While the disastrous tornadoes in Western Kentucky have overshadowed our flooding last spring, our own troubles have resulted in help for school children in Russell County. Each year, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Glenwood, Maryland provides around sixty school backpacks for St. Timothy’s Outreach Center to distribute to students on Barnes Mt. and Estill County. Due to donations, Estill County schools were able to provide supplies and backpacks to their students this year. As a result, St. Timothy’s had many left over. Last week, St. Timothy’s, after hearing of a specific request for school supplies, delivered what remained along with other school supplies and around fifty dental packs of brushes, toothpaste, floss and mouthwash to Mother Chris Brannock and some members of St. Patrick’s in Somerset, relayed them to Russell Springs later in the week. It was a small donation, but over thirty students started receiving the supplies a week after the departure from Estill County.

The following article was first published in “Diolex Link:New from the Diocese of Lexington, August 17, 2018
In 1982, the Rev. Canon Phil Thomas came to Estill County with the hope of planting a new congregation. Part of his thinking was also how could the church help the less fortunate in this Appalachian county. The genesis was a storefront used clothing, book, and whatever else people might need store along with a worshiping community. During his visits he met two young women who drove the Head Start bus who invited him to ride along and see some of the area. They both lived on Barnes Mountain. As he dreamed about helping this area, he was told of a farm that was for lease with the option to buy. With the aid of a United Thank Offering grant and support from St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Roxborough, Philadelphia, St. Timothy’s Barnes Mountain was born.
From the start, the aim was to assist in the community, especially help the children. In the summer of 1983 we held our first summer day camp, six weeks long with around sixty children each day. We provided a breakfast snack, lunch and a snack before they headed home. It took many trips each day to pick up and deliver home the many children. With some local adults along with students from the University of Kentucky, Phil was also the Chaplain at St. Augustine’s, we provided games, bible stories, and educational activities along with crafts. One of the highlights were the two Commodore Vic-20 computers we hooked up to donated black and white TV sets, so the children could program them to make stick figures do jumping jacks and run across the screen. And yes, we had games too; Asteroids, Pong, and I still have Frogger on a cassette tape.
Times have changed over the years. The van is long gone, the community has grown smaller as children have grown, many graduated from high school and moved away for jobs. As the education level went up, the birth rate dropped. Recently one of those women who first introduced us to Barnes Mountain tried to count all the children on the mountain and could only come up with twenty-seven. Only one school bus now comes up the mountain. What has not changed is the need in the county. While over the years we have begun working off the mountain more and more, there is always work to do. Each year mission trips from across the Eastern United States come to St. Timothy’s to work. They volunteer to help with home repairs, day camps for children, repairs to St. Timothy’s property and to learn about Appalachia; it’s people, culture and geography, the challenges we face, and the accomplishments completed. Once seen as those “people like Catholics,” after thirty-four years St. Timothy’s is a central part of the county. Each year we receive requests from the Health Department, Senior Citizens center, and other community organizations and individuals to help with home repairs, funeral expenses, utilities, food, clothing, school supplies and more.
We have always celebrated community-from that first Christmas where we gathered outside in the snow around a large cast iron cauldron to feed on burgoo before our first Christmas party to today, we celebrate community. During the summer when school is out, we hold a weekly community meal. The Saturday after Thanksgiving we again gather for a meal open to all the community. Each year since that first, we hold our Christmas party to distribute gifts to local children. Several Saturday’s throughout the year we gather for a day camp for children, much smaller than those at first, but full of games and crafts and fun for young and old.One of the joys of working with St. Timothy’s is that we are willing to try almost anything. We have had a Co-op garden, held cooking, canning, health classes, have gathered to make quilts for Veterans, learned to weave and make Christmas ornaments to send to areas of the country who have experienced natural disaster. We have been a center for GED education, had the only Cadet Girl Scout Troop in the county, worked with Grow Appalachia, the Christian Appalachia Project, CORA, Episcopal Appalachian Ministries, and other groups and activities.

In recent years, one way we have been able to help is by providing caskets for funerals. In the first five months of this year, we have provided five wooden caskets, made by our visiting mission teams, the linings sewn by our local women, for local burials here on the mountain. With mission teams coming from as far east as Massachusetts, west as Iowa, north as Michigan and south as Florida, we have been a center where Episcopal and non-Episcopal groups have come to serve and be served. This year alone we were joined by teams from Rhode Island, Two from Maryland, two from Washington D.C. and Ohio. It has not been uncommon for some groups to return year after year, a Reformed Church from Wisconsin made it nine years in a row, which will be tied next year when St. Andrew’s, Glenwood Maryland returns. In 2004 we even hosted the Province IV Triennial Youth Event. Over the years, we have had a few diocesan congregations join us for a week or weekend to give their youth a practical way to put in practice what they hear in church.

From the early days when we worshiped around the wood stove in the original log church, we still gather on second and fourth Sundays for “church” to celebrate the Eucharist. I still am reminded of the rector of one of our larger parishes said: “I hope one day [like St. Timothy’s] we too will reach mission status. St. Timothy’s Episcopal Outreach Center, as we now call it, is certainly not your typical Episcopal Church. Our official numbers are small, but the impact of this church has far outdone its size, both here on the mountain and more and more throughout the county.

The Venerable Bryant Kibler
Priest-in-Partnership, St. Timothy’s, Barnes Mountain