When St. Pius X Parish in Zimmerman merged with St. Edward Parish in Princeton to form Christ Our Light Parish 15 years ago, there was little precedent for the merging of parishes in the Diocese of St. Cloud.
In the mid 1950s, St. Boniface and St. Patrick parishes in Melrose merged to form a new parish called St. Mary’s. The parishes in Browerville also merged to form Christ the King.
Christ Our Light was the first merger in the diocese in the 21st century.
“It was the first one, and I think that the real grief happened when we merged together because people realized, ‘Wow, this is no longer St. Ed’s or St. Pius X,’” said Father Kevin Anderson, pastor of Christ Our Light.
Seeing a chapter close is hard and grieving is natural. Saying goodbye to a building, especially one that holds the memories of some of our most important moments, creates sorrow and grief, explains Bethany Tollefson, a faith community nurse and a member of the diocesan mental health ministry team.
“These important moments and memories we hold in our hearts are sacred because of the people — the church — gathered in a building where we have a shared sense of community and unity,” she said. “Grief comes in many shapes and sizes and all forms of loss leave holes in our hearts.”
After the merger, the parish operated with two locations, COL-South, formerly St. Pius X, and COL-North, formerly St. Edward, for several years with the goal of building a new church.
The Zimmerman location was closed and decommissioned in 2021, and Father Anderson said that the staff tried to be respectful of everyone’s feelings of grief during the whole process. Parishioners were kept informed about the progress and were invited to goodbye events, like a “Pie and Memory night.”
Jenny Adams, who works as a communications specialist for the parish, remembers storytelling — like the Pie and Memory event and a Soup and Stories event — being a big part of the grieving process for the people who attended Masses at that location.
“I think that storytelling was a big piece that helped that transition,” she said. “I love the storytelling because it’s a mix of grief and gratitude,” she said. “It’s part of who we are and what makes us, but it’s not the final chapter.”
Another part of that storytelling was a “Legacy of Light” video created by the staff.
“We didn’t focus so much on the sadness of letting go in the video, but it was a lot of the looking forward to the future,” she said. “It was more talking about that hopefulness of what is to come and the direction that the church takes and how we as a body of Christ move forward. Not so much of the sadness of the past, but the excitement, the spirit moving forward.”
During the Lenten season before the closing of the St. Pius X location, the staff focused the liturgy on a different aspect of the grieving process each week. Using the theory of the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — developed in 1969 by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book, “On Death and Dying.”
“We took one theme each Sunday and we focused on that for the whole liturgy,” Father Anderson. “Each week, we had people write down on colored slips of paper what they were angry about, not just about merging, but just in life.”
“We really wanted to honor what people were going through,” he said.
Earlier this year, the parish closed and decommissioned the original St. Edward location and moved into the new building that they had been working toward since the original merger.
“Having the new building is what we’ve been talking about for so many years,” Adams said. “To have it come to fruition, where we have this physical space that allows people to come together, is incredible to be a part of. It’s a new chapter for us.”
In some ways the transition to an entirely new building was easier, Father Anderson said. They still tried to focus on the future while also honoring the past.
The rituals were still important. They held a decommissioning ceremony, officially closing and tying the doors.
“We’re called Christ our Light, so we had a light outside [the old church] burning and then two days later we carried that light in procession to this building.”
Having those rituals was important to Father Anderson as a pastor, but also for him personally.
He remembers when his home parish of St. Andrew in Elk River moved from the old building to the new church. He happened to be in town at the time and was going by just when they were moving the altar to its new location.
“This is the church that I was baptized in. I had my first communion, confirmation, first Mass as a priest here,” he said. “So, I’m sitting there with my emotions, but then I had this thought, that that altar is important. This building, as important as it is to me, the parish is more than a building.”
“It’s the people,” he continued. “And that’s not changing. And I think that’s the biggest thing we want to get across to people. The church is the presence of Christ, it’s the presence of the people.”
During the building of the new church and the transition to worshipping there, communication was key, Father Anderson said. And that would be his advice to parishes that will go through this as part of the All Things New planning process.
“Communicate, communicate, communicate — communicate what’s going on, here’s what we know, here’s what we can tell you,” he said. “Things can be painful, but we’ve got to trust the Holy Spirit working through the leadership of the diocese.”
Throughout the whole journey Father Anderson has stressed the positive and encouraged parishioners to focus less on what they’re giving up and more on the presence of Christ in it all.
“When everything is happening and you’re letting go and it’s sad and it’s hard, you rediscover what matters most. I mean, it’s about faith. It’s about people. It’s about the Eucharist. It’s about something bigger,” Adams said.
Father Anderson agrees.
“The church is the presence of Christ in the people … we haven’t lost that.”