faith! - Elizabeth Moosbrugger

St. Martin’s offered Elizabeth Moosbrugger a homecoming she had not known she would need.

Elizabeth Moosbrugger had not anticipated what it would feel like to walk back through the large wooden doors of St. Martin’s after being away for more than 30 years.

But a lot of life had been lived over that period of time, and she needed a place that truly felt like home. Elizabeth returned to Columbia in 2018 to care for her aging parents after living most of her adult life in Cleveland, OH, where she had landed for work with B.F. Goodrich after graduating from Sewanee in 1989.

Elizabeth’s story with St. Martin’s technically began in 1967 when she was baptized, but in reality, Elizabeth’s connections to St. Martin’s had begun much earlier.

In 1950, Julius “Jay” McKay, the man who would become Elizabeth’s father, felt called to join those beginning a new church in Forest Acres. He followed that call even though he shared generations of history at Trinity Cathedral.

Elizabeth recently has enjoyed reading about those years through entries in her late father’s journals, which recount the earliest plans for the new parish.

“Sunday, Nov. 19, 1950. Very pretty day. Sunday school class very disorganized and I had no lesson prepared ... went to new church organization. Raised $6,500. The new name will be St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields,” one entry reads.

At just 27 years old, McKay was raising money for the building, editing the church constitution and recruiting members for the new church home.

A number of years later, McKay, a longtime confirmed bachelor firmly involved at St. Martin’s, met Betsy Mills. The couple enjoyed a whirlwind courtship and soon married. Betsy was welcomed into the St. Martin’s family with open 6 arms. Jay and Betsy soon had two children, Walker, and then Elizabeth.

The couple’s daily lives were filled with activities involving their children along with life at the growing parish. “Church was integral to everything we did in life,” Elizabeth said.

Elizabeth’s father Jay’s journal the day of St. Martin’s first service, January 7, 1951.

Sunday school: Felt boards filled with Bible characters and a particular Sunday of mischief Elizabeth recalls when she and a friend hid from their Sunday school teacher in a bathroom stall. “We were just bad,” she said.

Choir practices: “When I was little what is now the chapel was the choir room. Choirmaster Anne Bauer taught us the stories behind everything we sang. We sang cantatas about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and Noah’s Ark.”

Brownies, confirmation, youth group: EYC was especially meaningful as it gave Elizabeth a place of belonging. “Being involved and feeling a part of things made a big impression on me.”

Beloved trips to Kanuga both during Parish Family Weekends and as a youth group.

All of this worked together to form a sense of faith and a love for the Episcopal Church in Elizabeth – something she took with her to Cleveland where she served in a myriad of ways at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. From Altar Guild to vestry, she delved into all of it, and loved each experience.

“Because my parents modeled that commitment to serve, it was engrained in me. I just never questioned it, and I found it incredibly fulfilling. That foundation of service was so integral to the way my parents raised us.”

After Elizabeth’s move back to Columbia in 2018, she initially attended services at Trinity, where her parents had returned when Elizabeth was an older teen. Elizabeth had maintained a love for the Cathedral, enjoyed attending with her elderly parents and wanted to think it could be her spiritual home as well, but things in Elizabeth’s world had changed.

The mother of two children, one of whom is gay, Elizabeth held a theological perspective that was evolving. She soon discovered it was difficult for her to worship in a congregation not fully embracing the changes approved at General Convention in 2015 allowing gay clergy and affirming gay marriage. Their family had experienced welcome in Ohio and wanted to continue to worship with the openness they had found there.

She spoke with Trinity’s priests about her concerns, but, ultimately, she had to decide whether to be a part of change that may or may not come, or whether change was fair to ask of those who simply weren’t in the same place she and her husband were.

Because of their child, “now it was personal,” she said.

“The log in my eye got so big because I kept hearing we were to love everybody and, yet, it felt hypocritical because it didn’t feel to me that we were loving everyone,” she said. “I was so stuck in judgment.”

Elizabeth yearned to be free of that judgment, and to worship in a place where her daughter would be as accepted as her son. “I found that at St. Martin’s.”

Elizabeth’s husband John had already been attending St. Martin’s when Elizabeth made her decision to return as well.

One Sunday in particular stands out to Elizabeth. Associate Rector Caitlyn Keith had invited the children to come to the altar to observe her preparing the Eucharist. But Caitlyn didn’t just invite the children to stand in front of the altar, she invited them to stand with her behind the altar to watch exactly what she was doing. “That was so breathtaking to me,” she said.

It illustrated in such a simple way what Elizabeth believes in her bones – “that the Eucharist is a celebration ... I love watching Mitch and Caitlyn smile during the Eucharist.”

As a former Altar Guild president, Elizabeth knows firsthand how easy it

can be to get wrapped up in the pageantry of worship. But sometimes we do so, she believes, at the risk of “missing the experience.”

At St. Martin’s, she found people who are, instead, living Elizabeth’s experience of the Eucharist.

“There’s something to the informality of St. Martin’s and how it deals with the formality. That really appealed to me,” she said.

All of this is what brought Elizabeth back through St. Martin’s big wooden doors once again.

“St. Martin’s lives my values and what’s important to me about the Episcopal Church,” she said.