In Search of Growth: St. Mary’s, Brecon
Call him Ted Lasso. Actually, call him Fr. Mark — unless you’re a parishioner at St. Mary’s Church in the hilly town of Brecon, Wales. A year ago, when a cheerful American priest, the Rev. Dr. Mark Clavier, became vicar of the small cathedral-town parish, St. Mary’s had 16 regular Sunday worshipers. Today it has nearly 60, a growth rate of over 300 percent in a year, making for an underdog turnaround story like that of the football team on Apple TV’s Ted Lasso.
But how much does renewal reflect the new vicar’s vibe? Though congregants speak very affectionately of their vicar’s upbeat personality and people skills, there’s a lot more than optimism behind the growth.
Clavier worked with the congregation early on to create a strategic plan, or a parish roadmap, called The Beacon Project. It integrates the small city’s history with parishioners’ stories. It asks questions like Who are we? Where is God calling us to go? How will we get there? It expresses the past, present, and hoped-for future of the congregation. You can pick up a Beacon Project booklet as soon as you walk in the door. The collaboration, clarity, and commitment of the document has created a sense of identity rooted in mission rather than survival or spiritual hospice care.
But part of this mission has meant treasuring a very traditional Anglican identity, even in a part of the world where growth usually means a more culturally evangelical style. St. Mary’s history goes back to the Norman Conquest.
A young couple, Kim Scally and Kris Lynch, have attended only a few months. “We felt very welcomed,” Scally said. “It felt comforting.” The first time they visited, they had just lost a son at 24 weeks’ gestation. Looking for a sense of security and peace, they appreciated the familiarity of traditional worship and beauty of the historic space, combined with relational warmth.
“At a time when there was a lot of very raw grief and emotion,” Lynch said, it was invaluable “to come to a place where we could heal and feel soothed, and feel the love of the Church.” And the community is small enough that the couple already feels plugged in. Scally, an architect, is on the Beacon Project committee, helping plan improvements to the historic building.
Renewal has also meant traditioned innovation, starting with their historical space. You can see this in St. Mary’s cafe ministry. Parishioners turned the west end of the church, Monday to Saturday, into a restaurant and public meeting space. Parents meet for playdates and business partners have lunch in the side aisles, always within sight of the altar, and often hearing prayers or a Eucharist.
Though small, the church is high-ceilinged, creating a space that’s airy, bright, and not overly intimate or closed in. Outside and inside flow together easily and naturally. The architecture lends a similar flexibility to the space, as might an all-purpose room in a nondenominational church, except instead of basketball hoops, St. Mary’s visitors enjoy stained glass, a medieval Ting Tang bell, and stone soaked in centuries of prayer. The oldest definition of parish springs to mind.
Further reflecting St. Mary’s discerned call to Benedictine hospitality and local rootedness, the Tower Cafe serves Brecon produce, bread, meat, and baked goods. Clavier leads midday services and hangs out in the cafe, where he finds many unplanned opportunities for ministry. In prayer, communal discernment, and strategic, missional risks, St. Mary’s has opened outward in an organic way, welcoming the neighborhood to share a holy space and a shared inheritance.
Renewal has also meant investing in hours of prayer, budget adjustments, and building preservation. But the key to St. Mary’s revival fits an even deeper lock. Clavier realized early on that to access the parish’s history and inner life and cultivate growth would depend on learning from the handful of parishioners who’d weathered a precipitous decline. Faithful stewards of the church had stories to tell.
Dr. Elizabeth Parry — Liz to her church family — has been a parishioner for almost 25 years. Parry is a retired vicar’s wife and a nurse. She and her husband came to St. Mary’s looking for anonymity. When they came to the small, friendly church, they found “fantastic people.” But “from day one,” they did not feel like a diocesan priority. “Pastoral care was minimal. I’m sure [the vicars] meant well, but the end result was that this felt like an orphan congregation.”
In 2008, St. Mary’s held a lay-led week of prayer in the Lady Chapel “to see where God was leading us.” Parishioners sensed God’s guidance, Parry said: “This is an ancient building, it has a Benedictine foundation, and our role was one of welcome and embracing.”
This dream lay fallow for many years as numbers fell, and some considered closing the parish permanently. “We have a lovely word in Welsh,” Parry said. “It’s cwtch [hug, cuddle]. My grandmother used to use it when she put the chickens away at night. You put the hens away in the cwtch. Safe. Warm.
“It was a tragedy” waiting many years for a vicar to recognize “these are people who need loving,” who need a cwtch.
Pillar members of St. Mary’s could identify the vocations God had planted long ago in the DNA of the church, but to flourish, they first needed to feel loved. Committed plans for the future and a consistently hopeful attitude did more than cheer people up: it spoke directly to the congregation’s particular wounds, communicated affection, and built trust.
Clavier knew this would be part of his job. But it also comes naturally. He simply loves Brecon — the town, the landscape, the Wye River. He and his wife, Sarah, love to hike in the hills with their dogs. They love the history of Wales. They love the local butcher. Vestry member Windsor Griffiths is a longtime parishioner, and he attributes renewed energy to having a priest who’s obviously happy to be rooted in the parish, and who shares that with others: “people really want to work with him for the benefit of the Church’s mission. The vibrancy in St. Mary’s is beginning to infect more people in the area.”
Liz Parry has seen qualitative change through the prayer ministry. There’s been “a fundamental shift” in prayer requests, from focus on bereavement and grief to requests for guidance, from survival mode to being an active Christian presence in the community. “And if we as a church cannot meet people’s needs, we need our bottoms slapped.” Parry laughed, then added, “That’s why we’re here. We’re the sanctuary. We’re the ark. And we’re building for the future.”
A member since 2008, Jean Hosie felt the immediate difference it made for parishioners’ pain to be acknowledged and their emotional needs met by what she called Clavier’s “instant comprehension of the extremely negative and depressed situation he inherited.” But she also saw the way the strategic plan made a baseline difference, not only to organizational challenges, but to the parish’s mood: The “sense of a challenge to be met … brought about an immediate reaction amongst long-standing and exhausted members, and at the same time attracted … townspeople to find out what is going on.”
A pastor’s personality, like numbers, can probably be misread when looking at church growth. The vicar’s vibe shouldn’t drive growth or change. But personality and attitude undoubtedly have an influence. Affect has effect. It’s worth wondering how our traits, moods, loves, and energy levels might be deployed for kingdom leadership.
“Authenticity, being jovial, being traditional. St. Mary’s is an example for me of how all these things can coexist,” Kris Lynch said. “The Church can teach and preach the Word of God in the way it always has.” But, said Kim Scally, “I wasn’t anxious that I might slip up or be judged. I felt very accepted. That’s what struck me.”
So why is St. Mary’s growing? Why was Ted Lasso’s soccer team successful? “If I used one word, it would be community,” Scally said. “It’s not just Sunday, it’s every day of the week, and [it includes all] Brecon.”
Her husband added, “I look at the barbecue we had last weekend. It wasn’t staged. It felt like a community.” Like Cwtch? He smiled. “Yeah.”
Enjoy this article’s companion episode on The Living Church Podcast.
Mark Clavier writes occasionally for TLC and its web journal, Covenant.
