40th anniversary at Andover parish

ANDOVER  Bishop Serratelli on June 22 helped celebrate the 40th anniversary of Good Shepherd Parish here — a dynamic, welcoming rural faith community that continues its longstanding tradition of reaching out to the wider community and being inclusive of people of all ages and backgrounds. Forged from seven distinct communities in the area, the parish had received help from its non-Catholic neighbors early on and today continues to attract worshippers from far and wide and reach out to the poor near and far — all while having started new small-group faith-sharing and a new program to get young people more involved in the Mass.

Former and current parishioners, staff and clergy packed Good Shepherd Church at 5 p.m. on June 22 for the Mass, which closes the western Sussex County parish’s 40th anniversary celebrations. Bishop Serratelli served as main celebrant and homilist of the liturgy, which honored the 1,200-family faith community that was built on interfaith relations. A non-Catholic donated 10 acres of land along Rt. 517 in Andover Borough for the building of the church. Before it was constructed, worshippers attended Masses in the local Methodist and Presbyterian churches as well as a local firehouse, said Father Timothy Dowling, pastor since July 3, 2016.

Also, the name of the parish — originally Our Lady of Tranquility — and its location — originally in Tranquility Lake — were changed to Good Shepherd in Andover to encompass seven local communities. They are: Andover, Lake Tranquility, Green Township, Forrest Lake, Cranberry Lake, Lake Lenape and the Tamarack Road section of Byram Township. Good Shepherd also attracts people further out — as far away as Hackettstown in the Metuchen Diocese, Father Dowling said.

“The 40th anniversary of Good Shepherd celebrates a parish that reaches out to people of different faiths and out into the community and tries to bring the community together. Parishioners have a sense of caring and help people in their joys and sorrows,” said Father Dowling, a native of Ireland. He succeeds the two former pastors of the parish: the late Msgr. Richard Steiger, its first in 1979, and Msgr. Martin McDonnell, pastor emeritus and weekend assistant at St. Matthew the Apostle Parish in Randolph, who arrived at Good Shepherd in 2011. “I have built on the wonderful foundation of my predecessors. This is a great community that always is trying to improve — to do better to build up the kingdom of God here in beautiful Sussex County,” he said.

Father Dowling was one of the many priests, who concelebrated the anniversary Mass with Bishop Serratelli. The others were: Father Michal Jan Szwarc, parochial vicar; Father Ed Reading, weekend assistant; Msgr. Martin McDonnell; Father David McDonnell, pastor of Our Lady of the Lake Parish, Sparta, and dean of the east and west Sussex Deanery; Msgr. Kieran McHugh, president and principal of Pope John XXIII Regional High School, Sparta, and former weekend assistant; Msgr. John Carroll, a retired diocesan priest; Benedictine Father Samuel Kim, prior of St. Paul’s Abbey, Newton; and Father Stephen Prisk, diocesan vice chancellor and the Bishop’s priest-secretary. Many worshippers, who attended the liturgy, are founding parishioners of Good Shepherd, when it was named a mission of St. Joseph Parish, Newton, in 1975.

The June 22 Mass concluded Good Shepherd’s 40th anniversary events. They also included a presentation about the parish’s history last fall by Msgr. Raymond Kupke, diocesan archivist and pastor of St. Anthony Parish, Hawthorne, and a picnic on June 9, the Feast of Pentecost, which is the anniversary of the faith community’s first Mass in 1979, Father Dowling said.

In the area of social justice, Good Shepherd reaches out locally by opening its food pantry to people in need on Thursdays and also by helping children in the area, who are struggling financially. Globally, parishioners hold a walk from the church to the parish cemetery a mile away to raise funds for orphans in Ethiopia. Good Shepherd is also blessed with a dynamic music ministry and religious education ministry, which started something new last year: having each class in each grade participate in a liturgy as altar servers, lectors and gift bearers. Father Dowling devised the program and tailors his homilies to the young people at these liturgies.

“It’s a great way to connect students with the Mass by being a part of it. The kids look forward to it and get to know the parts of the Mass. It’s also great for older parishioners to see the young people get involved and for families to get involved,” said Phyllis Haarmann, Good Shepherd’s religious education director for grades K-7.

Always innovating, Good Shepherd during Lent started small faith sharing groups that meet in parishioners’ homes, the pastor said.

“Small faith sharing groups are the future of the Church. In our evaluations of the program, everyone, who participated, couldn’t imagine the amount of faith sharing that took place,” Father Dowling said. “It shows that there is a hunger for people to find peace that is not offered in the world as such,” he said.

Good Shepherd’s legacy of faith and love started in 1975 as a mission of St. Joseph’s and soon with the building of an all-purpose structure, which collapsed during a rough winter. Bishop Rodimer elevated the faith community to a parish — first called Our Lady of Tranquility — and named Msgr. Steiger as its first pastor. Elena Kissell became its director of religious education and pastoral associate — the first one in the Diocese. The parish’s first Mass was celebrated on Pentecost, June 1, 1979 in the Tranquility Methodist Church, the parish history states.

To unite the different communities that it serves, the parish was renamed Good Shepherd in August 1979; weekend Masses were celebrated in Andover Borough Fire Hall and the Andover Presbyterian Church, while daily Masses often were said in parishioners’ homes and local lake club buildings. In 1982, Finn Caspersen, president of Westby Farms and a non-Catholic, donated 10 acres of land for the church, which was dedicated in 1985. Throughout the years, improvements and additions were made to the parish’s ministries and also to its building and grounds thanks to the parishioners’ generosity. In 2003, pledges to the Diocesan Prepare the Way campaign paid for the purchase of 18 acres for a parish cemetery, parish history states.

Here in religious education for almost four years, Haarmann said, “The size of the Good Shepherd community allows for an intimate relationship with the families and their children as they participate in the faith formation program.”

One founding parishioner, Linda Gray, has served Good Shepherd as lector; a food-pantry volunteer with her husband, John; a parish representative at Manna House soup kitchen in Newton; and a member of a small faith-sharing group. Their two grown sons received their sacraments and served as altar servers here, she said.

“Good Shepherd is home for us. We feel accepted here. We try to make everyone feel welcome and be inclusive of everyone,” said Gray, who praised the leadership of the parish over the decades. “God has blessed this faith community immensely,” she said.