ARTICLES WRITTEN ABOUT GENE STRAATMEYER

 ARTICLES WRITTEN ABOUT GENE STRAATMEYER – WASILLA ERA

March 19, 1999 “News Briefs, Presbyterian News Service”

”Yukon Presbytery Celebrates the Centenary of Arctic Church, Ordination of Inupiat Ministers” by John Filiatreau.

Barrow, Alaska.  The unquestioned highlight of the recent spring meeting of the Yukon Presbytery – the ordination of two Inupiat Eskimos as pastor-at-large – hadn’t even been on the agenda.

No one knew that Timothy Gologergen and Isaac Akootchook, both long time commissioned lay pastors and unpaid heralds of the Gospel in remote native villages of Arctic Alaska (and also, in Gologergen’s case, Arctic Siberia), would become full-fledged Ministers of the Word and Sacrament during the three-day parley at Barrow, the northernmost city in the United States.

But the Holy Spirit moved among the whites and the Inupiats who had gathered prayerfully at the Utquiagvik Presbyterian Church at the “top of the world,” and as the meeting droned on, what only impossible came to seem only unlikely,, then plausible, then do-able, and finally inevitable.

After a whirlwind examination process and two unanimous votes of affirmation, the assembled men and women of the presbytery laid welcoming hands on the Inupiat pastors in rites reminiscent of rugby scrums.

Having come to a meeting of minds, these dozens of normally cantankerous Alaskans were rewarded with a warm and joyful sense of community.  One wouldn’t have been surprised to see tongues of fire dancing on their heads.

As usual, however, the Holy Spirit hadn’t acted alone.

Give an assist to the presbytery’s Native American Consulting Committee (NACC), which had remarked in a bitter letter to the presbytery last October that it prefers not to ordain Isaac and Tim posthumously.”

Timothy Gologergen is 79. Isaac Akootchook is 76.

Gologergen, “apostle to the Arctic West,” has been an elder in the Nome Presbyterian Church since its founding in 1975.  He was commissioned as a lay pastor for Chukotka Native Christian Ministry in Siberia in October 1992.

Akootchook, “apostle to the East,” was called as a commissioned lay pastor in November 1987.  He is an elder of Kaktovik Presbyterian Church on Barter Island, and also among the organizers of the Kuukpik Presbyterian Church in Nuiqsut(1975) and Atqasuk Chapel  in Atqasuk (1990).

Gologergen was accompanied to the meeting by Anna, his wife of 50 years, Akootchook by his wife, Mary, to whom he has been married for 54 years.

The NACC pointed out that it was Yukon Presbytery that “set a precedent” for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s ordaining of devout Christians “without any academically accepted theological and educational training.”  It cited the cases of two fabled Inupiat ministers, Roy Ahmaogak and Samuel Simmonds, “whom you regarded as “Ministers that walked just like Jesus Christ.”

The letter – which accused the presbytery of “scandalous neglect of duty” and downright “abuse” in this matter – clearly hurt some feelings, ruffled some feathers and occasioned some bitter debate.

And accomplished its mission.

When the presbytery council met on Feb. 25, the day before the presbytery meeting was to start, it voted “to delete the following wording from the minutes of the Nov. 2, 1998, ‘Whereas, raising issues in this way hurt and surprised committee members; Therefore, Council of the Presbytery responds to NACC: That: Council states that charges against staff and committees is unsubstantiated and without merit; and That: Council interprets the NACC letter to be a cry of frustration and hurt.’”

Frustration and hurt are exactly what the Native American Consulting Committee members were feeling when the letter was drafted.

No such feelings were evident on either side during the Presbytery meeting, however.  Participants clearly were inclined to be accommodating, and, even when they disagreed, managed to do so without being disagreeable. Some said the sense of camaraderie was a tribute to Moderator Arlayne Knox, a retired schoolteacher with a soothing manner, an instinctive grasp of parliamentary procedure and a habit of tireless persistence….

Shortly before the Revs. Gologergen and Akootchook renewed their ministries at age 79 and 76, respectively, the presbytery reluctantly approved the retirement of the Rev. Gene Straatmeyer, 65, effective Aprial 30. (One of Straatmeyer’s cronies rose, apparently to speak on behalf of those of us who are retired. We don’t want him!”)[1]

Straatmeyer devoted eight years of his 40-year ministry to leading the Native American Theological Consortium, a program at the University of Dubuque [2] that trained Native American laity for ministry and recruited Native American candidates for Master of Divinity programs.

He was among the architects of the hurry-up process whereby Gologergen and Akootchook were given summary oral examinations on theological and ethical issues on the Scriptures and “The Book of Order.”

When the process had ended, he charged the two newly ordained men to “preach the Word with your mouth and your life….”

Straatmeyer said a 1972 study identified 112 Native American Churches in the United States and only 12 Native American pastors whose average age was 57.  He said there might be as many as three dozen Native American pastors in the country today – “not nearly enough.”

Then he added, “We upped the count by two today, praise the Lord.”

In a prescient college paper [3] titled “The Northern Alaska Eskimo and the Presbyterian Church, written more than 20 years ago: “One way to get indigenous leadership, I believe, is to upgrade the office of lay preacher so that they can administer the sacraments and care for the ordinary pastoral ministry in a village. The lay preachers might receive practical ‘apprenticeship’ training at either Barrow or Fairbanks. There should be a program for their continuing education….If a lay preacher functioned faithfully over a period of 10 years, the Presbytery should consider his/her ordination, taking his/her practical experience into account.”

While militating for indigenous leadership for the Arctic church, Straatmeyer also served as pastor of First Presbyterian churches in Fairbanks and Wasilla and helped establish two new congregations in the Fairbanks area – First Korean Presbyterian Church of Fairbanks and New Hope Presbyterian Church at North Pole.  More recently, he has worked in new-church development at Big Lake – the Church of the Reformation, a mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Barrow, more than 300 miles above the Arctic Circle on the frozen-solid Arctic Ocean, may seem an unlikely spot for a presbytery meeting in February.  Luckily, the delegates arrived during what the Inupiat regards as a heat wave. The wind chill was 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.  For much of January it had been 80 to 100 below.

Whatever the weather, there was a compelling reason to come to Barrow, a city of about 4200 people, two-thirds of them Inupiat, for this meeting: Utqiagvik Presbyterian Church was celebrating its 100^th anniversary. (Utqiagvik,” the Inupiaq place-name for the present site of Barrow, means “the place where people go to hunt snowy owls.” The less-fortunate Inupiaq name of another remote Eskimo settlement, Anaktuvuk Pass, means “the place where the Caribou defecate.”)

Utqiagvik Church was organized on April 2, 1899 – Easter Sunday – with 13 Eskimo communicants who didn’t understand English and a white missionary pastor who couldn’t speak Inupiaq.

After a century, the pattern holds, generally: Utqiagvik is still an all-Inupiat congregation with a white pastor – the Rev. Michael Stuart – who couldn’t speak Inupiaq.

Today, however, some things are different. There is an associate pastor, the Rev. Mary Ann Warden, who is an Inupiat.  Nearly all the Eskimos are fluent in English. And many worship texts, including the Scriptures and scores of popular hymns, have been translated into Inupiaq.

Some Inupiats see evidence of racism in the fact that few white missionaries have learned to speak or write any of the native languages.  They point out that white educators have often required Inupiat children to speak only English at school and have punished pupils who dared use their own tongue. White Presbyterians tend to see the language issue in a more benign light; they say learning the language would have consumed so much time that other ministerial duties would have been neglected.

A good number of white citizens of Barrow attend services at Utquiagvik at least occasionally, but none has yet applied for membership.  Worship services are held in both languages – English in the morning, Inupiaq in the evening.  The church has a busy, growing youth group, but most, younger natives cannot read or speak Inupiaq. Most Alaskans seem to believe the native languages inevitably will die out within 50 years.

Membership in the Barrow church peaked around 1963 at approximately 750. Today it stands at a little over 300.

The church was about three months old when Yukon Presbytery was formed.

The presbytery has 40 ministers of the Word and Sacrament on its rolls. The ordinations of Gologergen and Akootchook bring to five the number who are Native Americans.

About 120 people flew to Barrow for the meeting….

On the evening before the meeting started, the people of Utqiagvik Presbyterian held a welcoming potluck dinner, followed by Eskimo drumming and dancing. Their guests seem to be of two minds about slabs of muktuk (raw whale skin and blubber, black, pink and chewy) but were sold on the dancing, which calls to mind the ritual stomp-dancing of the Maori people of New Zealand in the distant South Pacific.

Footnotes:

1.     These words were spoken by the honorably retired Ken Smith, a friend and compatriot in Alaskan ministry since 1970 and who had retired from the Eagle River Presbyterian Church in Eagle River, AK.

2.     The program was at the Seminary, which is located on the campus of the University of Dubuque.

3.     The quote is not from a college paper but is from a chapter in my doctoral dissertation done at Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist institution in Denver, Colorado. The Doctor of Ministry degree was granted in June of 1979.