The following story first appeared in the Winter 2004 Glenmary Challenge.
For a free copy of the next issue

Ministry Fits 'Like a Glove'
By John W. Davis

'LIKE A FAMILY': Deacon Bob Laremore, his wife Becky and members of the Moulton, Ala., mission.

Glenmary pastoral coordinator Bob Laremore spreads the Good News in one of the least visited, poorest parts of Lawrence County, Ala. It has brooding, tree-covered hills wondrously strewn with waterfalls, racing mountain streams and magnificent boulders. But the foothills are rock-strewn and overgrown with scrub pine and old oaks. It’s the sort of hardscrabble land that few settlers seek out but which attracts those seeking refuge. And many have.

Cherokees, driven through the county along the Trail of Tears, took to its hills and remain there today. Blacks, escaping slavery, fled into its marshy bottom lands and remote hollows where you can find their descendants living now. Descendants of white farmers too independent-minded to send sons to the Civil War fight to eke out a living from the hard ground. A sporadic stream of Hispanics pass through today, seeking a better tomorrow in the chicken factories and cotton mills built here to escape union and safety controls.

Bob arrived in 1993 with Becky, his wife of over 35 years. Having retired from his first career as a chemist, Bob had been ordained a deacon and administered a 2,000-family parish in Dallas, Texas, before joining Glenmary’s pioneering effort to establish mission churches with lay leaders. He was one of the original group trained to call together Catholic communities in counties with no Catholic presence.

“This has fit like a glove,” Bob says of his Glenmary ministry after 11 years on the job.

When Bob arrived in Moulton, the county seat, he rented a rat-infested former barbecue stand and transformed it into Resurrection Chapel. Then he hit the road every day making house visitations. His philosophy when meeting his neighbors in their homes was clear: “You all come to Christ. Whatever denomination you feel comfortable with, join! I’m here to work with others, not compete.”

Today the Catholic community in Lawrence County consists of about 60 parishioners who live very much like a family. They know and care for one another. I often think that this is what the early Church was like. Over the years the community abandoned the barbecue stand for a larger rented space—a former beauty shop! And it has now purchased land in hopes of one day constructing a real church!

Soon after Bob arrived, he observed that while every church in the county had an outreach effort, none was coordinated with the others. He recalls the “red-headed lady with the tale of woe” who worked each of the churches in Moulton for “gas and food money” one Sunday. She made off with about $600 before anyone caught on.

Bob, building on his good relationships with other ministers in the county, initiated a joint, computerized outreach effort called the Good Samaritan. Today, with government assistance, it now serves some 90 percent of the impoverished residents of the county, distributing clothes, furniture, utility assistance and other necessities.

Bob, besides serving the Catholic community by arranging for worship, sacraments and religious education, writes articles for local papers and addresses spiritual questions in public meetings. But most of all, he walks among the people. He shares their life as a shepherd and people respond.

One day he invited me to wander with him deep into the forest which surrounds his modest home. “I come out here often,” he said, “because here is where I remember that, despite everything, God is with me.” Now I can better understand what Bob means when he preaches that God is with us all the time—even in places like poor, often-forgotten Lawrence County.

For current assignment

John Davis, a member of Resurrection Chapel’s sister parish in Madison, Ala., assists Bob Laremore with Spanish translation.