St. David's Episcopal closes its doors after 65 years in Lakeland

LAKELAND —  After 65 years of services, St. David’s Episcopal Church's congregation held its last communion, sang hymns and offered prayers and personal expressions of peace and love at the corner of 145 E. Edgewood Drive and South Florida Avenue. At 9:30 a.m. Sunday, the church held its Service of Closure & Remembrance prior to joining the congregation of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church on County Road 540A.

While some tears were shed from the closing congregation of about 150, the Rev. Canon Tim Nunez chose a sermon bearing not words of finality but a prose of a positive future.

“We must acknowledge St. David’s was never sent to be an entity unto itself. Whether you’re talking about its heyday and the busiest of times, or you’re talking about the hardships and conflicts, or even the difficulties of the last few months, the church exists for a singular reason — we are the body of Christ,” he said. “Wherever you are in your sorrow this morning, I pray that God will bind up all of our wounds. We belong to him; we do not belong to a building.”

About 70 members of St. David’s congregation plan to merge with St. Stephen’s and the Rev. Robert Moses — who has been rector at Saint David’s for five years  — will become assistant priest.

St. David’s current congregation consists of about 120 members. The building encompasses 23,000 square feet of space on about 2 acress and has become a problem for the church to maintain. The move to St. Stephen's is seen by the church vestry, a board of nine members,  as preferable to searching for a smaller space to rent or buy.

Redemption Church of Lakeland, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, purchased the property for $1.85 million, according to lead pastor the Rev. Brannen Padgett. That church has about 240 members and currently worships at the RP Funding Center. Appraised at $2 million, St. David’s property, including its 400-seat sanctuary, known for its circular arrangement of pews with the altar in the middle, had drawn interest from an array of area churches.

Prior to the morning service, Frances Schroter Henry, 92, stood near a table holding scrapbooks of photos and memorabilia from St. David’s past. As she turned pages, she said she remembered attending the groundbreaking for the church as a mission of downtown Lakeland’s All Saints’ Episcopal Church.

Over the years, St. David’s priests conducted the weddings to Henry's first husband, Robert, who died in 1997, and her second husband, Bertram Henry, as well as the baptisms for her four daughters and one son.

“I’m wearing black today because I’m so sad, but it’s man-made problems that happened. We’re all God’s kids even if we’re all different in our own brains,” she said. “It’s just so sad.”

Following the Sunday service, Moses, 46, said he had was bit sad about the end of an era and leaving but there’s hope about the future at St. Stephen’s. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he moved to Florida at 6 and grew up in Melbourne. He began attending St. David’s in 2003 with his wife Nancy, daughter Emma, now 17, and John, 14.

“Its been a honor to serve the people of St. David’s and to journey with them on this path they’ve been on for a while,” he said. “I look forward to continuing the journey with them at a new property.”

St. David’s was one of four Episcopal churches in greater Lakeland. Besides St. Stephen’s, the others are All Saints downtown, the largest in terms of membership, and Christ the King on North Socrum Loop Road in North Lakeland.

During the service, St. David’s ambry — which holds the communion sacraments — was presented to the Rev. Peter Wallace Fleming, who served at St. David’s from 1961 to 1975. He had commissioned the ambry from a local artist and dedicated it in 1971.

Paul Catala can be reached at paul.catala@theledger.com or 863-802-7533. He can be reached at Twitter @pcat0226.