Harry Brunett is not your typical Episcopal priest.

Ordained in the early 1960s, he served as a priest in Baltimore County for only four years before deciding the church was too removed from the issues of the day: civil rights, women's rights, the Vietnam War. He quit to become a community activist, then a Rouse Co. employee, then a consultant, then a retirement home director, before once again -- seven years ago, in his mid-50s -- hearing a call to become a full-time minister, this time at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Glenwood.

This year, Brunett wants to start a contemporary "seekers ministry" for people turned off by the traditional church. He also wants to remain true to the Episcopal Church, arguably the most tradition-oriented of the Protestant denominations.

Instead of traditional music, the seekers ministry will have contemporary music. Instead of a sermon, there will be skits. Instead of a church building with stained glass and crosses, there will likely be a secular building with fluorescent lights and soda machines (Brunett said he hasn't decided yet on a location but knows it will be in western Howard County). Instead of meeting Sunday mornings, the ministry will meet Saturday nights, the better to attract those who have trouble getting up early.

These aren't new ideas -- churches around the country are trying to become more modern to attract members -- but for the Episcopal Church, the idea of this ministry is unusual.

Brunett has the blessing of the church hierarchy, said Bishop Robert W. Ihloff of the Diocese of Maryland. Ihloff said that if the idea succeeds, the diocese might set up similar ministries.

"We're already sold on some of the philosophical underpinnings," Ihloff said. "At this point, it will be interesting to see how it works."

'Setting the strategy'

Brunett is excited by the bishop's interest. "If the diocese endorses this, it's not Harry Brunett out in western Howard County trying some little piddly seeker service," he said recently, sitting in his sunny office at St. Andrew's overlooking the church graveyard. "It's going to be a major, major ministry. That's a big deal for me. We are setting the strategy for the entire diocese."

The day he decided to leave the ministry in 1966, Brunett, then 30, encountered the young woman who cleaned the church on weekends. She told him she might have to miss a day because she would be integrating the Woolworth's lunch counter in the Northwood Shopping Center in Baltimore and might get arrested.

"I thought to myself, what am I doing out here?" Brunett said. "The action is in the city. The action is among the young people, and it's in civil rights. And so I left."

Brunett worked for two years for Baltimore's Community Action Agency, then became a community organizer in a racially mixed neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. When he returned in 1969, he started and became executive director of the Northeast Community Organization, a group that worked with neighborhood organizations to address housing deterioration, inadequate schools, crime and poor sanitation.

Brunett appeared in the newspapers often during the four years he stayed at NECO. He had a reputation for using aggressive, strident tactics to achieve his goals. Critics sometimes told him he was un-Christian; he told The Sun in a 1970 profile that "nice methods don't always work." He also said that he preferred organizing to pastoring because he felt it was a better way to reach people.

"The influence of the pastor from the pulpit is so minimal nowadays, not like it was 50 or 100 years ago," he said. "I feel organizing gives me what I want."

Ready for the job

But almost 30 years and several careers later, Brunett, 63, has returned to the pulpit. During his activist days, he hardly ever attended church. He didn't have time, and, according to clips of the day about him, didn't much miss it.

When he had the chance to become full-time pastor at St. Andrew's in 1992, he felt ready for the job. This time,he wanted to appeal to the activists, the retirement-home directors, the people who hungered for more than doxologies, Apostles' Creed and other Episcopal rituals.

Looking back on his activist years, Brunett says he was "always searching for ways for the church to make a difference for people like me."

"Running a community organization, and running a retirement community, and all the things that I did, the church was never as important to me as I wished it had been," Brunett said. "And I said, if I'm going back into this, I want to make it more relevant and more important to my life because I know other people feel the same way I do."

Brunett has single-mindedly applied himself to that task. Since 1997, he has been chairman of the Mission Strategy Committee for the Diocese of Maryland, which includes 10 Maryland counties and Baltimore City. In May, he completed a doctoral thesis on how to start a seekers ministry.

Greatest challenge

This year, he is devoting much of his time to getting that ministry off the ground. He knows that the greatest challenge will be carrying out his contemporary ministry while remaining true to the traditions of the Episcopal Church. He wants to combine the lively packaging of contemporary churches with the meditative prayer of Episcopal tradition, as well as the strong emphasis on Holy Communion -- a little like combining the quiet solitude of reading with the sound and colors of television.

That will be challenge enough, but Brunett knows perhaps his biggest challenge will be convincing church members that the project is worth while, even though it might not bring more members to the Episcopal Church.

"I have to be very mindful that there's a mind set that I'm competing against that says if you're not adding Episcopalians to church rolls, what have you done to help us?" he said.

Breaks down barriers

Brunett knows it could also be a sensitive issue with some congregants, particularly the elderly who have honored Episcopal traditions their whole lives. But Bob Beaver, the senior warden, said the congregation supports its priest wholeheartedly, largely because he is "the kind of person who can break down barriers."

Michael Harris, another congregation member, goes further. He likens Brunett to visionaries such as St. Paul or Martin Luther and who is participating in what might be looked on one day as another Protestant Reformation.

"To me, the first big reformation in the church came with the Roman roads," Harris said. "Paul walked along the Roman roads. The second reformation was Martin Luther and the printing press. And the third reformation, to me, is the computer and the arts and communications. That's how it's all going to spread."

"If anybody can do it, it's Harry," Beaver said.

Pub Date: 3/07/99