'Just plain Gary' nudges his congregation forward

Originally published Saturday, November 14, 1998

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

A big part of Gary Schwab's job is to keep his team above the .500 mark.

And in the seven years he's been pastor at Newport Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), membership has grown slowly to "about 543," he said.

The Rev. Gary Schwab is "just plain Gary to most folks," he said. "Except for children, when someone calls me 'Pastor Schwab' or 'Reverend Schwab,' then I figure either I'm in trouble or it's a stranger to these parts."

Newport Presbyterian pretty much draws its hometown crowd from the Coal Creek corridor and the Newport community of Bellevue, with an increasing number of members from as far away as Issaquah, Redmond and Renton. And some of those members are drawn by the Fish Pond nursery and day-care center, which the church has seen as part of its role in this growing community.

"Just plain Gary" who sometimes is referred to as "chief of staff," leans back in his office chair and admits that "it all couldn't happen without all the built-in help." When the congregation set a $200,000 fund-raising goal for items such as repairs to the church hall roof and new furnaces, "I was able to just sit on the sidelines and let them raise the money and budget the improvements," he said. And the thermometer-type gauge just outside the sanctuary doors indicates they've almost reached their goal.

His staff includes an associate pastor, music director, organist, preschool director, two secretaries and a substantial layered middle-management of deacons and elders. "That allows me to divide my time between preaching, pastoral care, some education and other matters," said the trim 61-year-old.

This church's programs draw from and reach into the community on all levels, from active involvement in a food bank and emergency feeding program to sponsorship for more than 65 Asian refugee families. Gary also is on the board of the Eastside Habitat for Humanity building program and various cooperative programs with St. Clement's Episcopal Church in Seattle's Mount Baker neighborhood.

The Rev. Ralph Carskadden of that parish has no small amount of praise for his fellow clergyman. "(Gary) is just a real ordinary guy, in the sense that he's part of the community. We recently acquired a house adjacent to our church, and a couple weekends ago, he came over with a work team from Newport and there he was, down on his hands and knees, ripping up the dirtiest, grungiest old carpeting you ever saw. He was just a worker bee."

Beyond that, Carskadden said, "Gary has a wonderful warmth and a gracious humor. He shares the life of a place without feeling threatened or trying to climb above. He seems very much at home in his own body and soul, and therefore makes you feel at home. That's not true of a lot of religious leaders, or of people in general."

Outside of a 55-hour work week that starts before 8 a.m., either at home or in church, Gary and Judy, his wife of 36 years, get into everything from symphonies to theater.

An avid reader, Gary makes frequent trips to local bookstores. "Thank God for things in Seattle such as the Elliott Bay Book store and the readings there," he said.

But this Midwestern native blends into the Northwest landscape and social structure in other ways. "Three days a week I ride my bike for 35 to 50 minutes," he said. "I used to ride more, but my legs told me to stop. It's become a real discipline now, and I become out of sorts if I don't ride."

"He keeps talking about 'someday, if I do the STP (annual Seattle-to-Portland bicycle trek), I'll have to get a better bike,'" said Judy Schwab. "But he'd have to do more training, too." Most of her husband's free time is spent on his hands and knees . . . "in his garden," she said. "A handyman he's not, but he's helpful around the house."

Gary and Judy met at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she was a nursing major and he was working toward a master's degree in history. "I'd thought about the ministry since childhood," he said, but I did my undergraduate degree (at Muskingum College, in New Concord, Ohio) and pursued a master's. I think I was looking for an intellectual rationalization for the faith I always had.

"I found that at Wisconsin, where they had an active Presbyterian campus ministry, with two pastors, a music director, etc. And there was a growing interest in social justice and issues facing the church in the world."

Those issues became part of who Gary was, and was to become, as he went through Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He and Judy married a year before his graduation. "We took a required internship year in a little town in Northwest Wisconsin, where everyone referred to me as 'that guy from New York City!'" Gary recalled with amusement.

The social issues of civil rights and the Vietnam War that were the center of his extracurricular time in seminary changed and grew more important to him as they moved to pastoral assignments, first in a predominantly Jewish community in New York, then at an interracial church in Wilmington, Del., and before Newport, a dozen years as pastor of a church in Appleton, Wis.

Gary doesn't back away from social issues, particularly those he feels should be this congregation's issues. In the church's annual report, he writes about the "continuing debate and controversy within the larger Presbyterian family over ordination standards and the ordination of gays and lesbians is another significant challenge for us."

And this congregation and the larger church should keep this debate and discussion going -- as it has for the past 20 or so years -- until it is resolved, he said. "People know where I stand on this," he said. "And here, my role is to tell both sides and those in the middle that this congregation must be a model for the larger church on how to live with these differences, and to create a safe place (for gays and lesbians in the church)," he said.

Again, Carskadden observes that "Gary encourages people to move beyond their comfort zones. He has a lovely way of of encouraging, inviting, challenging in a way that is not confrontational or grandstanding. He's more concerned that people explore ideas and possibilities.

"He has a way of stepping aside and pointing us toward what's important, rather than at himself."