Father Mark Kurowski and Pastor Karl Sickles don’t know each other, and, from what I can tell after meeting them, they have vastly different lifestyles and personalities.
Sickles is a soft-spoken, chain-smoking grandfather with calloused, working-man hands who recently retired as a career center instructor. Kurowski is a fast-talking, ever-smiling extrovert with a rich vocabulary and an intense interest in social justice issues.
They do share at least one thing – they are both men of devout faith who are searching for a flock at their respective churches. Each clergyman preaches to only a dozen or so parishioners on any given Sunday.
“I would love to see more people walk through the door,” said Kurowski, 52, of Munster.
“Everyone is welcome at my church, from any walk of life,” said Sickles, 66, of Leroy.
In an odd twist of what they believe is divine intervention, both churches are as dissimilar as the men’s personalities.
Sickles is pastor of Living Testimony Church of Leroy, originally formed in 1888 as the Leroy United Methodist Church. Most of the building is as old as its former name, which keeps Sickles and his wife Wanda busy with rehab projects.
The church is huge, with a spacious basement, expanded additions in the back, and a steeple that looks straight out of a theology book. Trouble is, it’s so large that it easily shows how so few people worship there during services — only a handful of families, no children in regular attendance and mostly believers disillusioned with other faiths.
“We’ve had a few former Catholics and Methodists,” Wanda Sickles told me while giving a tour of the old church.
Kurowski just recently founded The Church of Saint Raphael the Archangel, renting space for Sunday morning mass at The Social Center, 8751 Lions Club Drive in Munster. Before, the Catholic services were outdoors at Centennial Park in town.
Throughout the summer, he walked around the park interacting with anyone and everyone to attract newcomers to masses. He wore his priestly robes, including an alb underneath and a sleeveless gold chasuble over it, with a stole draped around his neck, symbolic for the yoke of obedience.
Some Sundays only a handful of believers showed up. Other Sundays, there’d be a few more people. Kurowski was thrilled seeing any new souls. And, for the record, it never rained on any of those Sundays, something he said while nodding to the heavens.
One of his parishioners recently joked that their eclectic congregation is a churchly illustration of the “Island of Misfit Toys” from the popular Christmas film, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Kurowski loved the humorous description.
He’s a longtime community organizer and faith leader in Northwest Indiana, formerly living in the Miller section of Gary with his wife and five children. He has a heart for blighted or challenged communities, drawn to where his energy and enthusiasm is most needed.
Kurowski began his ministry in 1985, graduating from Duke Divinity School with a master of divinity in 1996. In 2002, he founded My Spiritual Advisor, Inc., a Christian internet presence that ministers to people throughout the world.
He has had experience with the United Methodist Church and the Roman Catholic Church, but made a break from both in 2015 to instead follow the National Catholic Movement.
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Key differences between the NCM and the Roman Catholic Church include priests being allowed to marry, and making the Eucharist available to all who are baptized and who believe it is in fact the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. That includes the divorced and remarried.
It’s essentially a break from the Pope and the Vatican, Kurowski said.
In July 2016, he was granted permission by that church’s bishop to begin a church in Northwest Indiana, the only one of its kind in this area. (Find more information at http://raphaelnwi.org/our-plan/ or email [email protected].)
The first meeting place was his home, with the doors open to anyone who has felt shunned or forgotten by other places of worship. Even if it’s only a dozen believers seeking salvation and fellowship.
“I’m thrilled,” Kurowski told me.
Sickles is less than thrilled about his church’s dwindling congregation, but just as hopeful that it can rebound in Leroy, an unincorporated community in Winfield Township with only a few hundred residents.
As a boy, Sickles attended this same church, even serving as a pastor here in his teenage years.
Later in life, he drifted away from God and, with his wife’s love, returned to his faith though no longer as a Methodist-affiliated pastor.
“Faith is faith. Religion is religion,” he said during a break to install new siding on the church.
“We’re all God’s children,” Wanda Sickles added, helping her husband to saw the siding outside the church. “This has been my pet project since I came to this church in 1991. With God’s help, we finished the south end of the church and now we’re working on this end.”
Their church has been held together by faith, prayers and generous donations from Leroy residents and kind-hearted outsiders. Any money collected from chicken noodle dinners and garage sales goes to renovate the church or help those in need.
“We do nothing on credit,” Wanda Sickles said. “We feel if God wants us to do it, we must save until we have the money. Too many churches have failed because they get deeply in debt. We have quite a history to preserve here. If only people show up.”
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