Attendance records at St. Paul’s shows that there are approximately 200 members at St. Paul’s and the average Sunday attendance is 90-95 people. This is just under the average size of an Episcopal Church today. However, on July 1, Miller’s first Sunday, attendance was 133, which is the highest attendance in years that the church has seen, not including Christmas Eve services and Easter Services. Then, on Miller’s second Sunday, attendance was still over 100. “The attendance the past two weeks has amazed me. I know that a lot of people have just come out to see the “new guy”, but I hope they will continue to attend Sunday services. To put the attendance in perspective, normal average Sunday attendance at St. Paul’s in June and July is around 60 to 65 people because a lot of people in this are flee to the beach on the weekends. So to have attendance over 100 at this time of year is amazing for this church. I can’t wait to see what the fall attendance will be which is traditionally when attendance goes back up.”
Miller, age 34 and originally from Bristol, Virginia is a 1991 graduate of Virginia High School. He attended King College in Bristol, Tennessee where he earned a B.A. in Mathematics in 1995. He then worked in the secular world for a number of years before attending seminary at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia where he graduated in 2005. He and his family then moved to Wichita, Kansas where he served as Assistant Rector at St. James. Miller also served as the Executive Director of the St. James After School Program, a non-profit program that taught choral music to at-risk elementary school children. Over the last two years, Miller helped to grow the After School Program from an outreach program with a $20,000 budget to a 501(c) 3 non-profit corporation with an annual budget of almost $90,000 with one full-time staff member, one part-time staff member, and more than 10 volunteers.
“he worked in the secular world for a number of years”
As though it is some far off, distant place we don’t like to speak of. Instead of the place we all live. I kind of chuckled at that…not really sure why exactly.