30 years in the pulpit on Hilton Head: ‘Here with a purpose’ at St. Luke’s

Greg Kronz sported the oversized glasses of the day, and a pretty hip beard, when he arrived 30 years ago as the new rector at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Hilton Head Island.

He and Meredith came with children ages 6, 4 and 1, and can say now they weren’t sure what they were getting into.

He played guitar. She sang.

He was surprised to be considered for the job because, at 35, he’d never served as a rector.

This Sunday morning, Kronz, without the beard but still with a shock of dark hair, will preach his last sermon as head of the 58-year-old church on Pope Avenue, known as St. Luke’s Church following its 2009 break from the Episcopal Church for theological reasons.

He is retiring as one of the island’s longest-serving clergymen ever.

“I believe (God) has called us here with a purpose,” Kronz said in a Packet story introducing him to the community in 1992. “And I don’t know what it means but we’ll work together to find out.”

I asked Greg and Meredith Kronz about that as he sat in a light suit and turned collar in an office stripped of its books and eight filing cabinets of old sermons that got tossed, except for some he may use in a new venture of writing.

Outside the office door is a long line of new boxes full of books belonging to incoming rector Jady Koch and his wife, Liza, and their five young children will now write new chapters for a parish tracing its roots to the founding of this colony.

Because few people see the underbelly of a community as a pastor does, I asked Kronz:

“What did you find out?”

Real Hilton Head

First, they found that Hilton Head is exactly not what it is portrayed to be: It has pain, poverty and suffering.

“We found that this is a place with the need of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Kronz said.

“We found a church that is an incredible source of ministry so far beyond the walls of the church.

“We found very talented people, and sometimes very troubled people.

“We found that sometimes people are all about retirement and doing what they want to do, and we need to reach them so they have a greater purpose. There’s a lot of loneliness too. A lot of the older people were lonely.”

Kronz arrived saying his role would be “giving people the practical tools to meet their needs and carry out their own ministry. I see it as a shared ministry.”

He leaves saying, “The Lord allowed me to be faithful to that.”

He has overseen five capital campaigns and expansion of the site to take over a former interior decorating business and a law office.

The church initiated and was the original host to the dementia respite organization now known as Memory Matters.

It offered Habitat for Humanity an office and a place to park its truck when the island chapter formed.

It added a family-counseling ministry.

It has a pre-school ministry.

It started the Church Mouse thrift store that last year gave $500,000 to charities.

It participated in a soup kitchen down the street at Holy Family Catholic Church and for a while offered access to toiletries and basic supplies to the homeless.

Its members minister in prisons.

It hosts the Neighborhood Outreach Connection academic program to boost neighborhood children living in poverty.

One member, the late Dr. Rick Vanderslice, and his wife, Joni, founded an orphanage in Tanzania after the doctor went along with Kronz in one of his 13 mission trips to Tanzania.

“It’s about the gospel,” Kronz said, “but it is also about caring for the community.”

Pain and hope

The painful part has been the departures.

When St. Luke’s left the Episcopal church along with about a dozen other congregations in coastal South Carolina, Kronz was applauded when he told the congregation “we are still a Christ-centered, biblically-centered church.” But more than 200 members left the fold.

The rift dating to 2003 was apparently settled for good only two weeks ago when the S.C. Supreme Court ruled that St. Luke’s, and others now identifying as Anglicans, did not have to vacate the church property.

Kronz said another wave of people left the island in the recession for economic reasons and more left as young couples could not afford to live on the island.

Add to that the retirement-nature of the island, where Kronz has conducted more than 800 funerals, and you get a cumulative feeling of loss that had him muttering the words of Nehemiah: “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

The Kronzes will not leave the island. They’ll try to see more of their three grandchildren, with another on the way. He will have weekends off for the first time in his life.

They met in his native Pittsburgh. She was working with the Young Life high school ministry, and he was involved in it after switching his major at Pitt from chemical engineering to a religion and philosophy double-major, followed by seminary.

“We have never known each other outside of a shared ministry,” he said.

Back in 1992, Kronz said, “We live in a hurting world that needs healing.”

Thirty years later, after all that work, how is that world looking?

“Worse,” he said.

“Look at the suicides, drug overdoses, cruel people on social media, the division of the nation as a whole, the mass shootings,” he said.

“Is that better?”

But his final words are of hope.

“There’s still a lot of pain and hurt. There’s still a lot of need. My hope is that Hilton Head will continue to be a place where churches are transformative to people’s lives and to the community and beyond the community.

“It is a place blessed with talent, resources and time that people have in retirement. We can have a huge impact by helping people see the opportunities and doing things in His name.

“Secondarily, I hope that people learn to get along.”

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.