New pastor serves three community churches

Friday, July 22, 2011
Donna Clark Fuller is keeping herself busy. She has taken over pastoral duties for three area churches while still a student at St. Paul's School of Theology in Kansas City, Mo. Fuller heard the call to ministry after serving as a certified public accountant for more than 30 years. Michael Pommier/Tribune

By Michael Pommier

The Fort Scott Tribune

Take the pastor of three churches and a seminary student and wrap them into one package ... that package would be Donna Clark Fuller.

Currently serving as the new pastor for St. John's United Methodist Church in Fort Scott, Hammond United Methodist Church on Soldier Road just east of U.S. Highway 69 and West Liberty United Methodist Church just west of the state line on Valley Road, Clark Fuller certainly has her hands full in her first assignment as a pastor.

"They're all small churches, but they are very active," she said of the three churches with a combined congregation nearing 150 members. "We have great leadership in the churches, and they do a lot of things."

Clark Fuller said the Methodist Church expanded in the early days when pastors would take turns visiting small rural churches that could not afford to pay a full-time pastor.

"That's what I'm doing now. None of these churches by themselves can afford to pay a pastor," she said. "Because I'm just starting out, they're not going to put me in one of the big churches. I have a lot of life experience, and I have a lot of experience as a lay-leader in the local churches that I've been in. (The United Methodist Church) thought that I had the skills to juggle the three churches."

Clark Fuller may be serving three churches, however, she is still not a full-time pastor as she has only completed two semesters at St. Paul's School of Theology in Kansas City, Mo., with three or four more years to go. She said when classes resume in September she will have classes on Monday and Tuesday, at which point she will live in her home in Peculiar, Mo., then return to Fort Scott the remainder of the week.

"I'm hoping to be really organized by (September) and be on a schedule," she said. "I'll have to be very focused on school when I'm up there and then very focused on here when I'm down here."

Once her classes resume, Clark Fuller said she is not worried about the churches while she is absent. She said the leadership within the churches is strong.

"They have very strong lay-leadership here who organize a lot of things that the pastor doesn't need to micro-manage everything that is going on," she said.

Ministry was not where Clark Fuller began her career; in fact, it is more of a second career path for her after working for more than 30 years as a certified public accountant. After her husband passed away four years ago from colon cancer, she became heavily involved in her local church. Through her involvement, she found herself as a delegate to the United Methodist Church's annual conference in which she heard a "clear call" that she was meant to be a pastor.

"I always knew there was something else God wanted for me to do. It took me a long time to figure out what it was exactly that God wanted me to do," she said. "I made a commitment at that point, even though I didn't really know where it would lead me."

Clark Fuller said that although it may not seem so on the surface, there is a connection between the ministry and working as a CPA. She said that she worked with small business owners, and she would often get involved in her clients' personal lives through their financial struggles and successes.

"There is always that connection of trying to help people," she said.

Clark Fuller leads Sunday worship services at 9 a.m. at West Liberty United Methodist Church, 10 a.m. at Hammond United Methodist Church and 11 a.m. at St. John's United Methodist Church.