Reverend Ives to Retire in June
January 25th, 2010
From the Daily Hampshire Gazette, January 25, 2010
Ives to retire from First Churches
By LARRY PARNASS
Staff Writer
NORTHAMPTON – The Rev. Peter B. Ives will leave his First Churches ministry come June, ending a 21-year tenure that makes him the fifth-longest-serving pastor of the church that helped establish Northampton in colonial times.
Ives, the 27th minister of the Northampton church since its founding in 1654, arrived in 1989 just as the First Church of Christ and the First Baptist Church were merging into what was to become known as the First Churches.
Two decades later, he leaves after leading a drive to save the historic building the churches now share at 129 Main St. in the heart of downtown. The church just completed a $2 million project to rebuild its slate roof and fix interior damage due to building leaks.
“I wanted to stay to be part of the reconstruction of First Churches,” Ives, 67, said in an interview before notifying his congregation Sunday of his decision to retire. “I just knew that I had to be with this congregation until we could go back into that sanctuary and restore this congregation.”
The Rev. Peter Wells, western area conference minister of the United Church of Christ, said Ives has led his church at a time when it is increasingly hard for churches to succeed.
“That’s in no small measure because of Peter’s leadership,” Wells said. “He’s led it to continue to be a vital congregation in Northampton and Hampshire County. He’s put them on a firm foundation for the future.”
Marion Van Arsdell, of Florence, said the service Sunday was emotional.
“People are sad to be losing him, but he leaves us in a very good place,” she said. She noted that his wife, Jenny Fleming Ives, helped lead Sunday’s service, and the couple has in effect run a co-ministry.
Ives plans to meet Tuesday with officials from the church’s two denominations, the United Church of Christ and Baptists, to talk about candidates capable of taking interim leadership of the institution after June. A search committee will be created by fall to seek a full-time successor – a process that could take more than a year and bring candidates from around the world, Ives said.
Ives and his wife, Jenny Fleming Ives, own a home in Northampton and expect to remain in the area. They have four grown daughters, Liza, Jen, Katie and Martha. Jenny Fleming Ives works as a nurse clinician for Tapestry Health.
Asked to name the high points of his service, Ives spoke of creating a culture that allows First Churches to be part of the city’s life, making itself useful to all, even those who do not come to worship. He said that mission connects the church with its founding ideals, when the institution was known as a meetinghouse.
A historian of the United Church of Christ refers to that role as offering a “place to discern the mind of the town,” a phrase Ives supports.
The church was one of many that opened its doors to all after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A meetinghouse, Ives said, should be “a place for the town to gather whenever there was a need, a crisis, a pressing concern the city of Northampton needed to address.”
“We’ve tried to do that and I’ve been committed to that,” Ives said.
“It was my deepest commitment to be a congregation, with this cathedral right in the center of Northampton, that was truly open and inviting to the community whenever there was a need to gather.”
The minister said he is also proud of the congregation’s decision in 1996, after a year of discussion, to declare itself “open and affirming” – and welcoming to people regardless of sexual orientation.
And at the start of his ministry, Ives said, he devoted himself to bringing the institution’s Baptist and United Church of Christ membership together as “one family.”
Along with the minister, the church employs a full-time administrative secretary, Joan Frederick, and five others who work part-time. The church’s yearly budget is $250,000.
Even after a major fund drive, the church remains nearly $500,000 short of the $2 million cost of the renovation. It received $1.1 million in gifts and grants and about $450,000 in pledges over the next five years.
Along with the roof repair, the project addressed problems with stained-glass windows, failing horsehair plaster and ruined stenciling in the sanctuary.
The church dates to 1888, when it was rebuilt after a fire gutted it. The original structure was erected in 1878.
With 21 years in the pulpit, Ives will have served longer than 22 other ministers, but not as long as the church’s second minister, the Rev. Solomon Stoddard (who led the church for 60 years), or the Rev. Jonathan Edwards (23 years), the Rev. Thomas Hooker (23 years) or the Rev. Solomon Williams (60 years).
When he was called to his Northampton ministry in 1989, Ives had worked for churches in New Haven, Conn., Cambridge and Glasgow, Scotland.
Taking a job in Northampton was a kind of homecoming for Ives, whose father had served as chaplain at Williston Academy in Easthampton.
Ives attended Deerfield Academy before taking degrees at Colby College in Maine, Colgate University in New York, Union Theological Seminary in New York and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Ives broke the news to church members Sunday in a sermon called “You Shall Not Go Over.” In it, he cited God’s instruction to Moses, as that leader looked out from a mountaintop across to the Promised Land.
“I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over,” Ives told his congregation, repeating God’s words to Moses.
“And that is what happened to Moses on Mount Pisgah, but that is also what happens to every minister of every church who retires,” he said.
“There comes a time when you cannot cross over. # No matter how long you have traveled together, you cannot go with them forever. # Today, Jenny and I know how Moses felt.”