96-year-old Polly Ingold has set up a prayer station in a quiet hallway in her home. She prays for those on EPUMC’s prayer request list each night. (photo credit: Sarah Gardner)

Every night after she gets into her pajamas, 96-year-old Polly Ingold retreats to a short hallway that connects her bedroom to her bathroom and walk-in closet. She has set up a small desk there, filled with prayer guides and calendars and a piece of paper heavily marked with hand-written notes next to a long list of names. It’s the weekly prayer request list.

“I lift up the names of each individual and touch their names on the paper,” says Ingold. “I ask God to bless these individuals and especially those who have requested a healing and a comfort.” 

This nightly ritual is not only part of Ingold’s rich prayer life, but a particular contribution she makes as a member of EPUMC’s “Congregational Care Committee.” The committee, in its present form, started during the pandemic and aims to help Pastor Ann Lantz in her ministry to the congregation. Not only do committee members tend to the weekly prayer list, they also connect with and support church members who may be sick, in crisis, or perhaps just need extra help.  

“One pastor cannot minister and provide care for the whole congregation,” says committee chair Lois Scott. Leaving it to the pastor alone, Scott says, would lead to either “very insignificant care” or pastor burnout. 

Each Tuesday, committee members meet in person or on Zoom to pray for those on the prayer list. They take their lead from Pastor Lantz, who will often take one of them aside and ask them to reach out to particular members of the congregation who she knows are struggling. It could be a personal, health or spiritual crisis, or even a financial one. Ruth Trittin, former committee chair and a retired United Methodist pastor and chaplain, says she was inspired partly by the love she experienced in her little church in Palo Pinto, Texas. 

“I realized that there isn’t a person alive who doesn’t have something going on almost all the time. Pretty significant issues… and those people are sitting next to you in the pews, and they’re hoping and praying that God will listen to their prayers and that someone will hear them and help them.”

“It was a family,” says Trittin, who spends the winters in Palo Pinto. “Each person checked on one another and they showed me what a church could be. So when I went to Colorado I thought, y’know, there is no reason that we can’t have a church like that in Estes Park. Let’s do it!”

Trittin tears up a bit when she talks about it. “Being a chaplain, I realized that there isn’t a person alive who doesn’t have something going on almost all the time, she says. “Pretty significant issues that sometimes follow people their entire lives. And those people are sitting next to you in the pews and they’re hoping and praying that God will listen to their prayers and that someone will hear them and help them.”

Aside from prayer, the care committee has also provided meals to members who are sick, rides to church and even to doctor’s appointments. Chair Lois Scott emphasizes, though, that the committee can’t sustain that sort of care long-term for congregants. “We can’t be their sole help,” she says. 

The care committee also mails out hundreds of get well, birthday, anniversary, and Christmas cards to church members every year. Trittin, Agnes Lantz, Donna Meyers, and Linda Strandberg manage the operation, which also may include cards that commemorate the anniversary of a loved one’s death.  

Scott manages the weekly prayer list that is emailed to church members every Wednesday. She tells people that they are welcome to keep their request on the list as long as they’d like but that it’s a great help when they email her and let her know she can take their request off the list to make room for others. (see Scott’s email address below) 

Lois Scott chairs the Congregational Care Committee. “Being part of the committee makes me feel so much more connected to the church and that I really have more to offer than I thought I did. (photo credit: Jim Ecklund)

Pastor Lantz calls the Congregational Care Committee an “amazing blessing” to EPUMC and to her. “I’m not sure everyone is aware that there are not very many churches that have such a robust, caring program,” she says.   

Committee member Susie Mardock heartily seconds that opinion. She should know. Mardock’s husband Jim is a retired Methodist minister and Mardock was often expected as “the pastor’s wife” to tend to the needs of the congregation. “I think I’m more aware than many of what it takes to service a congregation. So, I appreciate their work.” 

Mardock has been a grateful recipient of the committee’s care as well. She’s been struggling with long COVID and other serious health issues for several years now. Last summer when she was hospitalized the committee provided meals to her family and other forms of support.” “I was really impressed by how good you feel when you get food or cards or calls from the committee,” she says. “It’s the people doing that work that make all the difference.” Mardock says every Tuesday she thinks of the committee meeting in prayer and she hopes one day to join them again. 

Mardock and other committee members know there is one rule they absolutely must not break: respecting church members’ privacy. “They cannot be blabbing stuff all over the church,” says Ruth Trittin with a refreshing bluntness. Committee members, she says emphatically, “have to be able to keep their mouths shut.” 

Except in prayer, of course. When Polly Ingold attends the Tuesday prayer meetings by Zoom she says she likes to know “why the person is being lifted up. Are they in hospice, do they have aches and pains, are they going to the doctor, to surgery?” She then composes her prayers accordingly and keeps in mind Bible verses like John 16:33. “It says we will have troubles,” says Ingold, who breathes using an oxygen tank at home. “We will have suffering, but God is with you and He has overcome the world.”  

(Contact chair Lois Scott at Scottlois1830@gmail.com or 970-227-1211 with prayer requests. Committee members include Lois Scott, Ruth Trittin, John Trittin, Polly Ingold, Robin Groene, Donna Meyer, Jake Meyer, Pastor Ann Lantz, Agnes Lantz, Peggy Tice, Linda Strandberg, Dwight Strandberg and Susie Mardock)