Everyone said it was such a good fit, the new pastor and his rural flock.

And a good thing too, given what was going to happen, the sacrilege in God's house,

wasn't a soul alive who could have predicted that.

Certainly not, the big handsome ex-Golf Pro we spoke to more than a decade ago.

Craig Shrieves, who had traded in his clubs for a clerical collar at Trinity Evangelical

Lutheran, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

I love dealing with people and the joys and the sorrows of their lives.

And out there, of all places, a real country personage.

I often measure this congregation by the hands I see at communion every Sunday, with the

furrows and the fingers and the dirt under the nails.

The you take in the time, as are the members, to find the right place.

He liked them and they quite clearly liked him.

He's a wonderful pastor.

We wanted him, he wanted to come to us in this little town where there's not a whole lot

happening.

Deep Bucks County, where good country Lutheran still valued tradition and community and

their old church, the reassuring history of things.

Doctors who fought the Revolutionary War are scattered beneath the grass there.

This congregation has been worshipping regularly in this building since 1763, before there

was a United States of America.

So now he was pastor Shrieves, had a good sound to it.

Sue Bruner sang in the choir.

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