Hitting a high note
EAST BUTLER — Her ministry may be ending, but the music will play on for Rev. Mary Kitchen.
Her 30-year career as the pastor for the yoked churches of East Butler Presbyterian, 900 Randolph Ave., and North Butler Presbyterian, 137 N. Butler Church Road in Chicora, is coming to a close.
It's fitting her final service will be a musical one beginning at 10:30 a.m. June 13 in the Odd Fellows Shelter at Alameda Park, 184 Alameda Park Road in Butler Township, with bluegrass musician and founder of the Farm Hands Bluegrass Gospel Quartet Daryl Mosley providing the music.
Kitchen and her husband and church music director, Allen Kitchen, have been hosting monthly bluegrass jams at 7 p.m. the first Sunday of the month at the East Butler church for five years.
Mary said the session of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has allowed the Kitchens to continue their jams at the East Butler church after she ends her ministry.
An end to the jams would be a waste of the Kitchens' musical talents. Mary plays the guitar, violin and viola. Allen plays the piano, organ, clarinet, mandolin, bass, guitar and recorder.
Allen called bluegrass music “a fusion of country, mountain and jazz featuring banjos, mandolins, guitars and bass.”
“Bluegrass came from the Kentucky bluegrass region in the 1930s,” he said. “It evolved from mountain music and has its roots in Black music as well. Banjos were predominant in the Black music of the time.”
The monthly jams often draw 15 or so musicians, and attract an audience.
Performers come from Crafton and Slippery Rock, they said.
“People come to listen to the players and take turns playing songs,” Allen said.
“It's a little different,” he said. “We invite people who are not very good or who haven't played in a long time to come forward. I might have to whisper chords in their ear. It's encourage, encourage, encourage.
“It's a great way to offer the hospitality of the church to a wide variety of people,” he said.
“We like to do music,” Mary said. “It's something we hope we can continue to do after my retirement.”The minister said music playing and singing played a big part in the livestreamed church services on the churches' Facebook page that they produced during the lockdown of 2020.She said they started livestreaming the first Sunday the lockdown began and never missed a week.It's just another part of a career at North and East Presbyterian churches that has spanned 30 years since she began at the yoked churches in October 1991.“It's really been a joy,” Mary said.“There are wonderful people here,” she said of overseeing the two churches with their 80-member congregations each. “It's like having two children.”
Mary Kitchen was born in Cleveland, but grew up in Pittsburgh.“When I was in my 20s, I discovered that Jesus was real,” she said. “Discovering Jesus was real, that got me involved in a small church in Pittsburgh. But I was sensing God could use me as something.“He was nudging me, calling me to be a pastor,” she said. That nudging led her to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and her ordination in 1980.After her first church, Mary went back to school to learn pastoral counseling at Loyola University in Maryland.She and Allen met during a Christian renewal event called Walk to Emmaus. They kept seeing each other at various musical events.Allen, a native of Wyoming County, was playing at a large Methodist Church in the South Hills.In 2005, Allen became the musical director of the two churches, but didn't join until after the couple was married in 2008.“It would not do to have Mary dating a parishioner,” he said.She sees him as more than a musical director.“He and I are a team. We are really co-pastors,” she said.
But now, Mary said, “I feel that God is calling me to a new venture about using music in therapy.”To that end, she is taking classes at Slippery Rock University on music therapy.And the Kitchens have a mobile home in Chautauqua, N.Y., that they want to use in the summer when the Chautauqua Institute is in session.While the Rev. Monica Hamilton, a retired pastor from Butler, has been tapped to be the stated supply pastor to fill in at the two churches, a musical director replacement hasn't been found.“I will miss the people terribly,” Mary said. “I've married children of people that I married. It's hard to leave them. I love them very much.”
