Reverend Philip Schaeffer stands at the altar of the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in St. Ignace. He has performed the church's Sunday service since 1992. For 127 years the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in St. Ignace has served the community, from two locations. The church was originally built on the corner of State and Balsam streets in 1882, where the Mackinac County Road Commission is currently located. The church was there only a few years before the congregation decided to move it up the hill about a mile away, because members didn't like the location, according to church records.

In 1889, it took nine months to move the church to its current location atop Prospect Street, overlooking Moran Bay. The crew used a capstan and horses to pull the church through town and up the hill. According to church records, the crew dug a hole to anchor the capstan, which was then turned by horses to move the structure a few hundred feet down the road. Commonly used in maritime settings, a capstan is a rotating machine used to apply force to ropes or cables.

The Good Shepherd Episcopal Church on Prospect Street in St. Ignace. The building is 127 years old, and was moved to its current location in 1889. The crew started moving the church in October 1889, and didn’t finish until June of the following year.

"It must have been quite a project," said the Reverend Philip Schaeffer. "But the building basically hasn’t changed much."

Only a few necessary improvements have been made to the structure. In 1930, a pot-bellied stove in the center of the church, used to heat the 69-foot by 39-foot building, was removed and a furnace was installed in a crawlspace. A boarded up chimney hole from the original heat source can still be seen in the middle of the ceiling in the church. Rev. Schaeffer said he's heard reports that having the stove in the middle of the church was quite cumbersome.

"They said they had a terrible time when they had funerals, getting the casket by the stove. They had to pick it up and go over the pews," he said. "That was their source of heat."

About 20 years later, the basement was completely excavated to a full basement and a modern furnace, kitchen equipment, and meeting and dining facilities were installed. It was another 20 years after that, in the 1970s, that insulation was installed to improve heating efficiency.

Other improvements included installing heavy steel cables across the upper levels of the church in the early 1960s to anchor the two main walls of the building together and make it more sturdy.

Standing at the altar looking toward the back of the church, the building's list toward the southeast is easy to see. Rev. Schaeffer said the church still sways in heavy winds, but, because of the reinforcing cables, he's not worried the structure will collapse.

The only other major change to the structure was the reconstruction of the altar floor in 1982. Rev. Schaeffer said it was rotting from underneath and in dire need of replacement.

Rev. Schaeffer, 85, and his late wife, Louise, moved to the Straits Area in 1982, the same year the church celebrated its centennial. They retired from Dayton, Ohio, to move into a small cabin on Brevort Lake built by his great-grandfather in 1903.

A few years later, the Reverend John Gardner asked them to become lay readers, who are parishioners who can perform a service, but not give communion. Shortly after they accepted the positions at the church, which then had 45 in its congregation, Rev. Gardner left. The Schaeffers, along with several other members of the congregation, began a study course as part of a ministry support team. They attended class once a week for three hours over a two-year period. Rev. Schaeffer emerged from the training as an ordained Episcopalian priest. He has led the church’s Sunday service since 1992.

"I have the longest tenure here of any priest here at this congregation," he said of his 17 years of volunteer service.

But the shrinking number of members and lack of ordained clergy leaves the future of the St. Ignace Episcopal church uncertain.

"We don’t have anybody else that is here enough to become part of the clergy," he said. "Most of our parishioners are just summer people."

About 10 people attend the church’s weekly Sunday service at 10:30 a.m. Owing to its decline in parishioners over the years, now down to 16 members, the church only holds service between June and September. The remarried Rev. Schaeffer spends his winters in Marquette with his second wife, Louise.

"Most of the people on that ministry support team have either left the church, moved away, or died. I’m just about all that’s left," he said.

As long as he's in good health, he said, he will keep performing Sunday services.