Barbara Finley-Shea has served four years as pastor with Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Lyle. Being the congregation’s sole pastor entails a lot of work and is not for everyone, but Pastor Barb (as she is familiarly called) positively has all the energy and compassion needed for this assignment.

There is more to this lady pastor’s work than preaching and performing the rituals of marriage and funerals. Pastor Barb leads a regular Bible study group for women and periodically she also holds a class for all adults.

She found that there was no Bible study just for men, so she started one to fit the working men’s busy schedule.

They now meet at the Copper Kettle, a local cafe, at 6:30 a.m., every third Saturday of the month.

"That way they can study and have a sturdy breakfast before they go to work," Barb says.

Pastor Barb also teaches confirmation class.

For this class, she used to buy the curriculum, but in her search for the "perfect" material she struck out. So she started to write her own, which she incorporated with the mandatory Luther’s Catechism.

Eventually, she wrote the entire curriculum.

"Why buy stuff when I write my own, anyway?" she says. "I like to change it a little, so every year I write new material."

Pastor Barb also sits on the Lyle Community Education Board, where planning community events takes place.

Every couple of years she has helped out in well-attended parenting classes, and she also teaches Christian education to school age children.

"And every Monday morning, you can find me at the Humane Society, and I look forward to that," she says with a hearty laughter.

"That’s the highlight of my week.

I bring one of our students who is home schooled and she gets a chance to help socialize the dogs."

Pastor Barb adds, that if the children have the day off from school, she ends up bringing a couple of them to let them socialize with the dogs and also to help out with shelter chores.

She likes the chance to make connections with the kids.

It’s a way of teaching about God’s care, not only for people, but for all His creatures and all His creation.

We can learn so much about unconditional love from animals, she notes.

Once we win their trust, animals, and dogs in particular, are faithful to death, no matter what you act and look like.

She is not laughing when she bares her soul regarding her faith, though.

"My philosophy is that we should attend a church where we live, not 20 miles away.

Some people are in constant search of the perfect church, but hopping around from one to another, they'll never find it, because it doesn't exist."

She points out that the Church is the Body of Christ and needs all the members to work together, even if harmony does not always come easy.

Barb disagrees with people who think they don't need to go to church to be Christians. "I can pray from a tree stand while hunting," some say.

According to Barb, they have missed the point, the function of the Church.

Christ instituted His church, because we need each other, she insists.

"You try to be the very best you can on your own, but that doesn't work.

Every person has something to contribute to the whole of the congregation, just as every part is important to the body.

If one part is ailing or missing, it affects the entire body.

We are supposed to work together for the better of our community."

This is exactly what Pastor Barb made happen after she heard about the school social worker, who was feeding hungry children from her own kitchen.

"That's not right," Barb said. "She should not do that, that should be the Church's responsibility."

She brought awareness of the existing hunger issue to the church council and got the go ahead to start a food shelf program that got the entire community involved with contributing food.

The Lyle American Legion and the area churches became contributors; the local school had a food drive with kids competing to see which class could bring in the greatest amount.