LONGMONT, Colo.—The Rev. Lillie is giving the sermon on Sunday at First United Methodist Church—but parishioners never know which Lillie it is until they show up.
“Clergy couple” Dave and Carol Lillie prefer it that way.
The couple, married since 1977, stepped into the pastoral duties of FUMC in Longmont this past summer.
“We always wanted to be in ministry together,” Dave said.
“Our skills mesh well,” Carol added.
This is the first time the Lillies have co-pastored a church together, they said. Pastoring is a second career for both of them.
Dave previously worked as a corporate controller for a large construction company in New Mexico. Carol worked as a receptionist for a home builder, “back when they didn’t have answering machines,” receiving up to 300 phone calls a day. She also taught Lamaze classes and organized an annual charity golf tournament.
But in 1984, the couple—then in their late 20s—looked around at their life: a custom home in the suburbs of Albuquerque, three young children, a 1956 Ford parked in the driveway, a country club membership, but they felt isolated.
“We were doing all these yuppie things, all these ‘right’ things … and life felt empty,” Carol said.
She said she saw a notice in the local grocery store about a new Methodist church forming in town by a pastor they both knew in their youth.
The couple, though they were married and baptized their children in the Methodist tradition, attended church only two or three times a year, they said.
So they decided to join the fledging church, which met in the pastor’s living room.
“What we discovered there was a truly engaged spirituality,” Dave said. “There was a quality to life that had been missing before.”
A few years later, the couple moved to the Denver area, where Dave attended seminary; the following year, he was appointed as a United Methodist pastor and served a Loveland parish, he said.
In 1996, Carol graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley with a sociology degree; she then attended seminary school. She was ordained an elder in the United Methodist Church in 2005.
Carol said she appreciated how the Methodist denomination welcomed women in pastoral roles and that having Bible study full of relevance and reason didn’t require “you to check your brain at the door.”
During this time, the couple was asked to start a new Methodist church in Fort Collins, but after a year, it was not growing fast enough. Dave remained at the Loveland parish, while Carol assisted at a Greeley church.
Their pastoral duties at different congregations so far from their Platteville home led to some creative scheduling of home life: Holidays were the bare essentials, and theological discussion often filled their car trips.
“The challenge of being pastors who are married and living together is finding a church close enough where you can be married and live together,” Dave said.
In 2003, the Lillies moved to Laramie, Wyo., where Dave was a church pastor and Carol was director of campus ministries for three colleges.
And while the Lillies said they loved the people of Laramie, the windy, frigid climate they did not. So they pursued a church where both could serve.
“The difficulty is finding a church in a geographical location that can support two pastors and have two positions open at the same time,” Dave said.
FUMC in Longmont fit the bill: The lead pastor was retiring, and the associate pastor was moving out of state.
And while Carol (who has the bigger office) is the creative one and Dave is more pragmatic, the couple is willing to serve as a team.
“It’s important to see men and women in these leadership roles,” Dave said.
“To hear male and female voices from the pulpit,” Carol added.
The two say they have brought their brand of an authentic, genuine and relevant pastorship to the congregation of 500 members.
“Our philosophy is that you should feel better walking out of church than when you walked in,” Dave said.
