Harvest pastors head toward new mission

Pam Eubanks

Senior Editor

When the Revs. Steve Price and Catherine Fluck-Price moved to east Manatee County, they came as pioneers, both in faith and by definition.

Catherine Fluck-Price was one of a handful of female ordained ministers within the United Methodist Church at the time. The couple was one of two clergy couples in the state and they were the first clergy couple to start a church together in Florida.

“When we first came, the visitor sign on University Parkway said 421 families and growing,” said Fluck-Price, who is 51. “It was a daunting task starting a church.”

Nineteen years later, they have fulfilled a vision and a commitment to the community that will remain after the couple leaves the Harvest United Methodist Church April 3. The Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church has assigned them to another church in the state, although the announcement of where they will go and who will replace them will not be made until later this month.

They will start their new assignments in July. Until then, the Revs. Bob Stark and Ken Morrison, both members of Harvest and retired ministers, will tend to the church’s pastoral needs.

The couple will take some “unstructured” time to visit family and friends throughout the Southeast and prepare for their new assignment. Steve Price will still play tennis in the upcoming Take Stock in Children Tennis Festival April 30.

“They’ve been such a part of the community,” church member Dr. Don Bowman said. “They provided us with a pioneer spirt. It was a new way to welcome people into the church. They were selfless in their role-modeling in their commitment to community.”

Bowman’s own family joined Harvest in 1999, after seeing signs the church was meeting at Lakewood Ranch High School, where their daughter, Julianne, started as a freshman. The pastors performed her wedding ceremony Feb. 27.

“That was special for our entire family,” he said, adding Steve Price, who is 52, worked with the youth when Julianne was in high school.

Judy Harshman, whose family has been involved with Harvest since its first year, said the couple have been a gift to her family, as well.

“They have been beside us every inch of the way,” she said. “They are a wonderful couple and they work so well together. We have a church full of disciples because of them. Wherever they are going, that is a lucky, lucky church.”

Harshman recalled how in Harvest’s early years, when the couple’s two children (Shelby is now 23 and Sid is 18) were small, church members would watch them while the Prices preached. One morning, while Steve Price preached, their son, Sid, then a toddler, escaped from his caretakers and walked up and clung to his father’s leg.

“Steve reached down, lifted Sid up and held him in the cradle of his arm,” Harshman said. “This is such a family-friendly church.”

Over the years, Harvest has grown from a handful of members to more than 1,200 and a staff of 60, including teachers at its preschool, Sprouts. Its programs have evolved, expanding from one simple Christmas outreach to now providing gifts and a meal to more than 500 migrant farmworker children at Faulkner Farms each Christmas. It fills backpacks with food for children at Samoset Elementary to take home on the weekends. It holds an annual Harvest Hustle 5K that raises funds for the Take Stock in Children scholarship and mentoring program, among other contributions.

Those ministries, they said, will continue.

They have shared life and faith experiences for nearly two decades.

“We have cried a lot and will dearly miss the people of this congregation, but we trust God will be at work in this place,” Fluck-Price said. “We understand our ministry to be broader than any one congregation.”