faith! - Kate Gellatly

Kate Gellatly’s faith is intricately woven into her day-to-day life.

She isn’t flashy about what she believes, or one to coerce someone into coming to church with her, but she does believe that the way you live can have an impact on others. If they see you living in a way that is inviting, they just might want to find out more about what is informing your way of life.

“I don’t think it’s the ‘Come to church with me’ kind of stuff that works, but instead, show that we’re here. We’re a comfortable place where you don’t have to wear the right shoes or drive the right car,” she said. “St. Martin’s is the only other place where I’ve really experienced that” kind of church life.

Kate knows a little bit about different churches. While she was baptized as an infant at St. Martin’s, her family moved out of state not long afterwards, later returning to the Northeast area of Columbia, where she grew up attending St. David’s. As a college student at Furman University, she attended St. Peter’s in Greenville, and as a graduate student in Utah, she attended All Saints Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City. Later, after her children were born, she found her way back to the church of her baptism and the church where her grandfather had been a founding member. Returning to a place with those types of roots has been comforting.

“I feel a strong connection to keeping our church healthy in his honor,” she said. “I also believe it is part of why it feels like home.”

Kate loves the liturgy of the Episcopal experience. She finds that it offers a soothing rhythm. “The flow of the service is just engrained in you,” she said. “It’s a heartbeat-like comfort.”

Kate’s not sure why, but regular church attendance has never been a struggle for her. “I don’t ever remember fighting about going to church,” she said. Perhaps it’s because her friends were in church. She wanted to be with her friends and she enjoyed the things they did together as a church community.

The same truth fell into place as a teen and young adult when she attended Camp Gravatt and later worked there. While attending Furman, she helped start the Canterbury Club so that Episcopal students there might have a fighting chance against all the Baptists.

With all that interest in the church, you might wonder if Kate ever considered a call to the priesthood. Nope. “That’s never been a thing for me. Not because I am a woman and didn’t think I could. I just wasn’t interested,” she said. To be a part of the laity is her call.

But many of her friends are connected to the church, and people who Kate describes as doing their best to follow “a good moral compass.” They are “people who tend to do good in the world, and are trying to love.”

Among Kate’s friends are teachers, therapists, priests and professional church staff, including a group of “Gravatt Girls” she visits with annually.

She wants the same types of friendships for her children, Emmie, 15, and Matt, 16, and hopes what they’ve observed in her life serves as an example for them.

“Your friends are so much who you are,” she said. “They have seen that my friends are who they are, and that we’re still close. They like that.”

As a result, Emmie and Matt are involved at St. Martin’s – both are in the Royal School of Church Music Program, and active in EYC. Matt is also involved in youth work at the diocesan level, much like his mom, though she says Matt serves in ways she never did. He recently served on the staff of a Happening event at Camp Gravatt.

Kate does her share of good in the world as well. Even as a single mom, she works as both an X-ray technologist with the Surgery Center at Midlands Orthopedics and Neurosurgery and as an analyst at General Engineering Labs, work she has done for 20+ years. Their laboratory helps analyze, among other things, pollutants in the environment.

But her favorite job is mom.

“It’s so much fun seeing them turn into these amazing people,” she said.

As a new vestry member, Kate’s unsure what to expect, but hopes to share her affection for youth ministry and her belief in the significant impact it can have on a young person’s life. She especially loves experiences that encourage teens to give of themselves in ways they might not do on their own – and then reap the rewards.

She recalls a youth trip before the pandemic that her son took to Colorado. The teens raised funds for the trip that they then donated to organizations they worked with while there.

“They saw the rewards of giving that money,” she said. “I think that is a good precedent.”

Kate joined St. Martin's in 2012, though she was baptized here as an infant in 1976. She is mom to Matt, 16, and Emmie, 15.