Emily Willard remembers when St. Joachim’s Catholic Church was full on Sundays.
As a kid, she liked sitting in the loft and watching her family members pray before Mass.
“This place used to be overflowing,” said Willard, 69, standing in the historic Lummi Nation church on a Sunday in mid-February.
Dozens of people attended Mass that day, including those who grew up attending the church as Willard did. Attendance is lower than it once was, however. It can be difficult for Willard to convince others in her community to join her at Mass.
“I try to tell them, God is forgiving, he’s loving,” she said. “[I] just can’t reach anybody. A lot of people just stay away.”
Decreasing attendance is not unique to St. Joachim’s. Last summer, the Archdiocese of Seattle began carrying out a massive consolidation effort to address declining numbers of parishioners and priests, as well as financial challenges. Per the new initiative, Western Washington’s 136 parishes are now pared down to 60 “parish families.”
Priests give services at churches within their parish family. Four priests are assigned to Whatcom County: Very Rev. Jeffrey Moore, Rev. Tyler Johnson, Rev. Francis Thumbi and Rev. Stephan Arockia Doss Thomas. Moore is pastor for the county and Johnson is a chaplain at Western Washington University.
The Whatcom family encompasses churches in Bellingham, Blaine, Lynden, Ferndale, Deming and Lummi Nation. The reorganization, though it is already being implemented, will not be finalized until it is approved by Archbishop Paul D. Etienne.
Nearly nine months in, parishioners are still adjusting — and the restructuring is still in its early stages.
Moore said the plan allows the archdiocese to better distribute its resources.
While he handles administrative tasks, “my other priests are now doing more of that presence: being with people, hanging out with them, hearing their confessions, visiting the sick,” Moore said. “They’re specializing more.”
Long term, he said, closing churches or offices could be on the table as the consolidation progresses.
Mass attendees acknowledge growing pains
At St. Joachim’s, some Mass attendees acknowledged growing pains.
“Change is always hard for our people,” said Vernell Lane, 66. “But the people that are here … they want to be here. They need to be here, just like me.”
Willard, too, said it will take a while for people to adapt to the changes. Priests rotating their services between different churches is hard to get used to, she said.
The Seattle archdiocese’s consolidation is just one piece of larger social trends. The number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation has been rising for decades. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, has also faced a clergy abuse scandal that tarnished its reputation across the world.
Nationwide, the number of Catholics who say they go to Mass at least once a month fell from 71% in 1970 to 40% in 2023, according to data from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which is affiliated with Georgetown University. In 2023, the country also had 25,100 fewer priests than it did in 1970.
Kevin and Samantha Ernest, who both converted to Catholicism in adulthood, have noticed the decline.
“It feels like resources are always spread thin,” said Samantha Ernest, 30.
The couple said the Lummi church, which they’ve attended since moving to the area in 2020, has been getting more attention since the consolidation. St. Joachim’s is also a local “pilgrimage site” in 2025, meaning the archdiocese is encouraging those who don’t normally worship there to visit.
“I think it’s become more on people’s minds that this community exists,” Samantha Ernest said. “And that this community has a voice.”
When the consolidation plan was being developed, the original idea was to have two different parish families in Whatcom, Moore said.
The Lummi, Ferndale and Blaine churches have long been grouped together as one parish family. In the initial plan, Moore said, Lynden and Deming would have been added to that family, while the Bellingham churches, the chaplaincy at the university and Assumption Catholic School would have formed their own group.
Moore argued strongly that the county should be unified in those discussions, he said. Watching the consolidation play out has further convinced him that was the right decision.
“People feel like they belong to each other,” he said. “The Whatcom County identity is a very strong identity.”
That doesn’t mean all the Whatcom churches are the same. Moore spent five years at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham. Now, as pastor for the whole county, he has an enthusiastic appreciation for Whatcom’s diversity.
Blaine, for example, has its own culture as a border town, he said. In Deming, meanwhile, two logging families make up most of the congregation.
Moore also offers sermons in Spanish at two churches, one at Assumption and one at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Lynden.
His sermons at the Lummi church, as well as his Spanish sermons, are distinct from others, he said.
“You preach to people with what hits them,” he said. “So the Lummi folks, what matters to them is they have been connected to this land since time immemorial.”
At St. Joachim’s in mid-February, babies babbled during Moore’s sermon. He reflected on why Lummi ancestors accepted Christianity, concluding that every culture that does so recognizes the “power and presence of God.”
Afterward, attendees gathered for a post-Mass breakfast. Lane was one of them.
Her ties to St. Joachim’s run deep. Lane’s dad, a journeyman carpenter, helped build the church, she said, and she grew up attending. When she was young, big families would take up entire pews in the church.
“It’s the people that change,” Lane said. “But this building never changes.”
Sophia Gates covers rural Whatcom and Skagit counties. She is a Washington State Murrow Fellow whose work is underwritten by taxpayers and available outside CDN's paywall. Reach her at sophiagates@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 131.
