Dillon Davis

Battle Creek Enquirer

After five years and in his third stop in Battle Creek, the Rev. John Fleckenstein once again is moving on.

Fleckenstein, commonly referred to as Father John or Father Fleck, was reassigned last month as part of a new diocesan pastoral plan mapped out by the Diocese of Kalamazoo. He will leave the St. Philip Parish in Battle Creek at the end of the month to serve as pastor of St. Ann Parish in Augusta, St. Ambrose Parish in Delton and Our Lady of Great Oak Parish of the Lacey Parish Collaborative in Bellevue.

His successor is the Rev. Christopher Ankley, a former associate pastor at St. Philip. Ankley begins his tenure in the area July 1.

Here's an an edited interview with Fleckenstein, conducted Wednesday at Brownstone Coffee House in Battle Creek. He discussed a number of topics, including his bout with epilepsy, transitioning from Battle Creek's downtown area to a rural community and the ongoing influence of Pope Francis.

The Enquirer: I want to hear your thoughts on leaving the St. Philip parish here. What is your thought on that at this point?

Fleckenstein: "Well, this is my third time leaving Battle Creek. I was there at St. Philip as the associate pastor and was moved to St. Joseph as pastor and came back. I've been here five years. It's hard to leave, really. It's always exciting to start again with a new parish, but it's hard to leave. I love being downtown in particular. I'm going to go from a downtown setting to a more rural setting, really, in the long run. It's been a great experience, but in the long run, if you add up all of those things, I have been here 12 years, which is sort of a mixed blessing.

"You've been here a long time and perhaps it is time to move to something different. On the other hand, you know, it's hard to leave what you're used to and have gotten used to over time. People, too, they get used to you."

You must take something away something different each time you step away. What have you learned?

"Being downtown is very different than being out at St. Joseph's, for example. I see the downtown sort of right on the bubble of something really exciting happening. I was working at Western (Michigan University) many years ago and the downtown in Kalamazoo was very much like downtown Battle Creek is now. All of a sudden, some investors come along and downtown Kalamazoo is great. One thing I've learned is our parish being right in the location that it is is really key, I think, to the success or it's contributing to the success of downtown in general.

"St. Philip owns almost the entire block and it's the entrance into the city. There's property St. Philip's owns across the street -- they are dirt lots now -- but the Tiger Room is in the other direction, so I've learned a lot about St. Philip's place and what St. Philip's place can be in the community."

St. Philip's 'Father Fleck' reassigned

What are your thoughts on the evolution of the Catholic church under Pope Francis? I think he's come in and broadened so much, but the teachings seem to be largely the same. What is your opinion?

"As you say, the teachings, themselves, haven't changed, but the way the message is delivered has definitely changed. Again, it's another mixed blessing because the people are understandably very connected to the pastoral abilities or the pastoral speaking of this pope. The challenge is, sometimes as a priest, there are some things or some ways he speaks about something and we don't necessarily know he just said it. That can be a real challenge. You'll hear someone come to the door after mass and say Pope Francis said such and such. You're sort of, you know: 'Really, what did he say?' You have to do some homework there."

It kind of puts you on your heels?

"It does. But his pastoral message and his way of teaching is very different and very much what the church has needed."

When he visited the United States last year, it was such a big deal. You see young people, who are not as visible in the Catholic community, speaking up and people outside of it, too. And, of course, he is on Twitter, as was his predecessor.

"If you go back to John Paul II, it was really the turning point for what you're talking about here. If you look back at numbers and the audiences popes have had, I think Pope Benedict was getting larger audiences than John Paul II. And so, starting with John Paul II, there was a real attraction from young people. John Paul II loved being with young adults and of course now he's declared a saint. There was a way, and you may have seen this, John Paul II reminded us what we believe, Benedict taught us how we go about believing it and Francis teaches us how to do it. All of these popes are natural progressions out of the Second Vatican Council."

What is your health like right now? I understand there have been some difficulties.

"Part of that, really, is the large reason for me to be transferred. The parish I'm going to at St. Ann's is a little more than half the size in terms of families than St. Philip's. Where this really all started was was the doctors at the Mayo Clinic, they were saying, really, I was doing way too much. This is one of the largest parishes in the diocese in the nine southwest Michigan counties. They just felt I was not helping myself in terms of my epileptic seizures. Fortunately, the largest seizures are under control from medication, but I have smaller seizures now, which still, they say, are probably triggered by doing too much.

"They call it stress, which is hard for me to use, because everybody has stress. I still have minor problems. I fortunately don't lose consciousness or anything like I did before. The bishop asked to see my records from the Mayo Clinic and they have the recommendations in there that perhaps we needed a change to slow down a little bit."

Rev. John Fleckenstein: Downtown starts with a dream

There has to been an aspect of disappointment or sadness to this, right?

"I think sadness is the right word, but I think understanding. In the long run, you want to be able to serve the people to the very best of your ability and if I can't do that because of my health right now, then I am not helping my parish and the things I've started in the community. I can be as effective if I can't be there all the time. Yeah, there is certainly sadness. I do not know what to expect at St. Ann's when I go there. I have no idea. I think you become as busy as you want to be and I really don't know enough about the parish yet to know what that's going to be like. There is definitely sadness there, but on the other hand, the health problems I've had have been pretty significant to some of the people who have health issues.

"I've seen more people in my office with health issues asking how do I handle this or that. That's been one of the pluses of this experience."

How often are you having seizures right now? How many times per week?

"It all depends. They can come a couple of times a week and they can be, you know, four to six weeks in between and then you have them again."

When did this come on in your life? Has it always been this way?

"No. That's the reason of more concern. I just turned 46; they started when I was 42. Every year for, I don't even remember, seven or eight years, I had taken the seniors, the graduates of the high school, it has become a tradition to take them to Rome. It was there, actually coming back on the airplane, where I had my first grand mal seizure. I woke up on the floor of the plane and didn't know what had happened.

"A couple of months later on the first day of school, I woke up on the couch in my house with the paramedics around me and they didn't know what had happened. They think I've been having more, like at night, but mattresses and pillows protect you more. I couldn't drive for a couple of years after that. I had these smaller seizures, where I don't lose (consciousness), which is what you want. The concern has been that these started at 42 and they have found a small place in the brain that's a little larger than the other and the seizures are coming from there. So, that's what Mayo Clinic has been focusing on.

"It could be a birth defect or it could be an autoimmune disorder, but that's where it stands right now."

It sounds brutal.

"Well, it's difficult. But like I said, there have been people who have benefited from it and I have benefited from it. There are things that I've had to be careful with that I do or don't do. It's been difficult to deal with."

Let's talk a little about your tenure here. What would you say your accomplishments are?

"I've always believed that the possibilities or the people and the energy have always been here. If I've had an accomplishment, maybe I've opened that up and freed up those possibilities so people can dream. That's the first thing I do as an administrator. I've always done this. I go among the staff and ask them what their dream would be if money were no object, time, you know, what would it be? I think my accomplishment is just to allow people to dream and to go forward with it. That doesn't always, sometimes it's met with resistance and sometimes it's very welcome. In the long run, it's been the parish and the parishioners, but I've allowed it to open up more."

Any regrets at this point? Would you do anything differently?

"I wouldn't say I have any regrets. There have certainly been challenges over these five years. Leadership always brings challenges of some kind. Would I do some things different? Um, probably so, like anybody. I would really stick to saying I've learned again and I've learned many times before that true leadership is going to cause for challenges and if you don't have some challenges along the way, you're not really leading anything."

John, what do people need to know about you that they wouldn't otherwise pick up on Sundays?

"I think I have some abilities when it comes to administration. I think people sometimes are, they focus more on the administration than the pastoral part and there is a lot more pastoral about me. I hear that sometimes that if you haven't had the experience of doing something pastoral or having a one-on-one, people don't always realize that. They realize it when it comes to the homilies and attendance has grown considerably over these five years. That's the one pastoral piece people really see. I am administrative but I think there's more pastoral there than people realize."

Contact Dillon Davis at 269-966-0698 or dwdavis@battlecreekenquirer.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DillonDavis