Lee’s Summit Loses Dynamic Community Leader
January 9, 2010
Lee’s Summit Loses Dynamic Community Leader
Father Michael Tierney Transferred to Kansas City
By Mary Pechar Contributing Writer
Father Michael Tierney, pastor of Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Lee’s Summit has been transferred and will become pastor of Christ the King parish in Kansas City mid month. A reception in his honor will be held Sunday, January 10th from 2 to 4 p.m. in the A & B meeting rooms at Holy Spirit Church located at 1800 SW State Route 150.
Father Tierney has been the pastor here since June 1998 and has overseen the growth of the parish from 300 families to 1600 and still growing today. Although the church was still relatively new when he became pastor, it was rapidly becoming too small. Father Tierney led a planning process that resulted in a new church dedicated in September of 2006.
In the December Catholic Key Newspaper, Father James Healy, pastor of St Robert Bellamine parish in Blue Springs is quoted talking about Father Tierney saying, “He is good with people and he’s always been committed to creating small communities within larger communities.”
That quality has lead to Father Tierney becoming an integral part of many communities within Lee’s Summit. He has been a good Shepard with the Lee’s Summit Ministerial Alliance, helping them through a time of significant growth. He serves as an Advisor to the Lee’s Summit Economic Development Council. In addition, he is an active participant on the Lee’s Summit Civic Roundtable which is a gathering of civic leaders representing various segments of our community including commercial and residential development, city government, health care, business, education, religion and others. Its purpose is to look ahead, suggest and support strategies that will keep Lee’s Summit strong, vibrant, welcoming and progressive across all sectors for generations to come.
Dave Gale, founder and president of Gale Communities and New Longview, who had the opportunity to work closely with Father Tierney on the Civic Roundtable and other projects commented, “Mike is a clearly a person of deep compassion and conviction and his beauty is he doesn’t hold it against the rest of us! Together, sometimes in disagreement we negotiated the construction of Holy Spirit Church, the biggest, new church in Lee’s Summit of the last ten years – there were many opportunities for both of us and our respective teams to have irreconcilable differences but Mike, a true leader kept moving forward, always in good humor, searching and finding the optimum path. He deserves credit for growing the congregation at Holy Spirit, leading the Ministerial Alliance and for the last two years serving as chair of the Civic Roundtable…he is also blessed with lots of energy. Someday when I grow up I want to be like Mike!”
Father Tierney offered the following observations regarding his time in Lee’s Summit, “My observations of Lee’s Summit is that it is a big small town with many element still growing at a fairly fast pace. The critical small town aspect is the ability to have relationships with the Mayor and City Council members. I am grateful to city leadership for their openness and willingness to dialog. The continued challenge will be to deal with growth in a planned way. I was happy to be involved with the 3600 Planning process and I hope to see the city follow through with many of those initiatives.”
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