A Southeastern Arkansas native looks at home in his office in Gainesville, where he works to continue a nearly 200-year-old legacy.

Stuart Higginbotham, rector of Grace Episcopal Church on Brenau Avenue in downtown Gainesville, crosses his legs and rests his cheek in his hand as he thinks about all he enjoys about the city he has called home for 2 « years.

“It’s a great little town,” he said.

Higginbotham has established himself in the role as Grace’s minister, since starting at the church in January 2014. He is the 27th priest in the church’s more than 190-year history, but it is only his second parish to serve in his 10 years of ministry. However, Higginbotham said he feels himself settling here and looking toward the church’s future.

His ministry work started a decade ago, when he worked as a hospital and hospice chaplain.

“I was in an inpatient unit for two years and worked with families and patients who were dying,” he said. “I helped or was with 800 people who died over the course of two years, working with their families and doing follow-up with all of them around grief and healing.”

Higginbotham conducted his post-grad year at University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., before being assigned to his first parish in Smyrna. He was there more than five years before moving to Gainesville.

Joining him in Gainesville is his fourth-grade teaching wife, Lisa, and their 9-year-old daughter, Evelyn.

Higginbotham sat down with The Times to talk about Grace, Gainesville and the growth he sees for the future.

Question: What is your favorite thing about being pastor of your church?

Answer: “I love the conversations with people,” he said. “I really do. It’s a very stressful job in some ways. It’s hard. But you also get invited into those spaces in people’s lives when they have a child, or when someone dies, or when they get married. You’re part of that.

“And as much as you hear people say, ‘the church is dying,’ or that people aren’t going to church any more, while people may not be as involved in the institutional side of things, that does not mean people have stopped asking questions and wondering. It does not mean people don’t have a spiritual life.

“I love being a priest, and I love being a priest in a small town.”

Q: What is one strength of this community?

A: “A huge strength of Gainesville as a whole is its civic involvement. I have not lived in a town that had this level of civic involvement in so many different ways. There are 400-plus nonprofits in Hall County, and that’s just unheard of. What that lets me do here at Grace is, if there’s a need or an idea at a parish this big, instead of feeling like I have to initiate that conversation, what we most often can do is research and find who in the community is already involved in that, and partner with them.

“That’s an enormous asset that people can build on. It’s a huge gift, and it makes the momentum of Gainesville really fascinating.”

“We do a lot of work with the other churches, which is another huge strength of this community. To be able to call and bounce stuff off Bill Coates (pastor at First Baptist Church), or Lee Koontz at First Presbyterian is amazing.”

Q: What’s an area that needs improvement or growth?

A: “Gainesville, like any small town, has its struggles. It’s still a very segregated town. It’s very divided in a sense, in three ways: African-American, Hispanic and Anglo. Those divisions are cultural, but there’s also a very pronounced socioeconomic divide in Gainesville. There’s a lot of wealth, and there’s a lot of poverty.

“Here, we’re really curious about Hispanic ministry in our community. The model for that in our diocese is starting a worship service for Spanish-speaking people. But in Gainesville, what Hispanic ministry means is actually something much more complex. It’s not just saying, ‘Well, we’ll have a service Sunday afternoons for people who speak Spanish.’ It’s becoming involved and becoming aware of the needs of the Hispanic community, and they may actually have no interest whatsoever in having a service. Their needs might very well be in four other areas.”

Q: What is your hope for Grace Episcopal?

A: “Having a parish that is so old, it has a lot of institutional memory and habits. And one of those is the stereotype, if you will, the perception of the Episcopal church as this waspy place. That it’s full of wealthy white people. Over the past few decades, we’ve really gotten out of that and realized it’s not realistic and it’s not sustainable.

“In 2028, we’ll celebrate our bicentennial. I’ve locked in, as much as I am able, to starting the third century in Gainesville-Hall County, and what that would look like as a strong, vibrant, diverse community who is integrated and involved in the needs of the people of the city and the county. It’s fascinating to me.”