Our mission statement

St. Mary's is a welcoming, highly active, multi-generational and generous faith community, celebrating a diversity of vibrant worship services, growing in our outreach, growing in our capacity to nurture all seekers, and growing in our commitment to strong stewardship. We are a learning community for all ages, engaged in crucial and provocative issues that impact our world. We are a place where we are continually developing new leaders and ministries to serve God's people.

Introduction

From our beginnings in 1895, St. Mary’s has been a warm, faithful and committed congregation. Served by seven priests as rector, St. Mary’s has welcomed thousands of individuals and families—gathered in many groups and configurations. The life of our church extends far beyond our own boundaries through the leadership and compassion our people offer in other places.

As a group, we are not opposed to taking a good look at ourselves and searching for ways to improve. As a church, we like to take risks. We invite you to read more about us, our community, our outreach and our goals and challenges for the future.

Who we are

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church – where all are welcome

We are a lively, progressive and welcoming congregation who are flexible, adaptive and willing to take risks. Worship, formation and outreach are the strongest elements of our life together. We open our doors to practice Jesus’ own brand of radical hospitality. All are welcome here without exception.

We are a loving and supportive church family with strong clergy and lay leadership, strongly committed to faith development for all generations. We cherish and celebrate our children and our youth, providing excellent formation programs and growth opportunities.

We love discussion and respect differences of opinion, dealing with conflict in healthy and mature ways.We are firmly rooted in our Episcopal heritage of balancing scripture, tradition and reason, and we honor the past and the present while being open to change, risk, and growth. Our church family includes long-time Episcopalians, crossovers from other Christian denominations and other faiths, seekers, skeptics, and various combinations of the above.

We value our worship, using traditional, contemporary and exploratory forms of liturgy. Our music is excellent and diverse yet does not detract from the liturgy. Sermons are intelligent, well-designed, thought-provoking, and relevant to our life and times. Weekly services include both Rite I and Rite II. Other offerings include regular Taizé services, a Centering Prayer group, occasional jazz services, and a raucous, joyful U2-Charist last spring.

We are a fun-loving and celebratory community. Playing and praying together is an important part of our common life and how we celebrate our gratitude to God for bringing us together.

We serve many outside our walls through our outreach and partnership programs. We are aware we are a mostly white, suburban church, yet we value diversity and we hope to be more diverse in membership and to promote greater understanding and appreciation of people different from us. As disciples, we actively promote social justice.

 For more information please click on the link below to read our Parish Profile created in 2007.