Saint Mary’s is a community of Christian disciples who are committed to our mission of “Reaching Out”. This reflects our very deep commitment to Outreach as one of our primary core values. Our other core values include the sense that our parish community is like a family and wanting to spend quality time with each other; and that we deeply value our beautiful worship.
Outreach: Saint Mary’s places a high value on Reaching Out to the community around us in a variety of ways. You can read more about those specific ministries under the Ministries tab, Outreach, but in general, we tend to focus our Outreach in a variety of areas, including feeding, tending to those who live on the street, partnership ministries with Christians in Haiti, prison ministry, and supporting education in our local community.
Family fellowship: At St. Mary’s, we love to gather for informal social occasions, usually involving food. These range from our Easter Day brunch, to our Pentecost Picnic, our Ministry Fair, our annual Celebration of Hope for Haiti, our Halloween Trunk or Treat, and our Christmas Party. Smaller gatherings throughout the year also happen from time to time. We just love spending time together!
Worship: Worship in the Episcopal Church follows the traditional liturgy that was set forth with the birth of the Church of England back in the 1500s. While the language and other elements have been updated, much of our worship reflects those traditional norms and values, including the pattern in our services, as well as movement, silence and singing. Our worship finds its balance between the Roman Catholic liturgy and Protestant expressions of worship.
Many people from different church backgrounds find a home in the Episcopal Church because of that balance in our worship. It is important to us at St. Mary’s that our worship reflect the “beauty of holiness,” and while different Episcopal churches will express that in some differing ways, what you will find in our church is a dedication to maintaining worship that expresses our love for God through the beauty of the combination of prayer, scripture, movement and music.