On a recent hot Sunday morning, 73 people sat down to worship at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church with the Revs. Don Baxter and Melissa Adzima.
Fans circulated air in the sanctuary where, not too long ago, regular attendance was hitting a high around 40, maybe 50 on a good day.
“We’re hoping to get 100 people by Christmas,” Adzima said.
The growth at the Millcreek Township church has followed the start of a redevelopment led by the youngest bishop in the Episcopal Church. He’s created a three-member leadership team at St. Mark’s that includes one of the youngest Episcopal priests.
Most telling quote from the article, from one of the priests: “”I didn’t know young people could be priests.”
Thank you for publishing this article – it is important that Anglicans get a picture of what is happening in TEC as well as other American Anglican groups.
It will be interesting to see how this church goes, given the apparently zero success by liberal churches in evangelism and church planting. Perhaps this time will be different!
St Mark did fairly well during 2002 through 2009 with Members up from 110 to 130, ASA down from 65 to 55 and Plate & Pledge up significantly from $75K to $140K. But it will take more money to fund this earnest effort. In 2009 the Dio only had 4 of its 34 churches with Plate & Pledge of more than $150K which means that each “rich” church had about 7 “poor” churches to help support. Statmann