Letter from the Executive Committee | St. John's Episcopal Church

Dear Friends,

The news that Gideon has been nominated as a candidate for the 14th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia is an exciting and unnerving moment for St. John’s Church.

On the one hand, we give thanks to God for the blessing of Gideon, our gifted and talented Rector, who has ably led us to become the kind of church that can offer leadership to the wider Episcopal Church. On the other, the possibility that Gideon might be called away from us is unsettling.

The Vestry has every confidence in Gideon’s ability to succeed and he has demonstrated his capacity for leadership together with us for the last 6 years.

Under his leadership, we have seen steady growth in membership, leadership in the community response to the opioid pandemic in New York, and nationally, and greater interfaith collaboration. Together with the Vestry, we have seen record stewardship giving and historically high endowment performance. With community partners, we have begun important work caring for our historic burying ground for people of color and exploring our parish history of race and racism. This spring we will complete a variety of projects at our Memorial Cemetery including a cultural landscape report, the rehabilitation, and expansion of the Olmsted quality there, and the creation of a new “terrabarium” for the burial of cremated remains. Finally, we have begun a campaign to build a new meditation Garden as an expansion of our BlueGreen theology efforts and in loving tribute to Irene Gubrud Finch. But nothing has been more valuable to this church than Gideon’s steady pastoral leadership over the past several years of the COVID 19 pandemic. He has been and will continue to be a much-beloved pastoral leader in our congregation.

We know that there is a good chance that he may be called as the next Bishop of Virginia, and we commend him for his courage in being part of that process. We won’t know anything, however, about his or our future until early June. Until then, the Vestry asks your prayers for Gideon, for our leadership, and for our beloved church as we navigate this anxious moment.

Yours,

Mr. Seamus Mitchell
Warden

Mr. Jeremy Bradford
Warden

Mr. Billy Wresch
Treasurer

Mr. Jon Hatch
Assistant Treasurer

Sermons

Nov 16 | The Very Rev. Gideon L. K. Pollach
Funeral Homily for Mary Lenore Blair

Nov 10 | The Very Rev. Gideon L. K. Pollach
The Widow's Wisdom: A vision of abundance

Nov 3 | The Very Rev. Gideon L. K. Pollach
Extraordinary and Ordinary Saints

Oct 27 | The Very Rev. Gideon L. K. Pollach
I want to see again!

Oct 20 | The Rev. Dr. Douglas C. Mohrmann
Wisdom for a resilient faith