Compensation We adhere to the ECCT guidelines, which can be found in the Commons Companion on the ECCT website.
Diocesan Compensation Info https://www.episcopalct.org/administration

St. James’ offers 2 Sunday worship services; 8:00 eucharist in the chapel, (Rite I) and 10:00 eucharist in the church, (Rite II). Morning Prayer to include a sermon is lay-led on weeks we don’t have supply priests.
Music is offered at both services, using the 1982 hymnal and LEVAS. Chanting by the priest is optional and we also sing the Lord’s Prayer. Music is very important in our liturgy and our Director of Music is extremely talented and creative, bringing joy to all services.
Worship traditions are celebrated throughout the church year and are augmented by evening prayer during Advent and Lent, Wednesday noonday prayer, healing services during Sunday worship once a month and offer communion to our homebound parishioners. A prayer wall outside our church invites the public to pray, hope and dream. These petitions are offered up during our services.
During Covid, worship services were available on Facebook and YouTube.
When asked what is important to us about St. James’ the liturgy and music is always at the top of the list. We believe the services are moving and bring the light of Christ into our lives.
 

Our people. We have people who love this church and are committed to it. People who  take leadership responsibility. People who make worship happen. People who make fellowship happen. People who commit themselves to outreach. Our people love St. James’ Church and demonstrate their love through actions and worship without hesitation.

We have a fantastic location and building with many opportunities.

We are a welcoming congregation. Our services have a joyful lightness to them with great music.

We have a new mindset of openness to change, and openness to discussion, even when we disagree.

Historically, we have not had an established mechanism for dealing openly and lovingly with our priests and either our priests have offended our people, or our people have offended our priests.  People have left our parish because they felt wounded, hurt by, or ignored by our priest and we have not found safe ways to communicate and heal hurt.

Prior to the pandemic, we had a small but steady youth and children population. Post-pandemic, that has changed. Having no young people or youth is disheartening to all.  We face the challenge of how to attract young and diverse families.

Managing our church properties in the neighborhood and the surrounding homeless community. The tremendous amount of real estate doesn’t match our current congregation size.

While we have tremendous and strong relationships and collaborations with several community mission programs, we hunger for more community collaboration- possibly with other congregations- to cast our net wider and bring in new growth.

We are hoping for :

A priest who will both lead and partner with us on this journey, in an open-minded way. A priest who will help with problem solving while inspiring us.

We look for a priest to provide pastoral care, who will focus on the healing and spirituality of our congregation. We want to find ways to have less administrative demands of our priest, to allow for this.

We look for a priest who has vision. Who can help take this excited group of Christians to move the vision into action. A priest who can lift up the people around him/her.

Find out more about St. James' Church, Danbury here.

Amber Page Gehr

Diocesan Transition Minister

Phone: 203-639-3501 ext 131

Email: apagegehr@episcopalct.org