Serve: Parish Life

All people, whether newer to this community or a lifelong member of St. Stephen’s Church, are invited to share their gifts through service in ministry. This page focuses on the ministries that collaborate to support and enrich our community’s life, including the following. More details about each of these areas is available on the interest form.

  • Pastoral care
  • Kitchen ministries
  • The Women of St. Stephen’s and May Fair House
  • Community life
  • Racial healing
  • Creation care

At St. Stephen’s Church, pastoral care is a ministry carried out both by clergy and lay people and takes varied forms.

Lay pastoral visitors: Lay pastoral visitors are volunteers who regularly reach out to fellow parishioners identified as having pastoral needs. Visitors connect with in-person visits, phone calls, or notes, as assigned. Monthly meetings cover training, time to share pastoral experiences, and identification of needs as they arise.

Lay Eucharistic visitors: Eucharistic visitors share Communion with fellow parishioners who are not able to attend church in person. Eucharistic visitors discern a call to this ministry and undergo training preparing them to offer the sacrament of Communion. Eucharistic visitors also have a role in our morning liturgy; the congregation commissions the visitor each Sunday to signify that our whole community shares Communion with those who receive the sacrament at home. Eucharistic visitors serve on a rotating schedule, not every Sunday.

Prayer shawl ministry: Prayer shawls are crafted for distribution to those in our parish to whom we wish to give a tangible expression of our love and prayers. Clergy and lay pastoral visitors offer shawls to those who are sick, those who are isolated at home, new parents and infants, and others. Shawls are usually knitted, crocheted, or quilted.

Wednesday night supper: Our mid-week suppers provide fellowship and comforting, homestyle food. Volunteers on Wednesdays mainly help prepare and set up the food and utensils for the meal. Volunteers also monitor food levels at the buffet and answer questions from parishioners. No prior cooking experience is necessary. Seating is available in the kitchen for those who need it; prep roles can be customized to accommodate varying ability needs.

Sunday night supper: These suppers take place between the Celtic service and Compline and provide fellowship and delicious, nutritious food. The meals are  prepared for the whole community–all are welcome and no reservations are required. Cook teams serve in two shifts: preparation from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. and/or serving and clean-up from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. No prior kitchen experience is required; seating is available in the kitchen for those who need it; prep roles can be customized to accommodate varying ability needs.

At St. Stephen’s, women are involved in all aspects of our community’s life in both lay and ordained roles, as leaders and participants. Among the opportunities for women are those offered by a group known as the Women of St. Stephen’s which dates from the earliest days of St. Stephen’s Church. While women’s roles in the church were far less expansive when this group formed, this group continues to provide important forms of fellowship, learning, outreach, and fundraising. The Women of St. Stephen’s also manage the May Fair House, a food and gift shop that generates significant funding for community grants. Opportunities for serving in the Women of St. Stephen’s include such areas as program planning, outreach, grant selection, and many others.

The May Fair House welcomes parishioners to work in the shop once a month, and/or to serve on a team with others who prepare casseroles and other dishes which are cooked in St. Stephen’s kitchen and sold in the shop.

Additional information about these two ministries can be found on our website using the links below:
• Women of St. Stephen’s
• May Fair House

EpiscoPals: This group of retired parishioners contribute to our parish life in a variety of ways, from bringing snacks and goodies to the staff to assisting in the parish office to working with our buildings and grounds staff and our food pantry. This fall, the EpiscoPals plan to assist with Wednesday Night Suppers, dust the main church, and continue to support staff events and training.

Front office support: During the week, there are opportunities for parishioners to assist our front office team in a variety of ways. Volunteers answer phones during all-staff meetings, collate bulletins for Sunday worship and special services, help prepare mailings, and more.

Bulletin collating: The collating crew is a group of parishioners who arrive each Friday morning around 8:30 a.m. and collate the church bulletins for all upcoming Sunday services. Collating involves putting the bulletins together and inserting a copy of our weekly Spirit newsletter. They also handle bulletin collating for special services, such as the Thanksgiving Day service and All Saints Day service, as well as Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Holy Week, and Easter. The collating crew is vital to getting the church’s bulletins properly assembled and in place for services.

St. Stephen’s is committed to the work of racial healing, which we understand to be a ministry of both spiritual transformation and radical discipleship. We are working to expand and strengthen this ministry, using formation offerings, worship, conversation, and outreach to imagine what a just and flourishing world could look like. Together we seek to make that world a reality here in Richmond.

Racial healing commission: St. Stephen’s Racial Healing Commission is envisioning and planning opportunities to further the reflection and engagement of parishioners in the vital work of racial healing. This commission works alongside clergy and staff to facilitate those next steps. It functions as a joint commission of the Adult Formation Committee and the Outreach Committee, with committee representatives joining additional at-large members invited from the broader parish.

Sacred Ground: Sacred Ground is a film- and readings-based dialogue series on race, grounded in faith. Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race and racism, while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity. We offer this program at least once per year; new groups will launch in January 2025.

Sons and Daughters of Ham Cemetery: The Sons and Daughters of Ham Cemetery is a historic site located in Bandy Field Nature Park. Once the cemetery of community of freed African Americans, this holy place has been hidden in Bandy Field for many decades. Through the Friends of the Sons and Daughters of Ham, the cemetery and its history are being revived and restored. St. Stephen’s is partnering with the Friends to support this important work of preservation and to honor the full story of the neighborhood in which we are located.

Civil rights pilgrimage: Clergy and lay leaders are in the beginning stages of planning a pilgrimage to key sites of the 1960s Civil Rights movement. Together, participants will explore our shared American history in order to witness, lament, and find hope. Additional information will be available in the new year.

At the beginning of all things, God calls humanity to care for creation–a mighty responsibility. At St. Stephen’s Church, parishioners and staff work together to explore ways to improve our environmental practices as individuals and as a parish community, and make recommendations to our vestry. To learn more about the work of our Creation Care ministry, visit this page of our website. If you’d like to be involved in this area of our community’s life, indicate your interest on the Serve: Parish Life Ministry form.