ABOUT US
St. John’s in the Village Courtyard
As a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and thus part of the world-wide Anglican Communion, our faith and practice are grounded in Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, with the Book of Common Prayer as the foundation of our worship. Confidently in the Anglo-Catholic tradition within Anglicanism we seek to ‘worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness’ using vestment, iconography, hymnody, choral music, silence, incense, and gesture to express our adoration of God in Word, in Sacrament, and in the gathered brothers and sisters of Christ. From our worship of God in the liturgy arises our service of his children in the world. We offer free groceries and house-hold goods, hand delivered, to the elderly and vulnerable, to allow them to remain indoors during the present pandemic. We offer welcome and counsel and ‘a meal on us’ to those who know various kinds of hunger.
Tucked away behind our 11th Street and Waverly Place historic facades nests St Benedict’s Courtyard, a ‘hidden garden’ in the heart of the Village. Its peace and tranquility provide an oasis of calm in this busy part of the city. It can be accessed via the church, which is open from 8.30am to 6pm Monday to Friday. Presently both the church and the courtyard have a safe-distance capacity of ten persons.
Our professional choir enriches the liturgy with a wide range of sacred music: from plainsong, through Renaissance polyphony, the baroque, classical, and romantic periods, to choral music of the 20th and 21st centuries. During the COVID-19 pandemic we employ smaller forces and sing our services to plainsong. Our children’s choir of St John’s Choristers (from September to May/June) offers both girls and boys not only the opportunity to sing great choral music alongside professional adult singers, but also contains a strong after-school music-education program teaching young people music theory, sight-reading, vocal technique, and the social skills involved in ensemble singing. This course is suspended until the present dangers are passed.
Most distinctively, St John’s is a beautiful and inviting space where the artistic endeavors of Green Village’s diverse community can find expression and growth. St John’s fine acoustic makes the church an ideal space for concerts and recitals of sacred and other music. These are presently live-streamed to at-home audiences. Home to the Greenwich Village Chorale, the Stonewall Chorale, Tapestry, Joyful Voices, the Strathmere Ensemble, and other ensembles, we present a series of high-quality concerts throughout the year. Our resident theater company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, adds drama and dance to our arts repertoire. Our present play, the Siblings Play, is available to view as a down-load at home, as the theater is presently closed to the public.
Our four weekly twelve-step programs are now offered virtually (by Zoom and other means) to those who suffer the unhealthy forces of addiction or dependence. Our professional counselling service, the Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute, functions in a similar at-a-distance way.
Rector and Arts Curator, Fr. Graeme Napier