Parish Profile
St. Andrew's Episcopal Church
Parish Profile
Introduction: “There is something about this church. . . .”
Someone made this comment on the steps of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church recently, and while she didn’t exactly spell out what that “something” is, many parishioners and newcomers sense it too.
Perhaps it begins with this:
We’re a small church located on a small island lying just off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts and thus cut off in a sense from the rest of the world. Yes, we have two beautiful Tiffany windows and a long, dynamic history, but this place is more than that. We take Jesus’s words to heart – to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the unloved and respect the dignity of everyone who comes to our church.
This includes long-time Vineyarders and newcomers, year-round members and summer residents, and everyone from tourists to the homeless who walk through our doors – doors that are always open in the daytime to allow prayer and meditation within our old red-brick Norman church – where they feel an overwhelming sense of peace and tranquility. That includes the Venezuelan migrants who didn’t even know where they were when the governor of Florida sent them to Martha’s Vineyard three years ago. Whatever the challenge, with God’s help, we always seem to rise to the occasion.
Our location: the Island of Martha’s Vineyard
You may have heard of us.
We’re the Island of six towns lying three miles off the southern coast of Cape Cod where two presidents, Clinton and Obama, have vacationed in the last thirty years. Where overnight in 1969 “Chappaquiddick” became a worldwide byword for human tragedy and political upheaval. Where in 1975 the predations of a mechanical twenty-five-foot great white shark briefly made us better known as Amity Island than Martha’s Vineyard.
That’s the celebrity side of our Island. But celebrity often glosses over reality. And the reality of the Vineyard is that beneath the resort for which it is famed, there lies a much deeper and more durable history that goes back to the glaciers and meltwaters that formed us more than twenty-thousand years ago. We are an Island of native Wampanoags, of the descendants of whaling men and their wives, of African Americans of many generations and immigrants from around the planet, of laborers and professionals and artists and dreamers and a group imprecisely and sometimes dismissively called “wash-ashores.” (Go back far enough and we are all wash-ashores.)
We are also a small offshore laboratory where we contend with often outsized social problems (the unaffordability of many homes, the slow exodus of every class of resident except the richest, the demographics and ramifications of an aging population). We also face existential challenges (among them rising seas, extensive erosion, saving an environment alive – Galapagos-like – with unusual and irreplaceable plants and animals). In reverence for this beautiful place in the sea, we parishioners of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church look to God and ourselves as we care for the land and water around us, and especially for our brothers and sisters who live and work on both.
Our mission
On September 14, 2022, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida flew forty-nine Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, figuring – probably hoping – that a small but famous Island just off the coast of Massachusetts would make a spectacle of itself trying to welcome these newcomers and minister to them with no notice at all. But by the grace of God and scores of eager, open-hearted Vineyarders, we at St. Andrew’s Church took them in with an offering of shelter and food, reassurance and compassion, and love and joy on the grounds of our small church and parish hall and parish house in the heart of the village of Edgartown.
To help our migrants through this crisis, we drew on the sacred, long-standing mission of St. Andrew’s – to help those who need us suddenly, deeply and sometimes open-endedly. Our creation of what is now the Harbor Homes winter shelter program with the help of other parishes in 2015 and our open invitation to the newly organized NAACP to meet in our parish hall right after the assassination of President Kennedy reveals that – above all else, and with the fortifying inspiration and guidance of Jesus Christ – we stand ready to assist any group or individual the moment a need arises or a call comes.
(For the migrant story, please see the link at the end of this parish profile.)
Our beginnings: St. Andrew’s-by-the-Sea
Looking back on it one hundred and thirty years later, the longing for an Episcopal church in the oldest Island town of Edgartown must have been immense in 1895.
In that year, the first known Edgartown Episcopalians, who had long been crowding into one another’s homes to conduct makeshift services, finally found a single gathering place to worship above a store on Main Street. It was called Gothic Hall. Instantly it filled with year-round residents worshipping on Sunday mornings. But from the very beginning, it could offer no room for devout summer visitors who were coming to the Island in rising numbers.
Bishop William Lawrence of the diocese in Boston visited in 1895, was impressed by the spiritual vitality of the worshippers in town and decreed them an official Episcopal Mission. The cornerstone for the church, then known as St. Andrew’s-by-the-Sea, was laid in 1899. Parishioners ordered one hundred and fifty thousand bricks to build our church in the Norman style. But times were hard in Edgartown just then, and it would take the faithful eleven years to raise the money to finish the job and open St. Andrew’s in 1910.
Against all the odds, what drove these first Edgartown Episcopalians forward so relentlessly? Why was it so important to meet and worship in the homes of one another? Why did they need to know for sure that in a town and on an Island where life on the land could be so hard and life on the water so perilous, there were likeminded Christians among them? That calling at the beginning of our story seems to have been elemental. There was no clergy that we know of, likely little if any music, possibly only a prayer book or two available, and at the start no leadership from the diocese, either offered or expected. Those early Episcopalians were out to sea and on their own.
Our Worship
We don’t really know how it all began, but we have a good sense of what kept the early Episcopalian movement going, because it animates our own desire to worship today. It was, and is, a need to gather in community and, through the liturgy, experience the everlasting love of God through the great mystery of the sacrifice, execution and resurrection of His son Jesus Christ.
As it was for them in those first days, so it is for us now.
We hear and speak the collects, the lessons, the psalms, the epistles and the Gospels, and we seek to know, in faith, how these ancient messages reveal the ways God loves and guides us to this day. We confess that our understanding does not always come easily or perfectly. Which is why, each week, we listen so eagerly to the sermon. It is from the pulpit that we learn how to interpret these ancient stories and discover, sometimes to our astonishment, how and where the Lord might be leading us today. And it is in community, among us parishioners in the pews, where the meaning of God’s unceasing love and guidance can be so joyfully taken in. And shared. And acted on.
Today, St. Andrew’s relies on the Book of Common Prayer (1979) and the Hymnal (1982). Until April of 2024, we held two services each Sunday. The first was Holy Eucharist Rite I without music at 8:00 a.m. To those who favored it, the allure of this service was its reflective, unchanging nature and especially the old English qualities and rhythms of its language. The eight o’clock service was suspended that spring. Now we worship once each Sunday at 9:00 a.m. with the Holy Eucharist Rite II liturgy and organ music. Our average off-season attendance is thirty-five to forty-five, our in-season average forty-five to sixty.
It is the evergreen hope of those who faithfully attended the early morning services that, under the inspiring leadership of a new rector, the Rite I service and its liturgy can return to the schedule, perhaps initially in summer when we have more people worshipping and serving as lay leaders. Meantime, those who happily attend the Rite II service and love the music played by director and organist Rob Lehman are welcoming the chance to experiment with alternate liturgies. We have tried out the New Zealand Prayer Book and are experimenting with additional services at different times, such as vespers – and inviting other musicians to play with Rob.
In short, parishioners at St. Andrew’s continue to place worship at the heart of everything we do, just as our forebears did when they were holding services in front-room parlors. Or as they did when they established their first communal home at Gothic Hall. Or as they did while struggling to raise the money to build a church where, we believe, they would recognize our own worship as devoutly Episcopalian. And rejoice that what they began one hundred and thirty years ago lives on with a vigorous, loving, Christ-centered spirit today.
Challenges of Island living
In one sense, the Island of Martha’s Vineyard is like any other island: Traveling back and forth to the mainland can be a challenge, especially in season. Prices for all manner of goods and services are high and feelings of isolation can become acute, especially during the winter months.
Having said that, there’s something unique about life on this little Island, a few miles off the coast of Cape Cod and a couple hours’ drive from Boston (or “America,” as some jokingly call it): Simply put, there are two Martha’s Vineyards — its high-profile summer season and the far more reserved autumn, winter and spring off-season. Together they create a unique set of challenges and opportunities for both part-time as well as year-round residents.
The bustle of “tourist season”: From roughly mid-June to mid-September, Martha’s Vineyard is transformed from a quiet community of around twenty-thousand full-time residents into a glamorous, world-renowned resort of between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand people. The Island buzzes with energy: Planes zoom in and out, boats jam the harbors, celebrities appear, beaches are crowded, and restaurants and shops are packed.
There’s a real upside to all this, of course: The Vineyard’s economy reliably booms year in and year out, supplying an abundance of jobs in hospitality, retail and support services, and pouring wealth into the community. This high-intensity period allows many year-rounders and seasonal workers to earn the bulk of their annual incomes.
However, like any seasonal boomtown, there are downsides. The demand for vacation rentals during the summer drives prices for housing and everyday goods to exorbitant levels, pricing out many essential workers and middle-income families. And then there’s what’s called “the Island Shuffle,” when year-round renters must vacate their winter housing by May or June so owners can rent their properties at high seasonal rates. Not surprisingly, this leads to significant housing insecurity and unstable living situations.
Housing may, in fact, be the Island’s most pressing problem. Driven by high demand for second homes and luxury rentals, the median home price – now hovering at nearly $2 million — is simply out of reach for year-round residents who help to make the Island work: teachers, first responders, tradespeople and police (the town of Aquinnah, for example, is dangerously close to losing its entire police force; other towns are facing the same problem.)
A close second to housing would be substance abuse. Given their isolation, islands are infamous for fostering drug and alcohol abuse and addiction. Martha’s Vineyard is no different. And the statistics are startling: 75 percent of the individuals taken to the Edgartown jail are there because of alcohol- and drug abuse-related incidents. The Vineyard’s rate of referral to state run substance abuse treatment programs is 25 percent higher than the statewide average. And saddest of all, the suicide rate on Martha’s Vineyard is double the state average.
The calm of “off-season”: When September arrives and the crowds vanish, a profound stillness settles upon much of the Island. Many tourist-oriented businesses close their doors, some from mid-January until April. The pace slows considerably, creating an idyllic small-town atmosphere characterized by empty beaches, peaceful trails and strong personal interactions. For year-round residents, this is a cherished time of community events — the world-renowned Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby being one of them — that offer a chance to refresh, reflect and prepare for next summer.
But again, there’s a price to be paid for this tranquility. Businesses in two of the Island’s three main towns — Oak Bluffs and Edgartown — mostly shutter up, leaving streets feeling somewhat empty (the third, bigger town, Vineyard Haven, with more businesses open year-round, is the off-season’s “go-to” town). Not surprisingly, there’s also an accompanying, drastic drop in job availability, with many workers facing seasonal unemployment or underemployment and working reduced hours or in jobs that do not fully utilize their skills. Moreover, when seasonal high winds or a late fall nor’easter (or, rarely, a hurricane) hit, ferries and flights are significantly reduced or cancelled, hampering the ability to leave.
The bottom line? Successfully navigating life on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard means balancing the idyllic off-season calm with the intense and often difficult economic realities imposed by the seasonal tourist market. Solutions remain elusive, but continuing efforts — expanding affordable housing, building more accessory dwelling units and increasing support for social service programs such as Martha’s Vineyard Community Services — could help to provide both stability as well as a sustainable future for all those who call the Island home.
A quiet but expectant yearning
We know the history of our church, and we’re proud of it. But at coffee hours, at committee meetings and even in the pews where the subject is sometimes discussed before services begin, we share a sense that there are causes in our past that we once led vigorously but have since stopped doing – causes we’d like to bring back or reinvent for our own time.
Older parishioners at St. Andrew’s recall sponsoring street fairs, May Day pancake breakfasts and auctions – among other events – whose revenues funded projects all around the Island. These were celebrations that drew throngs and whose recurring absences on our church calendar our senior members wistfully recall, and our newer members hear about with wonder. Across the street we are custodians of a parish house where other faiths worship and recovery groups meet – but where children once gathered for Sunday classes, yet no longer do because we have not offered the community a youth education program for decades. This, because we have not yet imagined the ways we might attract the families whose children would spiritually thrive in one.
At St. Andrew’s, we await a minister who will work with us to reintegrate our church into areas of Vineyard life where we have not been for a while, but we believe would welcome us back if we all figured out ways in which we might be of meaningful help. Across our congregation we feel a fresh, expectant sense that with new pastoral leadership we can and will recapture old and invent new ways to serve our fellow Island inhabitants creatively, faithfully, joyfully, collectively, enduringly. This leads naturally (and crucially) to a subject our whole parish has been considering and discussing in many ways this past year.
This conversation involves. . . .
Our rectory and schools
Rectory: In August of 2009, the church bought a single-family home for our rector measuring three thousand square feet, with four bedrooms and three bathrooms on a one-and-a-half-acre lot. The home is located just off the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road and situated about three-and-a-half miles from the church in the center of Edgartown. The rectory faces a bicycle path that can be ridden all around the Vineyard, and behind the home stands the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest, conservation land measuring hundreds of acres and alive with unusual flora and fauna.
Schools: The Vineyard school system works much the same way many mainland public school systems do:
For kindergarten through eighth grade there are four schools among the six Island towns (Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, Tisbury – or Vineyard Haven – and a regional grade school for the three smaller western or up-Island towns of Chilmark, West Tisbury and Aquinnah). The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, located in the middle of the Island, serves all six towns in grades nine through twelve.
Independent of the regional school system, the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School serves students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. There are also several alternative schools and programs on the Island, and across Vineyard Sound a private school – Falmouth Academy – serves students in grades seven through twelve. The ferry trip takes about forty-five minutes each way and the school bus on Cape Cod takes about twenty minutes each way. In the fall of 2026, the school plans to board a limited number of students five days a week.
Church finances
From our treasurer: St. Andrew’s is in a solid financial position. Our balance sheet is sizable for a small parish. We began 2026 with more than $255,000 on hand. We have no debt. The historic generosity of our parishioners has given us an endowment that covers more than half of our normal operating costs.
We possess a strong real estate portfolio that supports our mission. We have attended to deferred maintenance across our buildings and completed major improvements in the church, parish hall, parish house and rectory. These improvements and upgrades cost $285,000 over the past three years.
In 2024, we completed a major project to modernize the parish house apartment for our new organist and his family and a major repair and upgrade to a bathroom in the rectory. In 2025 we repainted the rectory interior and undertook repairs to make it attractive for a new rector. We also upgraded the church sanctuary to modernize the lighting, and we enhanced our video and audio capabilities supporting our on-line worship. It is doubtful that our facilities have ever been in better condition.
We have the financial assets and facilities to support a growing church. Our greatest financial need is to increase the average pledges of our approximately 110 pledging units and to increase membership.
