Welcome to St. John’s, Bowdoin Street. We are an urban, liturgically ceremonial, socially progressive church celebrating our 125^th anniversary this year beginning on March 17^th. During this landmark year we hope both to welcome many people back again, and to develop a new and vital sense of our future. We hope that whether you’ve been part of us in the past, currently claim us in the present, or may try us soon, you know that you, wherever you may be on life’s journey, are truly welcome at Bowdoin Street.

This sincere welcome has been a proud part of our heritage from our inception. Our parish has fed and ministered to freed African slaves after the Civil War. We welcome categories of people made unwelcome in some churches and in some societies: the poor, the hungry, gay and lesbians, those with AIDS, women seeking ordination, and the homeless. We are proud of this welcome and we continue to be a hospitable place for all of these peoples. We also welcome a variety of other Christians who have found with us a place of beauty, liturgically and musically, and who are in search of a truly open church.

Throughout our anniversary year, we plan to highlight the strengths we have demonstrated each year. We continue to feed the hungry, under Ron Tibbetts’ leadership of Neighborhood Action (NAI), and will join with NAI in a celebratory dinner to thank the many groups and churches that have helped NAI and us with their cooking, serving and greeting ministries. We continue to offer a well-prepared variety of beautiful music within our liturgies, presented by our gifted organist Jeffrey Mills, and the parish choir. The musical range runs the gamut of early church music to contemporary pieces, to American shape note music and includes grand anthems. Building on this ministry, and utilizing the glorious acoustics of our church, we offer a free concert every Wednesday at 5:30 pm. Both of these programs, NAI and music, offer ministries of respite and companionship freely to all who come.

In addition, in the fall of this celebration year, we will present a lecture series featuring some of the theologians who have served Bowdoin Street. We will also present a parallel lecture series to celebrate the various arts which have flourished at Bowdoin Street: architecture, fiction, poetry, and music, including the long-term gifts of Everett Titcomb, the organist and choirmaster for 50 years. We will bring into these celebrations some of the names and people inspired at or by Bowdoin Street to seek ordination. The list of interesting and thoughtful priests who have served Bowdoin Street ranges from members of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, to the first woman ordained in Canada, to Desmond Tutu, and a host of other clerical luminaries.

Please join with us in this celebration and recognition of thanks to those who have contributed to the variety and depth of those who have served God, the Church, and St. John’s, and their communities, so faithfully. We also invite you to join us in our new ministries together, as we head into the 21^st century and our next years of service. Welcome indeed to St. John’s. Bowdoin Street.