A Parish at the Corner of Darby Road and Ardmore Avenue
The Nevil Memorial Church of St. George sits on a familiar corner of Haverford Township, where West Ardmore Avenue meets Darby Road in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. The red brick church, its parish house, and the rectory were built together in the early 1930s as a memorial to the Nevil family, and the church was consecrated in 1932 by Bishop Francis M. Taitt of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. For more than ninety years the parish has gathered on this corner to pray, to sing, to teach, and to serve the surrounding communities of the Philadelphia Main Line.
St. George's describes itself as an inclusive Episcopal congregation, and that word - inclusive - shows up in every part of parish life. The building belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The two Sunday services use both Rite I and Rite II of the Book of Common Prayer. The Music program ranges from Renaissance motets to African-American Spirituals. A graded Sunday school welcomes children from preschool through twelfth grade. A day care center called the Children's Ark has been operating out of the parish house since 1995. An active Outreach Committee keeps the parish connected to food pantries, schools, homeless shelters, a personal care home, an overseas sponsor child, and a dozen other partners in the Delaware Valley and beyond.
It is a parish that takes seriously the three-fold promise renewed at every baptism: to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace among all people. The result is a congregation large enough to staff a full choir, a Sunday school, a vestry of nine, an Outreach Committee, a day care of ninety-one children, and a calendar that runs from Shrove Tuesday pancakes to a fall lobster feast, and small enough that newcomers quickly find themselves known by name.
Two Sunday Services, Two Tones
Sunday morning at St. George's offers two celebrations of the Holy Eucharist, one quieter and one festal, both rooted in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.
8 a.m. - Said Eucharist in the Chapel
The early service is celebrated in St. George's Chapel, the smaller of the two worship spaces. It uses Rite I, the older and more traditional language of the Prayer Book. There is no music, and the tone is generally more contemplative than at the later service. For some parishioners this is the week-in, week-out rhythm of their prayer life; for visitors it offers an unhurried way to experience the Episcopal liturgy in its classic form.
10 a.m. - Sung Eucharist with the Full Choir
The principal Sunday service is a festal, sung Rite II Eucharist with full choir and congregational singing. The choir leads the hymns and service music and adds offertory and communion anthems that range from Renaissance polyphony to African-American Spirituals. Readings follow the Revised Common Lectionary, the sermon expounds on them, and the congregation exchanges the Peace before presenting the gifts and sharing in Holy Communion.
From September through June, the 10 a.m. service is also a family service. Children in preschool through fourth grade join their parents in the pews from the procession until the Gloria, then leave with their teachers for Sunday school. They return at the Peace to take part in communion or receive a blessing. Students in fifth grade and older attend class during the sermon and return at the Peace as well, leaving the sanctuary lively with young voices during much of the school year.
During those same months, professional nursery care is available during the 10 a.m. service for children under four. There is also a designated space inside the church for children five and under whose families want them close at hand, with parents asked to accompany them so that all may enjoy a reverent worship experience.
The Children's Ark: Day Care on Church Ground
The most visible sign of St. George's reach into the wider community sits right inside the parish house. The Children's Ark at St. George's opened its doors on October 4, 1995, after two years of planning and construction funded in part by insurance proceeds from the January 1994 ice storm. It began with two staff members and six children. Today a staff of thirty serves ninety-one children from seventy-two families. Since its founding, the Ark has served more than five hundred families from Delaware, Montgomery, and Chester counties.
The Ark is open Monday through Friday, year-round, from 6:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. It has eight classrooms and offers five levels of care: infants, toddlers, young pre-school, preschool, and pre-K. Staff use a curriculum developed specifically for the Ark, supplemented with the Handwriting Without Tears program used by the Haverford School District. About a third of the staff hold degrees in early childhood education or a related field, and another third hold the Child Development Associate credential. The Ark is a member of NAEYC, the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children, the Child Care Provider Network, and the Delaware County Early Childhood Education Association, and it participates in the Keystone STARS program.
Its philosophy is rooted in the conviction that each child is an individual with unique characteristics, and that a warm, loving, and stimulating atmosphere helps children reach their fullest potential in intellectual, communicative, perceptual, physical, social, and emotional growth. Children are also taught about God's love for them and their important place in the world. The rector, the Rev. Joel C. Daniels, reads stories to the Ark children on Friday mornings. The Ark is governed by a Board of Directors made up of members of St. George's and parents of children enrolled there.
Sunday School and Youth Ministry
St. George's Sunday School is directed by Vicki Strickland and serves roughly sixty children from preschool through twelfth grade. Classes meet weekly during the 10 a.m. service from September through June. The youngest classes use the Episcopal Children's Curriculum, which covers Old and New Testament stories, the Sacraments, and the Church. Grades two through four use the Living the Good News curriculum, a lectionary-based program designed to make meaningful connections to each Sunday's lessons. Grades five through seven also follow the Episcopal Children's Curriculum. The eighth through twelfth grade classroom is described, with affection, as a place where students relate the lessons of the day to life as a teenager, and sometimes wander off on a complete tangent. Either way, it is fun.
The Sunday school program is built around the liturgy. Children in preschool through fourth grade attend the service from the procession until the Gloria and then leave for class, returning to receive communion or a blessing. Students in fifth grade and up attend class during the sermon and return at the Peace. Many of the older students serve as acolytes and choir members, weaving the next generation into the rhythm of the parish's principal worship.
St. George's is also working to grow a more intentional youth program for its middle and high school students. The parish already sees more than twenty middle and high school children in the pews most Sundays, and the rector and lay leaders are investing in opportunities for fellowship, service, and faith formation that meet young people where they are.
Adult Christian Education Between Services
The hour between the two Sunday services is given over to Christian learning. At 9:00 a.m., adults gather in the Rector's office for Sunday Bible Study. The current series works through the Acts of the Apostles under the title Faith, History, Heroism, and meets between the two Sunday services so that worshipers at either service can drop in. Class notes are circulated to those who want to follow along during the week. Whether a participant comes for only one Sunday a month or for every class, the parish promises that they will leave having learned something new about the faith, made close friendships through prayer, study, and sharing, and enhanced their understanding of the Holy Scriptures and the traditions of the Church.
The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament
One of the older and more distinctive ministries of the parish is the Blessed Constance Ward of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, an intercessory prayer group rooted in the catholic revival of the Church of England in the nineteenth century. Associates pray for those whose names parishioners have written on the Parish Intercessions clipboard near the entrance to the church, and lift up other concerns, local and worldwide, before God. Each day, an associate comes to St. George's Chapel and makes these intercessory prayers in the presence of the reserved Sacrament.
The Confraternity's rule of life has three simple parts: receiving communion on all Sundays and greater holy days unless prevented by illness or travel, practicing some degree of fasting before receiving communion, and offering the Eucharistic sacrifice as an act of intercession for anyone the associate desires to lift up to God in this special and powerful way. The Feast of Corpus Christi is observed as a day of obligation; each year St. George's marks it with a special Mass sixty days after Easter. Dues are five dollars a year, and a one-time contribution of a hundred dollars secures perpetual remembrance. Medals bearing the Confraternity emblem are worn by associates. Anyone interested in joining this ministry of prayer is invited to contact the parish office.
Music at St. George's
Music is woven through nearly everything that happens at St. George's. The 10 a.m. Sunday Eucharist is a fully sung service, and the choir is led by Nicholas Mynyk, the parish's Organist and Choirmaster. The choir's repertoire is deliberately broad, drawing on Renaissance settings, Anglican hymnody, and African-American Spirituals for the offertory and communion anthems. Choral videos of parish music are shared online, and the choir directs the parish's annual summer music outreach as well.
The Austin Pipe Organ
The instrument that anchors the 10 a.m. service is the Austin pipe organ. Its presence shapes the sound of the festal Eucharist and gives the choir its foundation. Visitors who come for the early, said service hear only the spoken liturgy, but anyone arriving at 10 a.m. finds the building alive with the sound of an organ that has been part of the parish's worship for decades.
Crusader's Music Camp
Each June, St. George's hosts Crusader's Music Camp, a week-long day program for young musicians that brings colleagues and friends from some of the finest music schools on the East Coast to Ardmore. The camp runs Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and is open to the community. It is limited to twenty-five student campers. Campers make music, worship, and have fun while learning the liturgy and music of the Holy Eucharist from gifted artists and teachers, deepening their devotion to the real presence of Christ in the sacrament.
Outreach: Slaying the Dragons
St. George's is a parish that takes Matthew 25 as a marching order. The Outreach Committee is dedicated to providing the congregation opportunities to serve the larger community. Inspired by the parish's patron saint, members of the committee often describe their work as an effort to slay the dragons of despair, need, and isolation through acts of loving service. The committee supports a wide network of partners with money, goods, and time, and most of those partnerships have lasted years.
Locally, the parish has assembled meals for Aid for Friends three or four times a year since 2010, supporting frail and elderly shut-ins in the Philadelphia area with free home-cooked meals. Each winter the parish collects coats for St. Barnabas Mission, a shelter for homeless families run by Episcopal Community Services, and on the first Sunday of every month supplies are collected for the same shelter. Twice a year the parish holds a cereal drive for the Ardmore Food Pantry, less than a mile from the church, where cereal is one of the higher-priced staples. St. George's also provides financial support to Impact Services, which provides housing, job training, and street outreach for homeless veterans.
The parish supports St. James School, a faith-based Episcopal middle school in the Allegheny West neighborhood of North Philadelphia that educates traditionally under-resourced students, through financial donations, participation in fundraising events, and periodic supply drives. Since 2008, parishioners have worked with Good Works on household repairs in Phoenixville and Coatesville, having previously volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and with a mission in New Orleans doing similar work. Three times a year the Outreach Committee delivers a basket of food, games, and magazines to the residents of Torrey House, a local personal care home for adults with physical, behavioral, or cognitive disabilities that specializes in working with individuals who have schizophrenia and similar serious mental illnesses. Each Advent the parish collects toys for Tommy's Gifts for Kids, a ministry founded by one of its own parishioners to provide gifts to children undergoing cancer treatment, inspired by Tommy Ricci, a fourteen-year leukemia survivor.
St. George's also sponsors Marta-alicia Lucas Lopez through Childreach (Plan USA) in the companion Diocese of Guatemala. Marta-alicia lives with her parents and four siblings in a village where the nearest health facility is half an hour away and the family walks to a neighbor's house for clean drinking water. Parishioners are encouraged to write to her and her family through the parish office.
Fun and Fellowship Around the Table
If there is one thing St. George's knows how to do well besides worship, the parish is fond of saying, it is how to have fun. Many of the events at St. George's center on food and dining together, and the parish treats breaking bread as a form of communion. The annual calendar is dense with gatherings for every age.
The year opens with the Shrove Sunday Pancake Breakfast the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. Spring brings an Easter Bunny Pancake Breakfast on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, complete with a visit from the Easter Bunny, and an Easter Egg Hunt after the 10 a.m. Easter Day service. Summer opens with Battle of the Bands, where youth bands from Ardmore and Havertown compete for the top title, and continues with the Sulgrave Classic wiffle ball game (kids versus parents), Summer BYOM Family Tailgates (Bring Your Own Meat), and a Chicken BBQ fundraiser featuring St. George's secret recipe. The Fall Feast welcomes the congregation back from the summer with lobster, steak, chicken, and live music. October brings a Pumpkin Carving Party in costume, and the year closes with the Holiday Gala, a catered, semi-formal celebration with music, dancing, a live auction, and a raffle. Other longtime traditions include Men Cook, the annual High Tea at a local tea room, the Progressive Dinner, Mother's Day Photos, and a brand-new Women's Book Club that meets monthly in Jerusalem Hall.
Weddings at St. George's
St. George's hosts weddings in the Episcopal tradition and affirms marriage as a sacramental rite in which two persons enter into a life-long union, make their vows before God and the Church, and receive the grace and blessing of God to help them fulfill those vows. The parish follows the theology of marriage set out in the Book of Common Prayer, including the requirement that at least one of the parties be a baptized Christian, that the ceremony be attested by at least two witnesses, and that the marriage conform to the laws of the state and the canons of the Church. When one of the parties has been previously married and divorced, the consent of the diocesan bishop must be obtained prior to solemnization.
Dates for weddings are only selected after a preliminary meeting with the rector. Couples typically meet with the officiating priest on several occasions to discuss the meaning of Christian marriage in their life together, and a Wedding Handbook is available from Fr. Daniels. The marriage may be celebrated and blessed in the context of a Nuptial Eucharist, at which the marriage service replaces the Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharist begins with the Offertory.
Pastoral Care
The St. George's family is made of all kinds of people, of all ages, and in all walks and conditions of life. The clergy of St. George's are available for pastoral calls and visits, and will bring Holy Communion to anyone unable to be at worship - to a home, a hospital room, or wherever else the need arises. Because hospitals can no longer notify churches when one of their members is admitted under HIPAA regulations, the parish asks that members and their families reach out directly to the church office to let the clergy know when a visit would be welcome.
From 1932 to Today
The Nevil Memorial Church of St. George was made possible by the will of George Washington Nevil in 1929, which included a bequest to the bishop of Pennsylvania to build a church in memory of the Nevil family, with endowment income to keep the church in good repair. Bishop Thomas J. Garland had not wanted the new church so close to the existing Ardmore parish of St. Mary's, but Bishop Francis M. Taitt consecrated the building in 1932 on the present site. Because the parish was self-supporting from the beginning, it was never a mission. The bishop served as the titular rector, and the ministers-in-charge were its vicars. Regular services began with attendance that exceeded expectations.
Peter C. Van der Hiel arrived as vicar in the summer of 1950. Convinced that the time had come for the so-called Bishop's Church to take its place as a full parish, he secured a charter from the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County in 1952 and became the first rector. A capital fund campaign in 1955 enlarged the church and extended the parish house.
James F. McKendrick followed in 1975. He introduced family services with the Eucharist every Sunday, added a charismatic tone to worship, and brought the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the 1982 Hymnal into regular use. The 10 a.m. family service eventually became the principal Sunday worship service.
A two-year interim followed McKendrick's 1994 resignation, during which the ice storm of January 1994 did extensive damage to the property. Insurance proceeds and other funds were used to repair the buildings and to renovate the parish house into what would become the Children's Ark. The parish then elected William Duffey, whose twelve-year tenure brought vigorous growth in membership and ministries and was crowned by the celebration of the Diamond Jubilee in 2007.
After another interim, the Rev. Ryan R. Whitley was called as rector in January 2010. Under his guidance the congregation grew, particularly among families with young children. The present rector, the Rev. Joel C. Daniels, PhD, began on the first Sunday of Advent 2018.
Clergy, Staff, and Governance
The Rev. Joel C. Daniels, PhD, has been rector of St. George's since the first Sunday of Advent 2018. A native of Atlanta, he lived in New York City for two decades before making his home in Ardmore. After studying English at Columbia University, he attended the General Theological Seminary and was ordained to the priesthood in 2007. He served as Associate Rector of the Church of St. Barnabas in Irvington-on-Hudson, then completed a PhD in theology at Boston University in 2015; his dissertation was published as Theology, Tragedy, and Suffering in Nature: Toward a Realist Doctrine of Creation. Before coming to St. George's he was Associate for Evangelism at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York, where he led adult education and served on the Ecumenical Commission of the Diocese of New York. He has taught at Fordham University and General Theological Seminary, is a post-doctoral fellow of the Center for Mind and Culture, and serves as assistant editor of the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior. Fr. Daniels and his wife have two children, who enjoy climbing the trees in front of the rectory and playing soccer on the lawn.
Nicholas Mynyk serves as Organist and Choirmaster, directing the music program and the summer Crusader's Music Camp. Vicki Strickland directs the Sunday School. The parish administrator is Violette DeSantis, and the sexton is Mark Alston.
The parish is governed by a Vestry of nine members, each elected for a three-year term. The current Vestry includes the Rev. Joel C. Daniels (Rector), Douglas Stuart (Rector's Warden, Class of 2029), Jan Heidinger (Accounting Warden, Class of 2027), Frank Hadden (Class of 2027), Gretchen Magnani (Class of 2027), Tina Scarborough (Class of 2028, Secretary), Richard Schaaf (Class of 2028), Sam Soldan (Class of 2028), Jeffrey Grant (Class of 2029), and Emily Polera (Class of 2029). The Vestry meets on the first Wednesday of every month at 7 p.m. in Jerusalem Hall and welcomes visitors. The Wardens and Vestry members are elected at the Annual Parish Meeting each January.
Giving and Staying Connected
St. George's is supported by the pledged contributions of its members and friends. Online giving is available through Servant Keeper as either recurring scheduled payments or one-time gifts. Pledge forms and additional ways to give - in honor of a loved one, for a special occasion, as a memorial, for flowers in worship, or to support youth programming - are available through the parish office.
The parish publishes a weekly e-newsletter called the E-Tale, and Sunday bulletins are posted online each week. The Choir's choral videos are shared online as well. Newcomers who want to experience the parish firsthand are warmly invited to join in worship on a Sunday morning, drop into Adult Christian Education between services, or visit one of the many fellowship events that fill the calendar.
St. George's Episcopal Church is located at the corner of Darby Road and Ardmore Avenue, 1 West Ardmore Avenue, Ardmore, Pennsylvania 19003. The parish office is open Monday through Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and can be reached at 610-642-3500 or parishoffice@stgeorgeschurch.org.