St. Mark's Episcopal Church sits at 2618 N. Hackett Avenue on Milwaukee's East Side, where Hackett meets the neighborhoods just north of downtown. The parish describes itself as a community of sojourners and seekers, a place where old and young, families, singles, and couples, orthodox and questioning, straight and LGBTQ+, and people of varied races and ethnic backgrounds come together. The community's welcome is set down plainly by the front door: "Whoever you are, and wherever you find yourself on your journey of faith, you are welcome here as you are, to receive the blessings of God so freely given to you. Walk in love as Christ loves us."
St. Mark's belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of Wisconsin, within the broader Anglican tradition, and its ministry grows out of a particular double commitment: to worship rooted in the Book of Common Prayer, and to acts of love and justice in the neighborhood, the city, and the world.
Sunday Mornings at 8 and 10
The week at St. Mark's centers on two Sunday services, both held in the Sanctuary. The 8 a.m. service is a simple, spoken Holy Eucharist. The tone is reverent, with space for silence and contemplation, and the service runs roughly thirty-five to forty-five minutes. Worshippers use the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and ushers are glad to help newcomers find their place.
The 10 a.m. service is the full choral Eucharist. Music at this hour is lively and eclectic, and from September through May the St. Mark's Choir sings. A fuller complement of musicians, including guest instrumentalists and vocalists, joins the parish's core ensemble throughout the program year. The 10 a.m. service is the parish's livestreamed service, broadcast each Sunday to YouTube. Ushers hand every worshipper a bulletin that includes the readings, congregational responses, and instructions for when to sit, stand, and kneel. Hymn numbers are listed in the bulletin, with music drawn from the bulletin itself and from the blue Hymnal 1982 found in the pews.
Children are welcome in either service. During the program year, Sunday School for children in kindergarten through fifth grade meets at the same time as the 10 a.m. service. Children gather for a Bible story and a hands-on activity, then rejoin their families in the Sanctuary for Communion. In the summer months, "Summer Stories" keeps younger children engaged during the first part of the service. Older youth (sixth grade and up) are welcome in the Sunday service and in the parish's wider youth ministry.
Following the 10 a.m. service, the congregation moves into the parish hall for coffee hour. The priest generally greets people at the rear of the church as the music closes.
Wednesday Evenings in the Chapel
A third weekly Eucharist is celebrated each Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Chapel. The smaller setting gives parishioners who cannot join on Sundays another way to receive Communion and offers newcomers a quieter entry into the parish's worship.
Be Still: First Fridays of Contemplative Prayer
On the first Friday of each month at 7 p.m., St. Mark's offers Be Still, an evening of contemplative prayer in candlelight. The service weaves meditative music, scripture, intercessory prayer, and time for silent reflection together. Its name comes from Psalm 46: "Be still, and know that I am God." Be Still is open to all who want to mark the close of the week in stillness.
Morning Prayer and Centering Prayer
Daily prayer is part of St. Mark's rhythm. A small, dedicated group gathers on Zoom from 9 to 9:30 a.m., Monday through Thursday, to pray the Daily Office. The prayers are drawn from the Book of Common Prayer, A New Zealand Prayer Book, and other devotional books from across the Anglican Communion. No experience is needed; no one is asked to lead unless they want to; and all the prayers appear on the screen. Centering Prayer is offered in the Chapel on Mondays at 11:30 a.m. for those who prefer a contemplative practice rooted in silent attention.
A Lively Music Program
Music is one of the great strengths of St. Mark's. The Music Director oversees a varied program that includes organ, piano, and guest musicians drawn from the wider Milwaukee scene. The mixed-voice St. Mark's Choir is a parish choir for adults, singing at the 10 a.m. Sunday service and at major celebrations throughout the church year. Rehearsals take place on Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. and briefly before the Sunday service. A roster of professional section leaders strengthens the choir each week; these musicians often serve as cantors at weddings and funerals, lifting the music across the parish's liturgical life. The parish's commitment is to provide the highest caliber of choral music while also supporting young artists in the city.
Adult Formation, Bible Study, and Reading Groups
Adults gather on Sunday mornings during the program year for an education hour that runs from 9 to 9:45 a.m. Each season treats a different theme. Recent programming has included Episcopal 101, taught by the parish's own clergy, and a multi-week series called Learning Our Way around The Library that walks through the books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Past seasons have featured mixed-media teaching series and conversations with local professors. Reading groups and occasional film discussions carry the conversation beyond Sunday mornings.
Bible Study meets on Wednesdays from 4 to 5 p.m. via Zoom, giving people in a range of schedules a way to study together.
The Women's Book Group meets roughly every six weeks in members' homes, drawing about ten to twelve women at a time. Members select the year's reading list at a fall gathering, and Boswell Book Company on Downer Avenue orders the books and offers a ten percent discount. Guests are very welcome.
The Fellowship Group, billed as "Donuts, Bacon, Coffee, and the Holy Spirit," gathers for breakfast and conversation on the third Saturday of each month. Cooking starts around 8 a.m. and the gathering begins at 9. All are welcome, including kids and people of any gender, and the group is one of the parish's pools of helping hands for projects through the year.
Children, Youth, and Family Ministry
Sunday School runs through fall, winter, and spring at the 10 a.m. hour. The Nursery (for children up to age five) and Sunday School (for children in first through sixth grade) are part of the program year. Parents are invited to volunteer alongside paid staff as the program grows, and children gather for a Bible story and a craft before rejoining their families for Communion. Older youth participate in the MKE Youth Collab, an Episcopal youth group open to all sixth through twelfth graders and facilitated by several area Episcopal churches. Confirmation classes are offered at St. Mark's, and the parish hosts regular family events so that parents grow alongside one another.
All clergy, staff, youth volunteers, and vestry members have completed Safe Church, Safe Communities training, a national program designed to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse in ministry. The parish's Policy for the Protection of Children and Youth, approved unanimously by the Vestry, is available to the parish.
Campus Ministry: Canterbury at Marquette and Corner House at UWM
St. Mark's serves as the home parish for the Canterbury Fellowship at Marquette University and partners with The Corner House at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. College students from anywhere in the Milwaukee area are invited to make St. Mark's their church home.
During the school year, Canterbury gathers three days a week at the historic Joan of Arc Chapel on the Marquette campus. Evening Prayer is offered Monday through Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., and once a month, on Wednesday, the group celebrates Eucharist in place of Evening Prayer at the same hour. A fellowship time follows each gathering. Special events through the year include a Christmas and end-of-semester party in December, a Tenebrae service during Holy Week, an end-of-year party in May, a Blessing of the Animals for the Feast of St. Francis, a Prayer Service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and an Ash Wednesday liturgy held jointly with the Marquette Office of Campus Ministry.
At UWM, St. Mark's enjoys a partnership with Corner House, the ELCA campus ministry led by Pastor Rachel Young Binter. The parish joins and supports Corner House's monthly worship and the community meal that follows.
The 20s/30s Group
St. Mark's hosts monthly gatherings for people in their twenties and thirties. The calendar moves from potlucks and board game nights to axe-throwing and theater outings. The aim is to provide space for fun, welcome, and reflection as members seek Christ in one another.
The Gathering, Common Ground, Forward Scholars, and More
Service to the wider community runs through almost everything the parish does. St. Mark's supports The Gathering, an ecumenical ministry that cooks ten to eleven free meals a week at four Milwaukee locations for those who would otherwise go hungry. Volunteers from St. Mark's serve meals several times a year, and the parish gathers every four to six weeks after the 10 a.m. service to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hundreds at a time, for distribution at Gathering sites.
St. Mark's is a member congregation of Common Ground of Southeastern Wisconsin, a nonpartisan organization of more than forty congregations, schools, small businesses, and neighborhood groups across Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, and Waukesha counties. Common Ground members work on Issue Campaigns that seek justice in housing and care of the watershed. Parishioners are actively engaged in the Tenants United campaign for reform in Milwaukee's public housing and in the Watershed Team's Water Drop Alert system, a partnership with MMSD and local media that asks the public to reduce water use during heavy rains.
Through Forward Scholars, a Common Ground initiative, trained volunteers serve as one-on-one reading tutors for MPS students in kindergarten through third grade who are not yet reading at grade level. No educational background is required. Tutors meet with the same student for an entire school year, twice a week, with an individualized lesson plan and a coordinator in the room for support.
Collection drives keep the parish connected to other neighbors. Each Sunday, the parish collects nonperishable food for the Kinship Community Food Center. Pet food for the Capuchin Community Services Food Bank keeps companion animals fed alongside their owners. Travel-size toiletries support Repairers of the Breach, a daytime shelter. In cooler months, the parish gathers warm socks, coats, and gently used layers for adults in need.
St. Mark's recent charitable giving has reached Eastside Senior Services, The Gathering, Common Ground of Southeast Wisconsin, Episcopal Relief and Development, Kinship Community Food Center, and the Milwaukee Diaper Mission.
Sacraments and Pastoral Care
Theologically, St. Mark's calls its work an outpost of God's rule in the world, with a particular commitment to living out God's justice as loving, liberating, and life-giving. The parish celebrates Holy Communion at every Sunday service and at the Wednesday Chapel Eucharist. In the Episcopal Church, all baptized Christians may receive Communion, regardless of their denomination; children are welcome at the rail. Those who are not yet baptized may cross their arms over their chest at the rail to receive a prayer of blessing. Gluten-free wafers are available on request.
Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ's Body the Church, and the bond established in Baptism is indissoluble. Baptisms are appropriately administered within the Eucharist as the chief service on a Sunday or other feast. Confirmation, for those baptized as adults or as infants, comes through the laying on of hands by the bishop following a mature public affirmation of faith.
Christian marriage at St. Mark's is a solemn and public covenant between two people in the presence of God. The Episcopal tradition requires at least one baptized Christian among the couple, at least two witnesses, and conformity to the laws of the State and the canons of the Church. The parish joyfully marries same-sex couples, and generally couples married at St. Mark's are members of the parish.
Eucharistic visitors are available to bring Communion to those who cannot leave home; the priest can be contacted directly.
The Parish Hall Project
St. Mark's is in the middle of a four-phase parish hall construction project that will replace the older hall that stood on the site. Demolition wrapped up in spring of 2023, and basement construction began that December with a groundbreaking prayer and litany after both Sunday services. By late spring of 2024, steel framing was rising on the new structure. An increased grant from the Diocese of Wisconsin, combined with builder financing from Catalyst Construction, set up an occupiable first floor by year's end. The completed first floor is planned to include a fully finished nursery, a kitchen, two sets of ADA-accessible bathrooms, a "warehouse chic" parish hall space, parish offices, and a conference room that can host meetings, Bible studies, and Sunday school. Capital campaign pledges, separate from annual stewardship, support the project, and a Phase Two fundraising effort continues to bring the larger vision to life.
Clergy, Staff, and Governance
The Reverend Don Fleischman serves as Priest-in-Charge. His first call in parish ministry was as an associate minister of the Angola Christian Church in Indiana, and his path since then has included work as a church choir director and musician, a decade of ordained ministry in another Christian tradition, and a long stint leading a media production group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds an undergraduate degree in music from Western Michigan University and seminary education from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and the Virginia Theological Seminary. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife Gypsy.
The Reverend John Hickey serves as Priest Associate. He holds an M.F.A. in Film, a J.D. in law, and an M.Div. from Seabury-Western, an Episcopal seminary. He has sold UFO books in San Francisco, hitchhiked through Ireland, and preached on a mountaintop in Hawaii. As a retired priest at St. Mark's, he still finds joy in crafting sermons and leading Bible Study while leaving vestry meetings to others.
Kelly Glostott is the Music Director. Raised in the Episcopal tradition in Jacksonville, Florida, she is a pianist and beginning organist who joined St. Mark's choir with her husband Joe in 2016 and has served as Music Director since January 2024. She earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Princeton University and a master's degree in nursing from Marquette University, with backgrounds in midwifery and hospice and palliative nursing, and works part-time as volunteer coordinator for Eastside Senior Services.
Governance follows a typical Episcopal pattern. The vestry, the parish's board of directors, oversees finances and the physical plant. Vestry members serve three-year terms with one third of the board changing each year. Wardens are elected annually, and the senior warden, junior warden, and rector form the executive committee that handles the daily needs of the congregation. The parish sends members to the diocesan convention each year, where they agree to the diocesan budget and consider resolutions that come before the body.
Planning a First Visit
Visitors enter through the large red doors on Hackett Avenue, where they will be greeted by an usher and handed a bulletin. Coats can be hung just inside the door. An accessible entrance for wheelchairs and strollers sits just to the left of the main doors and is open during all worship services; during the week it opens on request through the parish office.
Parking is easy on Sundays. Street parking on the surrounding blocks is free without time limits on Sundays. A municipal lot sits at the northwest corner of Downer and Park across from Sendik's. The Downer Garage on the southeast corner of Downer and Belleview accepts paid parking by smartphone. MCTS bus routes connect the church to the wider city, with several stops within walking distance.
What people wear runs the full range. Jeans are as welcome as dressier clothes. Children are always welcome in worship. The priest greets people at the rear of the church after the service, and the whole community is invited to coffee hour after the 10 a.m. service. The 10 a.m. service is livestreamed to YouTube for those joining from home.
The parish office can be reached at (414) 962-0500. Office hours are Mondays and Wednesdays from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays by appointment; the office is closed on Fridays.