Sunday Worship on South Common
St. Stephen's holds two services of Holy Eucharist on Sunday mornings in the Gothic-Romanesque sanctuary at 74 South Common Street. The 8:00 AM service is a quiet spoken liturgy without music, usually lasting about thirty minutes, and is typically held in the chapel or chancel area of the church. The 10:00 AM service is the principal Sunday liturgy, runs about sixty minutes, and includes congregational singing supported by the choir and organ. Both follow Rite II from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the official prayer book of the Episcopal Church. Three Episcopal hymnals are in regular use - the Hymnal 1982, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and Wonder, Love, and Praise - so that music across the parish can reflect the diverse backgrounds of those in the pews.
The communion table is open to everyone. As the parish often reminds worshipers, the table of the Lord does not belong to St. Stephen's or to the Episcopal Church; it belongs to Jesus, and all are welcome. The 10:00 AM service is livestreamed on the church's Facebook page for those who cannot attend in person, and recordings remain available there for later viewing. A Healing Service with Holy Eucharist is offered at noon on Thursdays, and the parish gathers on holy days and feasts of the church year.
The Building: A Mudge Family Memorial
The present sanctuary is the work of a grieving father. Enoch Redington Mudge, a Lynn summer resident and industrialist from Boston, had already lost his daughter Fanny Olive (Mudge) Van Brunt when his son, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Redington Mudge of the Massachusetts Second, was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. At Fanny Olive's urging before her death, Mudge had begun planning a memorial church for St. Stephen's; after losing both children, he built it as a memorial to both, sparing no expense. Ground was broken in 1880, the cornerstone was laid in May 1881, and on November 2, 1881 - just one month after Enoch Mudge himself had died and been given the first funeral in the new building - Bishop Huntington consecrated St. Stephen's. Mudge's wife Caroline died less than three months later, in January 1882. All four Mudges are buried in the cloister garth at St. Stephen's.
The architectural firm of Ware and Van Brunt designed the church in Gothic-Romanesque style, in the shape of a Latin cross facing east. The exterior granite was quarried from Mudge's own estate, and the interior walls are faced with dressed freestone from Nova Scotia. The bell tower rises 130 feet and now houses ten bells. The nave is 49 feet high and 68 feet wide, with a 90-foot aisle running to the apse wall. The building is recognized as a national historic landmark.
The parish, though, is older still. The first St. Stephen's worship was held on September 22, 1844, in a building across the Common from where the present church stands. Episcopalians in early nineteenth-century Lynn had grown weary of traveling to St. Michael's in Marblehead and St. Peter's in Salem, but their pleas for a local Episcopal church went unanswered in this Puritan-dominated town. The congregation only came together as Lynn was emerging as a summer destination for wealthy Bostonians and New Yorkers, and grew significantly with immigrants from England and the Canadian Maritime provinces as the Industrial Revolution transformed Lynn into a center of the American shoe industry.
Forty-One Tiffany Windows
What most visitors notice first is the glass. St. Stephen's holds more than forty-one Tiffany stained glass and decorative leaded glass windows, all commissioned in 1879 to 1880 and installed by the autumn of 1881. The collection is, in the parish's judgment, possibly the oldest set of ecclesiastical Tiffany windows in the world, made all the more remarkable because every window dates from the same brief season - the entire construction having been given by a single donor.
Two pairs are especially notable. Two large lancet windows at the west end of the nave were designed by Francis Davis Millet (1846-1912) for Louis Comfort Tiffany: one shows St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, preaching as a child; the other shows him being stoned to death. Both were restored in 2004, when it was discovered that the lead lines in the original cartoons had all been painted gold, creating an illusion of light streaming from outside even at night. Two rose windows, each thirteen feet in diameter, were designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) - among only two stained-glass windows he ever designed - and portray the Annunciation in the south transept and the Ascension in the north. Each rose window cost four thousand dollars in 1880. Nineteen of the windows are double-glazed, an early Tiffany experiment in creating depth by combining interior and exterior layers. The parish notes that none of the Tiffany windows at St. Stephen's were ever painted; flesh tones were built up by plating glass, and facial features were created by etching with hydrochloric acid and shaping the leadwork.
The Kenyan Congregation
Among the most distinctive features of worship at St. Stephen's is the Kenyan Congregation, an Anglican community of Kenyan immigrants that meets at the church using the Anglican Church of Kenya's order of worship. The congregation is known for its lively music and warm hospitality. Its vicar, the Reverend Joseph Ngotho, is an immigrant priest originally ordained in the Diocese of Mt. Kenya South, who earned a master's degree in theology at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge and has served the immigrant community at St. Stephen's for more than ten years. He is married to Emily and is the father of three children. Together with the main English-language services, this Anglican Kenyan presence makes St. Stephen's a multi-tradition parish under a single roof.
The Food Pantry on Blossom Street
St. Stephen's has operated an all-volunteer food pantry since the year 2000. Open Fridays from 2:30 to 3:30 PM in the back parking lot off Blossom Street and closed on the first Friday of each month, the pantry distributes bags of groceries supplied through the parish's partnership with the Greater Boston Food Bank. A 10,000-pound delivery arrives on the first Friday of every month at 10:30 AM. Clients with a registered card can stop by each week; volunteers speak English and some Spanish. Children under eighteen are not allowed to pick up food for a household, and one person may not register on behalf of another. New clients register in person with a single document showing their name and address, and must be at least eighteen years old. The parish asks clients to be fair to others; people often wait in line for hours.
Kids in Community
Every summer, St. Stephen's hosts Kids in Community (KIC), a four-week day program serving Lynn children in grades one through six from the diverse and economically challenged neighborhood around the church. The program runs Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 2:30 PM, currently held at the Connery School on Elm Street, with breakfast, lunch, snacks, and field trips included. KIC places special emphasis on the arts - the program holds that creative activities are central to children's well-being - and welcomes every child regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, or religion. A modest per-child registration fee is the only cost to families, and information and registration materials are available in both English and Spanish. Children from the parish also attend overnight church camp at the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center in New Hampshire.
Bible Study and Adult Formation
Adults at St. Stephen's have several regular opportunities for learning. A Bible Study meets on Wednesday evenings at 6:00 PM via Zoom. Seasonal Book Study groups meet at other points in the church year, and parishioners are prepared for Holy Baptism, Confirmation, and other sacraments at every stage of life. The Beloved Community Team, a lay-led anti-racism group, includes members from St. Stephen's and from Ascension Episcopal in Ipswich and St. Andrew's in Marblehead, and gathers on the third Thursday evening of each month to study, sponsor community workshops, and support the dismantling of racism in the wider community. Teenagers are invited to the Oasis Community Youth Group. The parish describes itself, in the language of its mission statement, as an "open and affirming Christian church worshiping in the Anglican tradition" that seeks "transformation of our lives and our community through Christ's Gospel of love, compassion, and justice."
ECCO and the Work of Justice
St. Stephen's is a founding member of the Essex County Community Organization (ECCO), a congregation-based community organization on the North Shore that since 1981 has worked on job training, health care, youth development, housing, and safety. Through ECCO and other partners, the parish takes up local issues such as teen violence, public safety, affordable housing, education, and access to employment. Members also assist with worship, serve as teachers and mentors, help in the parish office, and maintain the buildings and grounds. The food pantry, ECCO organizing, the Beloved Community Team, and KIC together give shape to the parish's stated commitment to "connect lines of color, class, culture, and generation" in the life of greater Lynn.
Clergy and Music
The parish is currently served by the Reverend Gustavo Galeano as Priest in Charge. Father Gustavo came to St. Stephen's from the Diocese of Southeast Florida, where he had been received by Bishop Leo Frade. Before that he served for many years as a chaplain at Nuestras Pequeñas Rosas Ministries in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and was ordained a priest in 2000 in Nicaragua, his home country. He is married to Keevyn Geraldine Gabourel and has two daughters and a grandson. Bruce Meredith Beecroft has served as Organist and Choir Master since 1982; he studied piano and organ in Andover, Concord, and at the New England Conservatory of Music before joining the parish. The Reverend Joseph Ngotho serves as Vicar of Christ the King Anglican Mission. Dorothy Post is Senior Warden, with Christopher Trahan as Junior Warden; the elected vestry, which meets monthly, includes Steve Switzer (Clerk), Bob Tucker, Toby Milner, Lucinda McClain, Joyce Wallace, Emily Sherwood, and Clarence Tuning. The parish belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
Visiting St. Stephen's
St. Stephen's Memorial Episcopal Church stands at 74 South Common Street on the corner of South Common and Blossom Streets in downtown Lynn, Massachusetts. Sunday services are at 8:00 AM in the chapel and 10:00 AM in the sanctuary, with the 10:00 AM liturgy livestreamed on Facebook. A Healing Service with Holy Eucharist is offered at noon on Thursdays. Detailed driving directions are posted for those coming from Boston via Route 1A, from Route 1, from Route 128, or from points north along the Lynnway. The parish office is open during the week and can be reached by telephone at (781) 599-4220 or by email at ststephens@ststephenslynn.org. The 1881 sanctuary, the Tiffany windows, and the parish's work with its neighbors remain at the heart of who St. Stephen's is.