Sunday Morning Worship @ 8, 9:15, & 11:15 -Education @ 10:15 · Details

  435 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30308  ·   404-873-7600  ·         Give

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From the Shepherd's Voice

For Lent this year I am reading about disability. Reading about disability takes me back to the things in my own life I push through to be perceived as able, which makes me wonder why that is so important and how that might influence how I experience people who live with visible disabilities. The first time I really thought about disability, besides basic respect for the idea that people deserved to be treated equally and with accommodation to participate in life equally, was in engaging the writing of John Hull. There was a film made about him in 2016 called Notes on Blindness. His article “Open Letter from a Blind Disciple to a Sighted Saviour,” so profoundly changed how I read the Bible and use the language of blindness, that I re-read it annually for years. The title itself does most of the work, but the article is worth reading.

John Hull was a Bible scholar who, because of a degenerative disease, slowly lost his eye sight. He knew it would happen as it was happening and documents what it meant to him to go from being a person who read and studied words, specifically the Bible, to a person who listened for words, from a person who in no way related to the many blind people or the many uses of blindness in the Bible to a person who could not do a thing about the fact that he was slowly going blind. He then begins to turn over what some references to blindness in the Bible might lead us to think about, as blindness becomes his lived experience.
It is for me a challenging step into just the very shallow end of a topic I will never know well. Hull’s work has taught me to be cautious when I think I know about someone else’s experience, even when the Bible is my source. His rethinking of the blind leading the blind, still makes me tear up, probably in mourning for my own ignorance, but also in thanksgiving for a beauty I had only ever seen as comedy.
I invite you to close your eyes and consider the many ways we name what is fallen or broken or not enough, and consider that there might be a key there to a more profound understanding of the human experience, the love of God, and maybe most importantly ourselves.
Lent invites us to a place of modesty and curiosity. What a blessing. I hope you can take the time to explore something that piques your curiosity and awe.
The Ebenezer–St. Luke’s Lenten Book Study is one of those places for me. I am excited about what I will learn with you all on Wednesday evenings. I am enjoying being more in person than we have been and eager to have more voices in the pulpit and forum. I am curious if “trauma-informed” thinking will equip us to be a healthier and more resilient community for the long term. I am delighted to see kids coming back to Sunday programming in person and proud, in advance, to accompany choristers to Nashville at the end of the month. I am excited for 4th Fridays in the Park and the plan to find a way to develop the space around the playground for more gathering and community building. It has been great to see so many of you on Sundays, and as the days get warmer and longer, this year resurrection life around the corner seems about as concrete as it has ever been for me, but not quite yet. We are working on reviving Soup and Scripture, but as you can imagine, Covid realities have made some parts of our returning a little hit or miss. Thank you for your patience as we figure this out together.

Winnie


The Rev. Winnie Varghese
Rector
404-873-7610 
The Rev. Elizabeth Shows Caffey
Senior Associate Rector, ​Liturgy and Education
The Rev. Horace L. Griffin
Senior Associate for Pastoral Care and Community Ministries
Matthew Brown
Director of Music
404-873-7620 
Mark Simmons
Director of Membership & Stewardship
404-873-7624 

The Rev. Winnie Varghese

Rector
404-873-7610 |

A national leader in the Episcopal Church, the Rev. Winnie Varghese is known for her inspired writing, teaching and preaching. Before becoming the 23rd rector of St. Luke's, she served as Priest for Ministry and Program Coordination at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City.

Prior to Trinity, Winnie served as Rector and Priest-in-Charge at St. Mark’s in the Bowery in New York. Winnie was also Chaplain at both Columbia University and University of California Los Angeles. She is a native of Dallas, Texas and is married to Elizabeth Toledo, a public relations executive. They have two grown children.

Winnie serves on the Board of Trustees of Union Theological Seminary, she chaired the General Convention’s Committee on the State of the Church from 2015 to 2018, and she served on the Board of Trustees of the Episcopal Divinity School, 2013-2016. She is also a published author, editor, and podcaster.

Winnie’s parents immigrated to the United States from India, and Winnie spent part of her early childhood years there. She attended Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA and earned her bachelor’s degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She then attended Union Theological Seminary and graduated with her Master of Divinity degree in 1999. She was ordained to the deaconate in Los Angeles in 1999 and to the priesthood six months later in 2000.

The Rev. Elizabeth Shows Caffey

Senior Associate Rector, ​Liturgy and Education

Elizabeth has served at St. Lukes since February 2015. Elizabeth has a passion for liturgy and a love for all things community. Her focus is around fostering opportunities for spiritual development and growth. Before seminary she developed and subsequently directed the Johnson Intern Program at Chapel of the Cross, an Episcopal Service Corps program in Chapel Hill, NC while also working as the family coordinator for Chatham Habitat for Humanity. She has served at the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City and All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta as the priest for outreach, liturgy and pastoral care. The connecting thread through all of Elizabeth’s work has been engaging in compelling questions about God, living as a person of great faith and intellectual inquiry, and responding with action and intention in how we live. She loves camping with her children and dogs, Ana and Fig. Elizabeth is always up for travel and adventure. Having been raised in North Carolina and as an alumni of the University, Elizabeth is an avid Duke basketball fan.

The Rev. Horace L. Griffin

Senior Associate for Pastoral Care and Community Ministries

A graduate of Morehouse College, Boston University, and Vanderbilt in theological studies, Horace came to St. Luke's in July 2017 after a twenty-seven year vocation as a college and seminary professor and hospital chaplain. While he has served on a part-time basis at a number of parishes, currently he has oversight for the pastoral care ministry and provides leadership for the fifteen Community Ministries here at St. Luke’s.

An award-winning author of the groundbreaking, Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in the Black Church, he was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 2005 and has passionately devoted his parish ministry to social justice, racial reconciliation and LBGTQ equality in the Church.

His fundamental belief that we are called to love God and treat all humans with love and equal justice is at the heart of his ministry. When he is not working on making the world a better place, he enjoys music, concerts, and film. He is interested in reading books on religion, African American and Gay history, and First Ladies.

Matthew Brown

Director of Music
404-873-7620 |

Matthew was appointed Director of Music at St. Luke’s in February, 2020. At St. Luke’s, he oversees a comprehensive sacred music program and is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Music at St. Luke’s series.

He has concertized throughout the USA and abroad, and several performances have been heard in radio broadcasts of American Public Media’s Pipe Dreams and the nationally syndicated program, With Heart and Voice. As a concert artist, he has performed in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; Barcelona Cathedral, Spain; Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; Washington National Cathedral; Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York; Princeton University Chapel; Assembly Hall of the Mormon Tabernacle; Trinity Church on Copley Square, Boston; Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta; Grace Cathedral, Charleston; and Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville. He has premiered works by prominent North Carolina composers, Kenneth Frazelle and Dan Locklair, and facilitated commissions from Barlow Bradford, David Hurd, Simon Lole, Ned Rorem, and Richard Webster.

He earned degrees in organ performance from the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Eastman School of Music. He also holds the Sacred Music Diploma from Eastman's Institute of Music Leadership. As a grant recipient from the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and The Robert Carwithen Foundation, he pursued two years of post-graduate organ studies with Dame Gillian Weir. Other major teachers include David Higgs, Jack Mitchener, and Wayne Leupold. Earlier in his career, he benefited from master classes with Marie-Claire Alain, Michel Bouvard, David Craighead, and Ewald Kooiman.

He is a member of the Anglican Association of Musicians, American Guild of Organists, and the American Choral Director’s Association. He currently serves on the committee for the Atlanta AGO Taylor Organ Competition and chairs the Nominating Committee for the AGO Southeast Region. Each summer, he manages the Royal School of Church Music in America’s Carolina Course at Duke University.

Mark Simmons

Director of Membership & Stewardship
404-873-7624 |
Mark loves people! He has worked in the nonprofit world virtually his whole career with major stints at the American Red Cross and two other communities of faith. Mark’s role at St. Luke’s is to help members and newcomers make connections with people and ministries of the parish, in addition to coordinating efforts to fund the church’s ministries. He finds his work fulfilling and important because it helps him and others connect with something bigger than the self and to make the world a better place.

Mark is a Louisiana native, but considers himself fully Georgian, having lived his adult life here. He dabbles with making pottery, trying new recipes in his wok, and he always has an in-progress book on his nightstand. Mark and his partner, Kippy, have been together many years and live in Cobb County with their wirehaired dachshund. Mark loves being a part of the warm, welcoming, inquiring, and difference-making community of St. Luke’s.

Sermons

  • May 22 | The Rev. Elizabeth Shows Caffey
    "A Peace that the World Cannot Give"
  • May 15 | The Rev. Horace L. Griffin
    "Uncommon and Clean"
  • May 8 | The Rev. Winnie Varghese
    "Rise Up"
  • Apr 24 | Emilee Walker-Cornetta
    "Risen with Scars"
  • Apr 10 | The Rev. Horace L. Griffin
    Trusting in God in Bittersweet Times (Palm Sunday)

St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Atlanta, GA

435 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, GA 30308

Tel: 404-873-7600

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Service Times

Summer Sunday's at St. Luke's

  • 8 a.m. Holy Eucharist - Rite I
  • 10 a.m. Family Worship Service - Rite II with organ, choir and congregational singing In person and live online

Sunday morning education for all ages begins at 10:15 am.

Bookmark stlukesatlanta.org/live/ for live services, bulletins and updates.

St. Luke's Live


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St. Luke's Episcopal Church
435 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, GA 30308

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404-873-7600

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