Get to Know Us …

Who are we?

St. John’s is an Angli­can church under the Angli­can Province of Rwanda. St. John’s exists to glo­rify the Lord Jesus in wor­ship, know Him bet­ter through the study of His Word, and to impact our world through faith­ful discipleship.

St. John’s peo­ple come from all walks of life and all kinds of tra­di­tions. Some are for­mer Epis­co­palians, some are new con­verts. Some come from Pres­by­ter­ian back­grounds, some from non-denominational back­grounds. Col­lege grad­u­ates, com­puter experts, office work­ers, electricians, doctors and chem­i­cal engi­neers — they all wor­ship together at St. John’s. Young fam­i­lies, sin­gles, and retired folks — they’re all part of the family.

Brief his­tory

St. John’s began as a con­gre­ga­tion in the early 1900s in the (then) Episcopal Church in the United States of Amer­ica in Hunt­ing­don Val­ley, PA. In 2001, due to increas­ingly sig­nif­i­cant the­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences on the most fun­da­men­tal issues of the faith, St. John’s voted to leave the Epis­co­pal Church and unite itself with the Angli­can Province of Rwanda. Approx­i­mately 98% of St. John’s mem­bers walked away from trust funds, a build­ing, bur­ial plots, prayer books, and all of the other links with its nearly 100 year his­tory. How­ever, together with the sor­row that attends such a change were admixed joy and a sense of pur­pose and free­dom. To this day, St. John’s is thank­ful to be “free at last, we’re free at last, thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.”

But that’s not the end of the story. After all, “the stead­fast love of the Lord never ceases; his mer­cies never come to an end; they are new every morn­ing.” (Lam 3.22–23) St. John’s pro­claims that His faith­ful­ness is great. We have not grown weary in serv­ing him (Gal 6.9)!

And that’s who we are!