In August, the Very Rev. Jeanette Repp will begin her 17th year as rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, which occupies a beautiful building and campus nestled in a friendly San Pedro neighborhood, down by Los Angeles Harbor. A former social worker from the Bay Area, Jeanette serves also as dean of the missions and parishes in the far west and South Bay neighborhoods of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, aka Deanery VIII. Assisting her in her ministry are gifted semiretired priests the Rev. Dr. Ruth Eller and the Rev. Judith Lyons, an actor and former interim seminary dean.
Fascinating theological conversation swirled at the reception after church. The congregation is rich in vocational and life experience. Grace Parker told me that her great-grandfather was a legendary mayor of Tucson, Olva Clayton Parker. Grace said she knew Tusconan Linda Ronstadt growing up. Lou, one of rector’s twins, just graduated from high school, brimming with ideas for a new video game, showed me a sketch they had drawn as I preached. They told me I looked like a moth, in a good way.
Hearty, diverse, and friendly, the St. Peter’s congregation has been participating in the diocesan Requiem or Renaissance program, discerning how best to represent Episcopal and Anglican values of justice and love in times which are inhospitable to them, in the public square as well as in the faith’s heretical nationalist distortions. With all that, the parish is growing, the dean reports. The oldest congregation in town, it was launched in 1884 and moved into its current building in 1954.
Rain or shine, the magnificent stained glass comprising most of the back wall of the nave continually bathes everyone in butterscotch light. Under the direction of Richard Metzler, the St. Peter’s Choir was equally sweet, offering a Van Morrison tune, “Into the Mystic,” as an anthem. An EfM graduate, parish member since childhood, and subdeacon, Kim Andrade was my gracious volunteer chaplain.
Known for its vigorous outreach, St. Peter’s cares for unhoused and hungry people around town as well as those battling addiction. After church on Sunday, when I was along to preside and preach, we dedicated Dave’s Depot in the name of its builder, David Dawson, who died three years ago. It’s a spot where people can wait to be picked up after church. A “no smoking” sign, the dean told me, is mainly for the sake of those attending the 12-step meetings St. Peter’s hosts. As this was my last visitation and probably my last Sunday sermon as bishop diocesan, I was more than usually conscious of hitching a ride with the Holy Spirit to the next season of life and ministry. I could not have had a friendlier sendoff.
