Welcome
It seems to be increasingly rare these days to find genuine community – not just Facebook friends, but real people to know and with whom to share our lives. At St. John’s we seek to be that kind of community. We don’t pretend to have all the answers; we do come together to share the questions – questions of faith and meaning, of purpose and commitment. As a church, we find that conversation happening in and through a relationship with God as revealed to us in Jesus. The heart of that is our regular gathering, Sunday by Sunday, to hear and proclaim God’s word, to offer our prayer for others and ourselves, and to be nourished and strengthened in the Eucharist (Mass, the Lord’s Supper). We seek to grow in that faith by engaging in study, conversation, and action in our Christian Formation programs for youth and adults. And we take that faith outside ourselves by loving service to others – here in Barrington, the larger community, and the world.
So please know that you are warmly invited to join us in building this church community, to share in being nurtured by worship and Scripture and one another, and to serve the world around us in the name of the Risen Christ. Welcome to St. John’s!
Our Mission
The mission of St. John's Church is to be a community of Christians committed to the care, nourishment, and spiritual growth of all.
Our History
St. John’s Church, Barrington is one of the oldest parishes in the Diocese of Rhode Island and one of the most active. The Parish has approximately 750 members with an average Sunday attendance of 145. The Parish has had 16 rectors since its founding in 1858 and only seven since 1931. During the last decade, St. John’s has experienced a sustained growth in membership and a deepening of involvement by many parishioners. The average age of parishioners has dropped dramatically.
Barrington, a community of 16,000, is located nine miles from Providence, the State capital, along the shores of Narragansett Bay. The estuary rivers and wetlands adjacent to Narragansett Bay dominate the town of Barrington. No point in town is more than two miles from saltwater. The town has public marinas, a town beach, a salt marsh bird sanctuary with hiking trails, a former state park now owned by the town, a park surrounding a large freshwater pond, recreational fields, a full service library providing adult and children’s programs, a senior center, and an active YMCA. The very popular East Bay Bike path that runs 14 miles from Providence to Bristol passes right by St. John’s.
Barrington was a winter campground for the Wampanoag tribe before European settlement by members of the Plymouth Colony in 1640. Until the suburban migration following World War II, Barrington was a fishing and farming community with some wealthy summer residents. It is now a bedroom community with residents commuting to jobs throughout Rhode Island and as far as Boston, 64 miles to the North.
Over the past decade the parish has reorganized its leadership, finances, and facilities to support lay ministry. We work to make Ephesians 4 come alive: "…to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ." The parish is blessed with a talented and generous laity active in a variety of growing ministries. The guiding principal is based on Frederick Beuchner’s concept of vocation as expressed in his Wishful Thinking. He calls vocation "the place God calls you to…where your gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet." At St. John’s lay ministry begins when and where parishioners identify their own deep gladness, their personal gifts. By discovering our gifts we discern what God is calling us to do in the world. All talents we have come from God, and in using those abilities in the service of God we grow spiritually. We consider ministry an opportunity to discover as well as serve others.
RECTORS OF ST. JOHN’S CHURCH
•The Rev’d Francis J. Warner 1858-1862
•The Rev’d Robert Murray 1863-1865
•The Rev’d Gilbert B. Hayden 1865-1866
•The Rev’d J. Brenton Shaw 1867-1879
•The Rev’d William M. Chapin 1879-1920
•The Rev’d Charles Barker Scovil 1920-1921
•The Rev’d Frederick Washburn Sandford 1922-1924
•The Rev’d William Worthington 1924-1926
•The Rev’d Dudley Tyng 1926-1931
•The Rev’d Richard Mortimer-Maddox 1931-1944
•The Rev’d William Owings Stone 1945-1973
•The Rev’d H. August Kuehl 1973-1988
•The Rev’d Daryl Stahl 1990-2000
•The Rev’d C. Neal Goldsborough 2001-2008
•The Rev’d Robert K. Marshall 2010-2017
•The Rev’d Patrick J. Greene 2018-