St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

At St. Andrew’s every Monday a three-course evening meal is served to anyone who wants one. Participants come to enjoy a buffet supper and the company of other local residents and visitors. Vegetarian options are provided. A dozen local organizations provide the food, prepare it, and welcome all to share. Even through the pandemic, volunteers prepared box suppers and distributed them, as cars, bicycles, and people on foot lined up for food and/or a break in routine.

Next to the Parish Hall, St. Andrew’s has created a thriving garden that serves two purposes. Chimayo chili peppers, an heirloom type cultivated by New Mexico Pueblo people for generations, are grown, harvested, dried, and ground for Holy Smokes Chili Powder and for creating spicy homemade condiments that are sold to help support the church’s ministries.

The garden also includes varietals of blue corn, squash, and beans to support Native Seeds/SEARCH, a non-profit that conserves dry-climate friendly plants originally grown by indigenous peoples and lost to them when they were forced on to reservations with inadequate water supply. The Native Seeds project helps to revive some of those lost heirloom plants.

St. Andrew’s invites parishioners and guests to participate in education, reflection, and dialogue on current events. Recent books included Citizen: Faithful Discipleship in a Partisan World concerning Christians’ political responsibility; An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story about the life and legacy of that theologian and social critic; and The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community that points a way toward recovery from the Church’s racist history.

      Sacred Ground is dialogue series on race, grounded in faith. Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race, racism, and whiteness while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity. The 10-part series is built around a powerful online curriculum of documentary films and readings that focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories.

      Sacred Ground is a resource coming out of Becoming Beloved Community, The Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, our ministries, and our society. This series is especially designed to help white people talk with other white people, while being open to all racial/ethnic groups. Participants are invited to peel away the layers that have contributed to the challenges and divides of the present day – all while grounded in our call to faith, hope and love.

The purpose of St. Andrew’s Invite Welcome Connect ministry is “to welcome the greater community and encourage others to develop their relationship with God and with us.” The ministry encompasses a range of public relations, communications, and event initiatives to reach out to strangers and more deeply engage with parishioners. St. Andrew’s actively welcomes all, regardless of spiritual or personal preferences or backgrounds, continually seeking a rich, diverse, and stimulating community. In response to the recent pandemic, St. Andrew’s created an online ministry, streamed Saturday, Sunday, and weekday services, initiated online book groups, expanded telecare, developed a Covid resources guide, and shifted sit-dowm Community suppers to take-out as ways to welcome and connect with both parishioners and strangers.

St. Andrew’s is committed to racial reconciliation and is working to engage with indigenous people in beloved community. Parishioners study and seek understanding through the Sacred Ground ministry and groups that study related topics such as in the church’s history of racism and pathway to healing. Direct support is provided through a relationship with St. Mary’s of the Moonlight in Oljato UT, participation in the Tewa Holiday Project at First Mesa, and through specific initiatives like the Pandemic drives for water, food, and PPE to help support Navajo Nation.