First Anglican Church in Utah Opens

British reverend opened St. John's Anglican Church at Quarry Village last week

Kelly Evertsen, Of the Record Staff
Article Launched: 11/24/2007 01:00:00 AM MST

British lawyer turned American Anglican church pastor Reverend Christopher Seddon said he decided after being a lawyer for 22 years that he wanted to give back to the community. In fact, when he was a young child, he said he always felt it was his calling to become a pastor.

"I think I knew when I was about five that God gave me a call in my life and I managed to keep putting it off," Seddon said. "I never really enjoyed being a lawyer and did it for years!"

Seddon moved to Park City in the summer of 2005 with his wife, Lori "Kismet" Seddon, and opened the first Anglican church of Utah in Park City. The church just recently moved to its new location at Quarry Village in Jeremy Ranch, in a building that houses worship services and the "Arc," a daily childcare drop-off center for the entire community.

Seddon was born in Kettering, England and lived in Lincoln, England, an "old Roman city," he called it. The city houses the Lincoln Castle, as well as the famous cathedral built in 1050 and an old Roman arch hanging above a street people drive through, he said.

"In the Lincoln Castle on the top of the hill, we have one of only the remaining copies of the Magna Carta," Seddon exclaimed.

Seddon was baptized into the Anglican church when he was a baby. The Anglican church, which literally means "English" church, dates back to 400 A.D. Seddon said it was lost in America during the 1700s and later turned into the Episcopal church, which he said adopts a more liberal theology than the original Anglican church. However, these days, Seddon said the Anglican church is slowly being integrated back into America.

Seddon had a few friends living in the states in southwest Missouri that he would often visit and fish with on Table Rock Lake. He was in Kentucky at a coffee shop when he met his wife, Lori, an American. The two wed and Christopher became a permanent resident of America. He was shortly after ordained a minister and started his own Anglican church in Kentucky, where the couple lived until just a couple years ago.

"I had retired from the law decided to have a sabbatical just in time in the States," Seddon said. "I met this wonderful woman, Lori, but in England, 'Lori' is the name of a semi-trick, so we changed [her name] to 'Kismet,' which means 'my fate.'"

When a friend in the Anglican church community in Ohio approached Seddon about opening a church in Utah - since he saw a need - Seddon embraced the opportunity. When the couple moved to Park City in June of 2005, they held the church services at the Park City Academy. After drawing larger crowds, they opened a new church in a building in Quarry Village. Kismet works in Salt Lake City as a nurse and hospice worker.

Seddon said the mission of the new St. Paul's Anglican Church is to serve and meet the needs of the community.

"I see it as the old parish service for this neighborhood in Jeremy Ranch, Pinebrook [and the surrounding areas]," Seddon said. "That's why we're doing this childcare service in the building. It's a place where we can serve the community [and] get to know the community."

The Ark is a childcare drop-off service on Quarry Road housed within the church. It will officially open on Dec. 3.

Director of the Ark, Rhonda Doffett, said the service is great for stay-at-home moms or dads who want to get out of the house for a few hours, go to the spa or run errands. But Doffett said it is not just a daycare center, it's also a learning center for children. The childcare workers will actually teach science, math or the alphabet to kids while their parents are out on a break.

"The space is wonderful," Doffett said. "We'll have toys, a sensor-based learning [area], time for dramatic play, science stuff, cognitive learning, reading and math skills.

There's a really unique type of curriculum we'll teach [It's] our hope to maybe look into opening a preschool within the year."

Doffett has been the director of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City for 10 years. She started the preschool at that church.

"So far, it seems like something that's wanted," Doffett said of the Ark in Jeremy Ranch. "The response we're getting from e-mails is positive."

Doffett and her daughter, Shannon Doffett, will be the primary childcare workers after the center first opens until business increases and they can hire more workers. She said Shannon has seven years of experience working at St. Paul's in early childhood development.

The rate for the Ark is $12 per hour per child, with a maximum four-hour stay.

Seddon said he is pleased to have the Ark drop-off childcare center in the church and hopes it will provide a great service to the community.

"I'm a great believer in walking-the-walk and talking-the-talk," Seddon said of his church duties. "That's why we're doing this childcare service in the building."

Seddon said he and his wife and several members of their congregation also regularly serve welfare missions to Kenya and Southeast Asia.

"My wife and I have a great heart for Southeast Asia and AIDS orphanages in Thailand," Seddon said. "We're also actively supporting an orphanage in Kenya for destitute children. Many of us have sort of adopted children there and paid for their school fees, clothing and food for a year."

But Seddon said it is also his and his congregation's ultimate wish to serve the community wherever possible.

"We can't just preach on Sundays, have coffee and leave," Seddon says of his church. "It's about serving the community and providing for their needs."

The pastor said it is difficult in an affluent area like Park City to provide housing needs for those who cannot afford it, and hopes to give aid to those less fortunate.

"Even as a priest, I have struggled to live here, and there are many that are simply not able to, and I think that's something that needs to be addressed," Seddon said.

Now that his church has been built at Quarry Village, Seddon invites the entire community to see and use the new facilities.

"We've got a membership of over 100 now, and it's growing quite rapidly," he said. "Nobody was here before and we're now seeing a lot of new folks coming to worship, which is really cool."

He encourages Parkites to visit the church, use the Ark childcare services and use the church as a house of prayer.

"They are so welcome to come and visit and we just want it to be a place of love, community and reconciliation," Seddon said.

The church also contains a prayer sanctuary.

"It's just enough room for six to eight people, and it's a gentle, quiet, spiritual place for anyone who would like to come and spend time with god," Seddon said.

St. John's Anglican Church meets Sundays at 9 a.m. for traditional services, and 10:15 a.m. for a contemporary Eucharist services. On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 a.m., the church hosts brief prayer meetings. The church and the Ark are located at 3156 Quarry Road in Jeremy Ranch. For more information, call 655-7994 or visit www.stjohnsanglican.org .

St. John’s Anglican Church Announces 2007 Lenten Schedule and Easter Celebration

Wasatch Front, Utah – February 14, 2007

The members and Rector of St. John’s Anglican Church, a rapidly growing Anglican congregation located between Salt Lake City and Park City off of I-80 at the Jeremy Ranch exit, invite everyone to join us in our Lenten reflections and then our celebration of Easter, the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ! .

Lenten Events (February 20, 2007 through March 30, 2007) In the Lenten Discipline, St. John’s has many programs to help you focus your life on Christ's self-sacrificing passion, death and resurrection. Through our faith, these acts of Christ, have brought us acceptance, forgiveness and redemption by God. Through that same discipline, we make a loving response to God. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, a Christian observance to begin the 40 day season of Lent. Ashes are imposed on the foreheads of worshippers as a sign of penitence.

Holy Week Events (Thursday April 5, 2007 through Sunday April 8, 2007)

Holy Easter Week Events (April 5, 2007 through April 8, 2007) begin with:

Maundy Thursday – Is the Christian observance of the first Lord's Supper during Holy Week and Commemorates the Last Supper which Jesus shared with his twelve disciples prior to his arrest, passion and crucifixion and resurrection. Because it commemorates the Last Supper, Maundy Thursday is sometimes called the “birthday of the Eucharist.” As related in the New Testament Gospel of John, Jesus demonstrated the kind of love and service he wanted his disciples to offer one another by washing their feet and then explaining, “truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” (John 13:12-17).

Good Friday is the Christian remembrance of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus.

The Easter Vigil is the Easter seasons first official celebration of the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Easter Sunday is the most joyful and holy of Christian days. Commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ is at the heart of our faith and we shall celebrate, lighting the Paschal candle, and experiencing the presence of our Risen Lord. According to Father Christopher Seddon, Rector of St. John’s, as believers in the literal resurrection of our Lord, we are thrilled to be able to proclaim, on Easter Sunday morning; “Christ has Risen! He is risen indeed!” The Kingdom has arrived and, as citizens and disciples, we rejoice in this great news, and are strengthened and empowered to continue His work amongst those who have not yet met Him. As always though, preparation is essential. How can we live more Christ-centered lives and truly walk with Him day by day? The congregation joins me in inviting you to join us in our Lenten reflections and the Celebration of Easter this year, at St. John’s Anglican Church.

St. John’s Anglican, founded in May 2004, holds weekly service at Park City Academy, 3120 Pinebrook Road. Take the Jeremy Ranch exit off I-80, turn south to stop sign and left to Pinebrook. For further information about St. John’s, visit our web site at www.stjohnsanglican.org or contact Father Christopher by phone at (801) 302-0379, (435) 655-7994 or by email at stjohnsrector@msn.com.

St. John's to link with African sect

By Carrie A. Moore Deseret Morning News, January 12, 2007

An independent Anglican church near Park City announced Thursday they will affiliate with the evangelical Anglican Mission in America, which is an outreach of the Anglican Province of Rwanda.

Rev. Christopher Seddon Rev. Christopher Seddon St. John's Anglican Church, founded in 2004 after a dozen people broke from St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Park City, has about 90 members, according to Father Christopher Seddon, the church's rector. "They wanted to have traditional view of scripture as being the word of God and felt they couldn't walk any longer" with St. Luke's, which is part of the Episcopal Church USA, a province of the 77-million member worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Episcopal Church has been under fire for several years from conservatives within the denomination who oppose the ordination of gay clergy and other policy decisions they view as inconsistent with biblical teaching. In recent years, several Episcopal churches across the country have announced affiliation with conservative foreign provinces in Africa.

St. John's doesn't focus on their differences with the Episcopal Church now, Father Seddon said.

"Things like that are not even talked about. We try to talk about the gospel, volunteer work in Thailand and with an AIDS orphanage, and work in Indonesia. We're really walking the walk rather than talking the talk. Otherwise, it's too easy to never do any."

The congregation meets in the Park City Academy, a Christian school near the I-80 Exit at Jeremy Ranch. Half its parishioners come from Summit County and another half from the Salt Lake area. Two families make the trek from Ogden, he said.

For information about the Anglican Mission in America, see the Web site at www.theamia.org or call Father Seddon at 302-0379.

St. John's alliance with AMiA 'fit the bill'

Jesse Ravitz, Salt Lake City Tribune, January 12, 2007

St. John's Anglican Church, a congregation established in May 2004 by former Episcopalians, announced Thursday its formal alliance with the evangelical Anglican Mission in America. The decision makes the group, which meets weekly at Park City Academy, Utah's first AMiA affiliate.

"We were looking for an authentic path in the Anglican world that we could join, whose goal was the same as ours," says the Rev. Christopher Seddon of St. John's. The organization's mission, one rooted in outreach to the unchurched and strict adherence to scripture, "fit the bill in so many ways."

AMiA, founded in 2000 and based in South Carolina, is an offshoot missionary movement of the Anglican Province of Rwanda. It currently has more than 14,000 members, 95 affiliated parishes and a new church coming on board every three weeks, the organization's spokeswoman, Cynthia Brust, reports.

The growth of AMiA stems from what Brust describes as "a crisis of faith and leadership. . .one that's been developing for over 40 years."

Both she and Seddon are adamant that splits from the Episcopal Church - the worldwide Anglican Communion's official American branch - are not just about the 2003 election of New Hampshire's openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson. Nor are such decisions mere objections to last year's ground-breaking election of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to serve in this Advertisement capacity in the nearly 520-year history of Anglicanism. It's about theology, about how one views and accepts scripture. In Seddon's world, and among his congregants, scripture is not something to be interpreted, something to be influenced by modernity.

"We see scripture as truly the word of God," Seddon, 50, says. "God is unchangeable."

The lawyer-turned-priest, originally from England, came to Utah a year and a half ago. He inherited a group of about 20 who had broken away, in 2004, from Park City's St. Luke's Episcopal Church. Today, he says, St. John's members exceed 90.

St. Luke's priest, the Rev. Charles Robinson, arrived in 2004 and says by the time he got to the Park City church the polarization was too deep and the opportunity for internal healing shot. He explains the difference between his viewpoint and that of Seddon's as a clash between "modern approach" and "traditional approach." Robinson's church, which has about 300 members, allows for "historical criticism" and takes into account evolving scholarship.

"The question is, will we acknowledge the scholarship of the last 150 years, or will we reject it and say 'those scholars, what the hell do they know?' '' Robinson, 52, says and laughs.

Seddon and Robinson may not see eye-to-eye on these matters, but they refuse to fuel divisions and harp on negativity. In fact, the two lunch together regularly.

"We are poles apart, and we don't pretend otherwise," Seddon explains. "But that doesn't mean we can't share fellowship."

St. John’s Anglican Church Announces Affiliation with Anglican Mission in America

Wasatch Front, Utah - January 10, 2007 - St. John’s Anglican Church (www.stjohnsanglican.org), a rapidly growing orthodox Anglican congregation located between Salt Lake City and Park City off of I-80 at the Jeremy Ranch exit, has voted to affiliate with the evangelical Anglican Mission in America (AMiA on the web at www.theamia.org).

According to Father Christopher Seddon, Rector of St. John’s, “affiliation with AMiAis a decisive step for St. John’s Anglican and one which directly connects us with the 77 million member Worldwide Anglican Communion. We celebrate St. John’s Anglican becoming the first parish in the Salt Lake City/Park City area to accomplish this.” The AMiA was founded as an outreach of the Anglican Province of Rwanda and provides spiritual connections to those who have left the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) as well as to un-churched peoples within the United States. “Right here in Utah, there are thousands of liturgical Christians who are watching their own churches turn away from belief in scripture as the word of God, and who are now seeking a faithful, historic and gospel-based Church where they can continue their liturgical worship. According to reports published by the ECUSA, the Episcopal Church is losing traction in Utah and nationally; with tens of thousands of attendees leaving annually.

At St. John’s, we believe we have been called to heal wounds, to reunite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way," said Father Christopher. “Our goal is joyful obedience to Jesus Christ, to God’s Word and to the leading of the Holy Spirit as we try to spread the love of Christ to our community, our nation, and the world”

St. John’s Anglican, founded in May 2004, holds weekly service at Park City Academy, 3120 Pinebrook Road. Take the Jeremy Ranch exit off I-80, turn south to stop sign and left to Pinebrook. For further information about St. John’s, visit our web site at www.stjohnsanglican.org or contact Father Christopher by phone at (801) 302-0379, (435) 655-7994 or by email at stjohnsrector@msn.com.