This is my search section here
  • Welcome
  • Service Times
  • Directions
  • What to Expect
  • For Your Kids
  • The Episcopal Church
Close X

Welcome

Welcome to St. Alban’s Church! Every Sunday, and most days in between, people gather in this place to worship, to learn, to grow, to share the joys and struggles of our lives, and to seek God’s grace in the midst of our lives. We do not come because we have it all figured out, but because we are seeking light on the way. We come as we are and welcome one another.

On this website, you can find information about our worship, our classes for people of all ages, membership at St. Alban's, and about how we seek to make a difference in this world. We warmly encourage you to join us for a Sunday service or for some of the many other events that happen here. You belong at St. Alban’s.

Please fill out this welcome form to connect with us.

Contact us with any questions. Call (202) 363-8286 or email the church office.

 

Service Times 

Weekly In-person Sunday Service Schedule (Please note: Service times may be changed during the seasons of Christmas and Lent and during the summer. Please refer to our calendar to confirm the times.):

8 a.m. (English) in the Church
9 a.m. (English) in the Church
11:15 a.m. (English) in the Church
11:15 a.m. (Spanish) in Nourse Hall (same building as the Church)

Communion in one kind (i.e. wafers) will be offered at the main altar, although we will happily bring communion to those for whom steps are challenging. 

Weekly Live Sunday Services are live-streamed on our Youtube channel (St. Alban's DC) at 9 a.m. every Sunday, as is our Spanish service at 11:15 a.m. 

Evening Prayer Thursdays, 5:30 p.m. via Zoom, join us for a time of reflection and sharing at the close of your busy day. Contact Paul Brewster for the link. 

 

Directions

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church is located next to the Washington National Cathedral at the corner of Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenues in the northwest section of the District of Columbia.

From either direction on the north loop of the Capital Beltway/I-495 follow signs for Route 355/Wisconsin Ave south toward DC. St. Alban’s is located on the left just before the intersection of Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenues NW. Make a left onto Lych Gate Rd before you reach Massachusetts Ave. As you enter the drive, the church will be on your left and Satterlee Hall and the Rectory on the right. Stay on Lych Gate until it becomes Pilgrim Rd.

From any Virginia main in-bound thoroughfare (George Washington Memorial Parkway, I-395, Route 50, I-66), follow signs to Rosslyn and take the Key Bridge from Rosslyn north across the Potomac River into Georgetown. Go right on M St, left on Wisconsin Ave. St. Alban’s is located on the right just after the intersection of Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenues NW. Make a right onto Lych Gate Rd after passing Massachusetts. As you enter the drive, the church will be on your left and Satterlee Hall and the Rectory on the right. Stay on Lych Gate until it becomes Pilgrim Rd.

Parking is available on Pilgrim Road Monday-Friday after 3:30 pm and all day Saturday and Sunday. Parking is also available in the Cathedral’s underground garage for a fee Monday- Saturday and for free on Sunday.  You may also park on neighborhood streets according to DC parking signs.

What to Expect

Visiting a church for the first time can be a bit daunting. So we have tried to put together the answers to some of the questions you’re likely to have and to ensure that you find a warm welcome here. Click on the questions to learn more.)

How do you worship?

What time are services on Sunday morning?

How long do services last?

Where can I park?

Do you offer programs for children?

What should I wear?

Do you have provisions for the differently-abled?

For Your Kids

Children’s Ministry

At St. Alban’s, we believe that a child’s spiritual growth is just as important as their physical and intellectual growth. Our goal is to help children name and value the presence and love of God in their lives. We do this through a variety of means – by providing stable and consistent adult mentors, encouraging strong peer relationships, and supporting parents in their families’ faith lives at home.

Worship: This Fall, Children's Chapel meets during the first half of the 9:00 a.m. service in Nourse Hall (a spacious parish hall in the same building as the main worship space.) Kids and families join "big church" at the Peace so everyone can receive Communion together. To learn more, contact the Rev’d Emily Griffin.

Education: We've resumed our formation programs for the 2022-2023 period. Here’s everything you need to know:

  • Sunday School and Youth Group Classes are from 10:15 to 11:05 a.m.
  • Nursery, 2s & 3s, PreK to 1st Grade, 2nd to 3rd Grade, and 4th to 6th Grade all meet upstairs in Satterlee Hall. Youth classes meet downstairs in Satterlee Hall.
  • If you haven’t registered your child or teen yet, it’s not too late. Register in person at the start of class or click here

Questions? For children, contact the Rev’d Emily Griffin at . For youth, contact the Rev’d Yoimel González Hernández at .

Learn more about Children's Ministries
Youth Ministry

Four teen groups participate in formation classes at St. Alban’s on Sunday mornings. We use the nationally recognized Episcopal curriculum “Journey to Adulthood," or J2A. J2A has two guiding principles: 1) Manhood and womanhood are gifts of God; and 2) Adulthood must be earned. This is a strong program with over 50 youth participating, many of whom engage in a wide variety of ministries at St. Alban’s. Two or three adults mentor each of the groups for two years, sharing their own faith journeys and forming strong bonds of fellowship with the participants.Learn more about Youth Ministries

The Episcopal Church

As Episcopalians, we follow Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe God is active in our everyday lives through the power of the Holy Spirit.  

The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and with each other in Christ. The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the gospel, and promotes justice, peace and love. The Church carries out its mission through the ministry of all of its members.

We uphold the Bible and worship with the Book of Common Prayer. We believe the Holy Scriptures are the revealed Word of God. In worship we unite ourselves with one another to acknowledge the holiness of God, to hear God's Word, to offer prayer and praise, and to celebrate the Sacraments. The Celebration of Holy Eucharist is the central act of worship in accordance with Jesus' command to His disciples. Holy Communion may be received by all baptized Christians, not only members of the Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion with 70 million members in 165 countries.  The word "Episcopal" refers to government by bishops. The historic episcopate continues the work of the first apostles in the Church, guarding the faith, unity and discipline of the Church. Both men and women, including those who are married, are eligible for ordination as deacons, priests and bishops. 

We strive to love our neighbors as ourselves and respect the dignity of every person. We welcome all to find a spiritual home in the Episcopal Church.

I'm New
St. Alban's
Header Image

Strength Training

Filter By:
02.04.18

Strength Training

Strength Training

Series: Epiphany

Speaker: The Rev'd Emily Griffin

It’s enough to make anyone tired. In today’s Gospel we’re given just the second half of Jesus’ first full day of public ministry. He’s spent the morning teaching, confronting evil, trying on this new, more vocal role for size. You’d think that would be enough time on the front lines for opening day. But no – he can’t even go to a friend’s house for dinner without a sea of need washing up ashore. He tends to Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. And then just as the sabbath ends, as if on cue, practically the whole city is at the door - wave upon wave of sickness and brokenness, with the promise of more of the same in the morning. And it’s not just the individual suffering he sees; that’s bad enough. He knows that there’s an entire system of neglect and greed pushing these people to the edges. He knows that for every life he heals and restores, every person he pulls out of the river, there are even more being thrown in.

So what does he do? He gets up before anyone has a chance to ask for anything and finds a quiet place to pray. It doesn’t last long. Even his disciples don’t know how to give him space. The text says they “hunted” for him. I’m not sure anyone enjoys being hunted. Pursued, chased maybe – but hunted – we know how that ends. He could have stopped then and there, I suppose – gone back to sleep, let someone else face the flood of need. But no - he takes a deep breath, reminds himself of why he’s here, puts one foot in front of another, and gets back to work.

If Jesus sounds a little weary even at this early stage of the game, Mark (our Gospel writer) wouldn’t mind you drawing that conclusion. Mark’s Jesus isn’t a pasty, plaster saint with boundless pluck and verve. He gets tired. He gets angry; he’s decidedly not serene. It’s part of his charm, I think. Despite his extraordinary powers to heal, his humanity is also on full display. Mark has no interest in hiding it. He wants us to think about the choices Jesus didn’t make. Jesus could have done what we tend to do when faced with an onslaught of need and a corrupt system perpetuating it. We fight the good fight sometimes. But we also get paralyzed; we escape and grow numb. Or we turn the actual people in front of us – and certainly those beyond us - into abstractions. We theorize about their need. We find someone to blame and pretend that’s the same thing as doing something.

Mark wants us to know that following Jesus means being awake and responsive to the pain around us, especially when it’s easier to despair than hope. So how do we do it? How do we prepare ourselves for the long haul of unjust suffering and devastating setbacks and at times flat-out evil – when the forces of nationalism and bigotry and environmental destruction are throwing people into the river faster than we can fish them out?

We need more than outrage to sustain us. That fire might burn hot, but it doesn’t last long. And pity is toothless. Even the need to be needed – a mighty force in many of us - only goes so far. Victory over evil takes more than just correctly critiquing the enemy or even feeling another’s pain; we need a picture of what we’re working toward, a vision that’s more compelling, more spacious, more beautiful frankly than the narrow, zero-sum nightmare we’ve been told to accept – where in order for us to win, someone else needs to lose.

For Jesus anyway, that vision was the kingdom of God. But he didn’t get that vision all on his own. He mined it, in part, from the traditions that came before him - from the Old Testament prophets who prepared the way. The gift of the prophets, like Isaiah from our first reading, isn’t just their ability to name what’s wrong; any Monday morning quarterback can do that. As biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann notes in his book The Prophetic Imagination, prophets don’t just criticize. They help us grieve the losses that can’t be reconciled, and then - they energize us by giving us an alternate vision, a new vantage point, a perspective on the present that orients us and points us to the future.

Isaiah begins his look forward by looking back – way back to the very beginning. If we can look past the puppet masters on our immediate horizon, he says, beyond the headline grabbers trying so hard to monopolize our view, we might just see what he saw – that the powers of this earth aren’t as big as we think they are. Ultimately, they’re lightweights, he says - grasshoppers compared to the Creator of the ends of the earth. They’ve been outclassed, outmatched and outplayed – even if they don’t realize it yet. As for those who think that the presence of tyrants and bullies means that God doesn’t see or care – Isaiah subtly points out the arrogance of that assumption. How can we claim to know what the Source of life does or doesn’t see? How dare we put the God of eternity on our timeclock or measure divine compassion by the limits of our own? The One who brought light out of darkness, who created order out of chaos, who spoke all that is into being isn’t bound by our tired expectations of what’s possible. Our prospects for change are not defined by our weariness or fatigue. When we’re able to keep the Creator of the universe in mind, Isaiah says, we don’t have to accept this small worldview where all others are threats and we only become strong at someone else’s expense. We don’t have to measure our strength by another’s weakness, because we’re not expected to carry everything on our own. We have a deeper well to draw from, a force of love and grace (and yes, strength) beyond our imagining that’s capable of pushing us all forward and setting us free.

In the meantime, it’s OK to be tired; the work we’re called to, the daily work of healing and justice and peace, of refusing to see anyone as an object of scorn or pity, is enough to make anyone tired. And it’s OK to step back at times and rest, to turn off the news, to step away from the phone; even Jesus needed the occasional time out to pray and regroup. Our tiredness is not a measure what we’re capable of. God “gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.” We’re told here that “those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength…they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” If we’re willing to accept it, we’re given the strength we need to keep walking when we feel like stopping, to keep putting one foot in front of another when we’d rather go back to sleep, to keep moving forward even when it feels like the world around us is going in reverse. I don’t know about you, but that’s a vision I can live with, a vision I can walk toward.

In the silence that follows, I invite you to pray however you need to. But if some questions to ponder might help: Who is looming too large in your vision today? Who might you need to push to the sidelines so you can see the far horizon more clearly? And who’s been on the edges of your sight for too long? Whose needs might need to come into greater focus for you to do the work God’s given you to do? In the Name of the One who gives us the strength to rest and to pray, as well as to walk and to run – Amen.