History

St. John's, Norwood, began as a mission in the rural village of Bethesda, Maryland in 1873 and became a parish in the new Diocese of Washington in 1895. After the original frame church burned in 1914, the parish constructed a Gothic-style stone church and rectory, which stood until the present church was completed in 1948. The parish became independent of financial support from the diocese before the end of the 1920s and experienced moderate growth during the Depression and World War II.

William F. Creighton

The modern history of St. John's began after World War II, with the explosive growth of suburban Washington and the arrival of the new rector, William F. Creighton. The son of an Episcopal bishop, and a Navy chaplain during the war, Mr. Creighton reorganized the parish to meet the needs of the young families who flocked to St. John's in the postwar years. Communicant strength rose to more than 1,500, and the church school grew to more than 1,200 students taught by 100 teachers.

William A. Beal

When Mr. Creighton became Bishop Coadjutor of Washington in 1959, he was succeeded by William A. Beal, who had been associate rector and then acting rector during the interim. During the turbulent 1960s the parish sought to strengthen its ministry in new ways. In addition to renewed emphasis on Sunday morning education for children and adults, the parish entered a cooperative arrangement with the public schools to create an after-school Christian education program in the parish. None of these efforts, however, stemmed the steady decline in membership and church school size during the decade.

Missions continued to be a major emphasis in the parish. During the Creighton years the parish was instrumental in supporting two new missions, which became St. Luke's, Bethesda, and St. Francis' Church, Potomac. A decade later Bishop Creighton called upon St. John's to start a new mission in south Rockville. St. John's provided clerical and lay support for the new mission for three years, and it became St. James' Parish, Potomac, in 1969. The Women of St. John's supported a variety of foreign mission projects during the 1960s, and the parish sent teams of young people to Nicaragua in 1967 and to South Dakota in 1969.

St. John's sought ways to adapt to the social and cultural upheavals that swept the nation in the 1970s. without abandoning its century-old, low-church tradition, the parish experimented occasionally with a variety of new liturgical forms, including the church's trial liturgies, and easily accepted the 1979 Prayer Book. A parish census in 1966 and a comprehensive survey of the parish in 1973 were designed to identify new programs and directions that might attract young families to an aging and shrinking congregation. The parish was still searching for a new vision when Mr. Beal died suddenly from a heart attack in February 1979.

Duane Stuart Alvord

Duane Stuart Alvord, who became rector of St. John's in September 1980, brought to the parish a new style in ministry and a sense of optimism about the future. Born and educated in the Pacific northwest and coming from a rectorship in Oregon, he possessed an informal and exuberant manner, a love for the outdoors, an appealing lack of eastern social reserve, and a liturgical style not quite in keeping with St. John's low-church tradition.

One focus of Mr. Alvord's ministry was to build a stronger sense of community in the parish and to promote parish renewal. In the early years he organized all-parish weekend retreats. He welcomed newcomers at every service, encouraged the expression of ideas and comments from the congregation, and sent birthday cards to every parishioner.

To spur parish renewal, the rector appointed a long-range planning committee in 1982 to develop with the Vestry and each parish organization a detailed plan for each year in the rest of the decade. The report, "St. John's at the Crossroads," served as a useful guide for the 1980s. to provide a plan for the next century, the rector in 1992 appointed the Vision 2000 Committee, which over the following two years completed a comprehensive survey of the parish in the context of local and national religious and social trends.

Outreach programs in the 1980s included a Lenten School of Religion with other Bethesda churches, noon-time concerts in the park, and on-going commitment to projects for the hungry and homeless. The parish for a time housed the local hospice society. The Opportunity Shop (a consignment and thrift shop), established by the Women of St. John's in downtown Bethesda in 1951, made substantial financial contributions to the parish budget each year.

When Mr. Alvord came to St. John's, the parish already had a female priest serving as assistant rector. Years earlier the parish had been among the first in the diocese to accept female seminarians. During Mr. Alvord's rectorship the parish had at least one, and sometimes two, female priests. One of these was an African-American, whom St. John's had sponsored for the ministry. There has also been a modest increase in racial diversity in the parish.

In the late 1970s St. Barnabas Mission of the Deaf moved from St. Mark's Capitol Hill to St. John's, where it continues to hold services in our chapel nearly every Sunday with its own vicar, as well as on special occasions. Occasionally St. Barnabas' members join us in the main church, bringing their own interpreter; members also join us for social occasions, and several St. John's parishioners have learned sign language.

In 1994 Mr. Alvord announced that he intended to retire at the end of 1996. Thus his departure closed another chapter in the history of St. John's Norwood.

Susan M. Flanders (Gresinger)

The Rev. Susan M. Flanders (Gresinger) came to St. John's in October 1998. After completing her M.Div. degree at Virginia Theological Seminary in 1985, she served for 10 years as the Associate Rector of St. Mark's, Capitol Hill. From there she went to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for six months of interim work and then served as the Priest-in-Charge back in her home parish of Saint John's, Fort Washington, Maryland. Susan was an art history major at Wellesley College and George Washington University, spent time in Laos in the 1960's, and worked briefly in campaign finance and real estate before beginning seminary. She has three grown sons: a chef and two college boys.

image: St. John's Church, circa 1900
St. John's Church, Norwood Parish as it appeared around 1900

image: St. John's Church at the Northeast corner of Bradley Lane and Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda/Chevy Chase, Maryland
View of St. John's Church today