St. Luke's Episcopal Church 03.01.2026

  

We call this SoNoGo - South Park-North Park-Golden Hill & Our Mission: to see the baptized who live in SoNoGo worship in SoNoGo

St. Luke's Episcopal Church

The Episcopal Church

St. Luke's North Park is a Christian community praising God and seeking justice and healing in this dynamic neighborhood of San Diego since 1923.  We strive to create spaces for God’s grace to form life-changing relationships with Christ and each other across lines of prejudice and privilege. In the past three decades, God has led us to a new blessing: to serve as one of the primary congregations and cultural centers for South Sudanese Americans in the city, and more recently, for former Congolese refugees. Worshiping with our diverse community is a joyous experience that includes singing in Arabic and Swahili, and individuals from around the globe and the U.S., united by our found “home” at St. Luke’s and in Christ.  Our infant, toddler, children, and youth ministries are full and thriving, thanks be to God! We are proud partners with RefugeeNet, a non-profit dedicated to the well-being of refugee families. We’re also grateful to host sixteen twelve-step support meetings on campus each week. St. Luke's North Park is a Christian community seeking justice and healing in San Diego's North Park neighborhood. We dream to be a place where all people can enter into uncomfortable and brave spaces with others different than themselves -- different races, ethnicities, classes, creeds, sexual orientations, and gender identities -- and find their perspectives and hearts transformed. We follow a God who loves each of us especially for who we are and desires that every single human among us has all she or he needs to thrive in this world. Until that day comes, we will work alongside God's powerful Spirit to do justice in this hurting world and help all people find a loving and dignified home.

St. Luke's Episcopal Church 11.23.2025

 We call this SoNoGo - South Park-North Park-Golden Hill

St. Luke's Episcopal Church

The Episcopal Church

St. Luke's North Park is a Christian community praising God and seeking justice and healing in this dynamic neighborhood of San Diego since 1923.  We strive to create spaces for God’s grace to form life-changing relationships with Christ and each other across lines of prejudice and privilege. In the past three decades, God has led us to a new blessing: to serve as one of the primary congregations and cultural centers for South Sudanese Americans in the city, and more recently, for former Congolese refugees. Worshiping with our diverse community is a joyous experience that includes singing in Arabic and Swahili, and individuals from around the globe and the U.S., united by our found “home” at St. Luke’s and in Christ.  Our infant, toddler, children, and youth ministries are full and thriving, thanks be to God! We are proud partners with RefugeeNet, a non-profit dedicated to the well-being of refugee families. We’re also grateful to host sixteen twelve-step support meetings on campus each week. St. Luke's North Park is a Christian community seeking justice and healing in San Diego's North Park neighborhood. We dream to be a place where all people can enter into uncomfortable and brave spaces with others different than themselves -- different races, ethnicities, classes, creeds, sexual orientations, and gender identities -- and find their perspectives and hearts transformed. We follow a God who loves each of us especially for who we are and desires that every single human among us has all she or he needs to thrive in this world. Until that day comes, we will work alongside God's powerful Spirit to do justice in this hurting world and help all people find a loving and dignified home.

St. Luke's North Park 10.05.2025

We call this SoNoGo - South Park-North Park-Golden Hill 

St. Luke's Episcopal Church

St. Luke's North Park is a Christian community praising God and seeking justice and healing in this dynamic neighborhood of San Diego since 1923.  We strive to create spaces for God’s grace to form life-changing relationships with Christ and each other across lines of prejudice and privilege. In the past three decades, God has led us to a new blessing: to serve as one of the primary congregations and cultural centers for South Sudanese Americans in the city, and more recently, for former Congolese refugees. Worshiping with our diverse community is a joyous experience that includes singing in Arabic and Swahili, and individuals from around the globe and the U.S., united by our found “home” at St. Luke’s and in Christ.  Our infant, toddler, children, and youth ministries are full and thriving, thanks be to God! We are proud partners with RefugeeNet, a non-profit dedicated to the well-being of refugee families. We’re also grateful to host sixteen twelve-step support meetings on campus each week. St. Luke's North Park is a Christian community seeking justice and healing in San Diego's North Park neighborhood. We dream to be a place where all people can enter into uncomfortable and brave spaces with others different than themselves -- different races, ethnicities, classes, creeds, sexual orientations, and gender identities -- and find their perspectives and hearts transformed. We follow a God who loves each of us especially for who we are and desires that every single human among us has all she or he needs to thrive in this world. Until that day comes, we will work alongside God's powerful Spirit to do justice in this hurting world and help all people find a loving and dignified home.

Renew San Diego 01.26.2025

Dear Friends of St. Luke’s North Park

Dear Friends of St. Luke’s --

This morning, after learning that former president Trump has been re-elected for another term, I kept thinking about how we at St. Luke’s have been preparing for this all fall – just as we have been preparing for the possibility that Vice President Harris might be elected, too. Because we have reflected on the central work and call of Christians in every age and around the globe, living within and under every kind of political authority:

• To love God and to love our neighbor as our highest priority and greatest commandment. In the past two months, our readings from the letter of James reminded us that “to love” our neighbor means actively caring for them in their physical needs, and in the gospel of Luke’s parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus reminds us that “our neighbor” might be the people in our communities (or nation) we have been taught to think of as our enemies, or adversaries.
• To defend and protect the most vulnerable members of society. Throughout our Scriptures, we receive instruction to especially care for the poor, the oppressed, “the orphan and the widow” (shorthand for those people who lack legal and/or economic protection). God knows the human heart, and so God knows that we are prone to forget and neglect those without power, especially if we are “comfortable” or “okay” – but God’s Word, in Jesus and in the Scriptures, prods us to actively preserve, protect, and strengthen any lives threatened with violence, oppression, or degradation.
• To build for the kingdom of God, which transcends any moment in history. We cannot and will not “bring the kingdom” or “build the kingdom” as human beings – but we are called to build FOR the kingdom, adding our efforts, day in and day out, in ways big and small, for a reign that is marked by wholeness & healing, justice & peace, truth & reconciliation, beauty & joy. Our mission as Christians remains unchanged, as stated in the Book of Common Prayer: “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” There is plenty of unifying work to do, and we are promised that our efforts matter to God – the loving actions we take endure beyond our understanding.

And, of course, I recognize that at St. Luke’s, we might be feeling a particular fear, anxiety, or grief due to the president-elect’s extremely negative language around immigrants, when so many in our beloved community are immigrants, refugees, and former refugees. Together as a church family, we can and will continue to proclaim in word and deed the value and dignity of new Americans. We have many families at St. Luke’s who have been resettled in the U.S. in the past year, and along with our sister non-profit, RefugeeNet, we hope to officially welcome 30 more individuals before the end of January. There is plenty of loving work to do, which brings to mind 1 John 4:18: “Perfect love casts out fear.” We are fortunate to have important opportunities to love and serve directly at hand, right now and in the months to come.

In the midst of significant political changes in this country, the perpetual invitation from God toward loving action is the same – and Christ Jesus is indeed with us through the Spirit.  We pray you know some measure of Christ’s peace, which passes understanding, as we navigate this new terrain.

Christ's love,

Mtr. Laurel and Fr. Colin

Click here to give to St. Luke's today

 

St. Luke’s is thriving – and we need your help more than ever to keep this good work going. Many of our congregants continue to struggle in our expensive city.  And yet there’s so much to celebrate as we head into our centennial year. To name just a few …

• We have been privileged to welcome four newly resettled families from refugee camps in Tanzania and Kenya, which has helped raise our Sunday attendance back to our pre-pandemic levels.  Through God’s grace, we continue reaching newcomers from North Park as well.
• Our flourishing youth group capped our program year with a trip to Sea World, and ten enjoyed a pilgrimage to Alaska with St. Peter’s Del Mar and the Episcopal Youth Event in Washington, D.C.  We are grateful to all who made these opportunities possible!
• Over the month of October our children’s program developed six new Godly Play stories raising up American and African saints and wove them together with the personal stories of six of our congregants.  Then we shared these stories with the church in intergenerational small groups on “Our Saints Sunday” at the end of the month.  We hope to make these lovely and moving materials available to the wider church!
• We are working hard, with help from Boston University’s School of Theology, to create a more “trauma responsive” culture that honors, and creates the conditions for healing, for most all of us who have been affected by the many sides and faces of trauma. Our annual retreat at Camp Stevens was a particularly blessed space for this work.

We need your help to keep these blessings flowing.  We write now to ask for your financial support in the year ahead.  Please prayerfully consider a one-time or monthly donation to St. Luke’s.  You can give by clicking here (and click on the “monthly” button for recurring gifts).

Thank you for your consideration, and please don't hesitate to be in touch with questions -- we'd love a chance to share more about God's good work in North Park, and would love to talk in person with you!

In Christ’s hope and power, and with deep thanks for your support,

Laurel and Colin

A Message From Mtr. Laurel and Fr. Colin

Grace and peace to you from the monastic community of Grandchamp! After 11 Sundays of being away from worshipping with you in North Park, my heart is still with you each Sunday morning, and indeed each day in prayer. As we round the corner toward our return, I wanted to give a brief update about our past, present, and future whereabouts.

Colin and I were part of the transformative East African delegation journey, as I imagine you have gathered from stories and pictures, while our kids stayed in San Diego with their grandparents. At the beginning of July we left for a sabbatical journey as a family of four, beginning in the Baltimore / Washington D.C. area. While Colin served as a deputy at the General Convention, the kids and I went to stay with a dear friend of mine from high school in Berlin, Germany. After Convention, Colin re-joined us and we had a few days as a family of four before we set out on the "marriage renewal" portion of our sabbatical, traveling just the two of us by car for one week from Barcelona to Rome...while Pete and Penny (Colin's parents) watched the kids again for us (they really win the grandparents of the year award)!

Once we were all reunited in Rome, we did some sightseeing there and in France (see picture from the little village of La Brede) before Colin returned home to San Diego with Robin and Jem so they could start school. All of this family travel has been paid for by the once-in-a-lifetime clergy renewal grant I received from the Lilly Foundation, and we are so grateful for both the funds and for all of YOUR generosity of time and spirit in making it possible.

Now, I am writing to you from an ecumenical women`s monastery called "Grandchamp" in Switzerland, where I get to stay for 3 weeks for free as a work-prayer volunteer. (You can check it out online here.) I join in the community`s rhythm of prayer in French four times a day, and share in the work of the community, like cooking and cleaning, 24 hours per week. All of the meals but two each week are shared in silence, so I have a lot of time to think of all the lovely people I am missing back in San Diego, and enter a deeper stillness. I am reading and learning and hope to be truly spiritually refreshed by the time I return to my family, and to you! When I return to San Diego, Colin will take his own time of retreat with God, and then we will see you all again on October 2. You may see Jem and Robin before then, because we don`t want them to miss the start of our children`s formation program year.

I am so curious about all you have been experiencing in your own "renewal Sundays," and look forward to our time of reunion. In the meantime, both Colin and I continue to hold you in our hearts, minds, and prayers.

With Christ`s love, always, (Mtr.) Laurel and (Fr.) Colin

Day of Pentecost | 06.05.22

Co-pastors in North Park: Laurel and Colin Mathewson