Prayer fuels mission at St. Francis in the Fields

Few Episcopal churches have experienced the kind of growth St. Francis in the Fields has enjoyed recently.

Average Sunday attendance at the Louisville-area parish is up from 287 to 454 over the past five years, placing it in the top 1% of fastest-growing churches in the Episcopal Church. It is also among just 3% of Episcopal parishes nationally with attendance over 250, and one of just 49 Episcopal parishes in the U.S. with attendance exceeding 400.

Looking at multiple metrics of health, the parish is thriving. It welcomed 65 new members and celebrated nine baptisms and 24 confirmations last year; its pastoral care team is 65 members – both lay and clergy – strong; its finances are sound.

Most importantly, prayer has taken up a central place in the life of the parish, says the Rev. Clint Wilson. Beginning last year, the church has committed to holding Morning and Evening Prayer every weekday in its chapel.

“The vocation of prayer is the most generative part of the work that we do at St. Francis in the Fields, and that really fuels our imagination for growth – growth that is not generated simply by principles of sociology or patterns pulled from the business world, as helpful as those things may be sometimes. Growth is really grown out of the seedbed of communion with God in prayer,” said Fr. Clint, a 2014 graduate of Nashotah House.

The parish has long enjoyed a reputation for its commitment to scripture, its traditional music program, and for its track record of producing lay and ordained leaders. Following a transition in leadership, however, the parish experienced a season of decline in the five years leading up to the call of Fr. Clint and his wife, Theresa, in 2020.

“When we arrived, we entered into a season of discernment and trying to ask good questions about what God might be calling us to,” Fr. Clint said. “We knew it was a parish that was really committed to faithfulness and scripture and prayer and leadership development and forming people within the story of scripture, so that was all really energizing.”

As a result of that discernment, a focus on prayer became core to the church’s work and was reinforced through conferences, small groups, retreats, vestry book studies, and, ultimately, the launch of the Daily Office.

“A commitment to prayer has been the white-hot center of our growth,” Fr. Clint said. “Out of everything else that we do, it’s not a program among other programs, but really it’s the center.”

He attributes his time at Nashotah House to cultivating the discipline of and love for prayer.

“Most fundamentally, the centrality of prayer and the Offices was most formative (at Nashotah House),” he said. “Marinating within the communal life, the Benedictine rhythms of ministry and community, was deeply formative and continues to really shape the vision of ministry that we try to inhabit here in Louisville and at St. Francis in the Fields.”

The Daily Office has also been a vehicle for leadership development within the church, allowing parishioners to discern their call to lay and ordained leadership.

“The Anglican tradition is really rooted in three things: the centrality of the Eucharist, the centrality of the Daily Office and of personal and family devotion,” Fr. Clint said. “So, those three things are central to what we do, and the Offices have become for us a pathway for people to explore their own call as Christian leaders.”

St. Francis in the Fields served as the sending parish for two recent Nashotah House graduates: the Rev. Elizabeth Garfield, ‘23, who serves as curate at St. John the Divine in Houston; and the Rev. Garrett Puccetti, ‘24, who is resident priest at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando. Three parishioners are currently studying in Nashotah House’s hybrid-distance program, two of them discerning orders.

Another source of vitality for the parish is the Louisville Bridge Fellows Program, a leadership development program now in its second year under Theresa’s direction. Having previously served as executive director of the Nashville Fellows Program, Theresa launched the Louisville program with its inaugural cohort in 2023. The nine-month program, which is hosted by the parish, is designed for recent college graduates who desire to invest in the city through leadership in the church, their places of work, and the community. Fellows work in their field as they receive professional and spiritual mentorship, take seminary-level classes, and live with host families. Louisville fellows currently serve in St. Francis in the Fields’ youth group.

“We’re trying to create a culture and to cultivate leaders who will move into the city, and not only will they be future vestry leaders, but they will be future civic leaders, entrepreneurs, business leaders, nonprofit leaders, and such,” Fr. Clint said.

“The goal is that fellows stay and invest in the city for the long-term, understanding how their faith impacts their vocation,” said Theresa.

Nashotah House and the Louisville Fellows Program enjoy a cooperative partnership, through which fellows can receive six credits of coursework toward a Master of Divinity, Master of Pastoral Ministry, or a Master of Theological Studies at the House, and receive a 20% tuition scholarship toward their studies. Nashotah House’s New Testament professor, the Rev. Dr. Paul Wheatley, and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. Jim Watkins, both serve as instructors for the Louisville Fellows Program.

With a particular focus on church unity, the fellowship program culminates in a pilgrimage to England.

“Focusing on church unity in the midst of an increasingly polarized culture is something that we really want to do,” said Theresa. “It’s a gospel mandate, it’s all over the New Testament, it’s how the ‘world will know who we are,’ and yet you look at us and we’re so divided. So, we are intentional to read texts and to have our fellows taught by people from different Christian traditions, such that they’re developing a love for the church at large.”

That’s also a priority for the parish.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is ask what it looks like for us to raise up leaders who can navigate cultural differences, who can help generate communion across difference, who can walk together with others with whom they might disagree on a number of issues, and yet nevertheless are rooted in the creed,” said Fr. Clint. “We’re joyfully orthodox, and we’re not showing up trying to be culture warriors; we’re trying to be fully orthodox and to cultivate a community that embodies what we might call the ‘cohering power of hope.’”