Founding

St. Timothy's Episcopal Church was founded as a Lenten project in May 1952 by the Moffett Field Air Chaplain, the Rev. Charles W. Adams. Rev. Adams began holding services for ten Episcopal families in the Mountain View American Legion Hall and later the Woman's Club.

On April 19, 1953, the fledgling group was formally organized as a new Mission of the Diocese of California under the supervision of the Rev. Canon E. E. West, Rector of St. Mark's Palo Alto. In the fall of 1954, the Rt. Rev. Karl Morgan Block, Bishop of the Diocese of California, announced the purchase of a 1.5 acre site, later enlarged to 2.5 acres, for the new Mission. The site was one of the historically prominent farms in the South Bay, and is marked by a magnificent 450 year old California live oak. The 50 year old Bubb farmhouse on the property served as combination church, Sunday School, parish hall and, later, vicarage.

Dwight Edwards: 1955 to 1973

Dwight W. Edwards began serving St. Timothy's while still a seminarian. Shortly after being ordained deacon, Dwight became St. Timothy's full-time vicar on July 19, 1955. He was ordained to the priesthood in time to celebrate Christmas Eve Eucharist for the congregation.

Dwight guided the church's growth and expansion. The Bubb farmhouse that served him as Vicarage became a practice burn for the Mountain View Fire Department when the house was deliberately razed to make space for the parish hall/church. The parish hall and guild hall were dedicated in 1956 by Bishop Block. The parish hall, now Edwards Hall, served as church on Sundays, as dining room for parish functions, and as theater for various productions. A group of strong-backed men was always on hand to move the pews in and out as the occasion demanded. As one longtime parishioner said, "I thought we had finished with these pews when we sent them from St. Peter's Redwood City, to that poor, new mission in Mountain View, and here I am moving them again!"

As the county was growing, so was St. Timothy's. Sunday School was enormous. The courtyard was filled with students on registration Sunday. The Preschool was added in 1961. At the Diocesan Convention in 1963, St. Timothy's was presented as being ready to move from mission status to the rank of full parish. We were incorporated and Dwight became our first Rector.

Dwight continued to aid us in our growth, both physically and spiritually. The outstanding "event" of 1963 was his wedding to Miriam Wallin - held at the local Presbyterian Church because 700 people attended! St. Timothy's parish, with the rest of the country, agonized through the Civil Rights Movement (Dwight marched in Selma), and the Vietnam War (one of the first local young men to die was from St. Timothy's). We grew and suffered with the country when the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. were shot.

The last great building effort was the church - dedicated in September 1970 with great pomp and circumstance and joy and celebration. When Fr. Edwards returned from his 1972 sabbatical, the Bishop suggested that after 18 years, it was time to move on. With sorrow and joy, Dwight and Miriam left for St. Mary's-by-the-Sea, Pacific Grove in 1973.

Ralph Jeffs: 1974 to 1992

The Search for a new rector took almost a year, and in February 1974 The Rev. Ralph W. Jeffs and his wonderful wife, Martha, joined the Family. Ralph brought with him 20 years of experience in parish work as college chaplain. Ralph added additional emphasis to a ministry of witness, outreach, and service to the community. The parish settled in to continue life with our second Rector, and took advantage of parishioner talent to landscape, repair and maintain both the old and new buildings. We grew and took our place in Mission to the community and the world. Ralph also put a strong emphasis on programs of adult education.

Ralph recognized that with our growth as a parish, we needed to change our ministry leadership model from that of a pastoral church with the Rector and Vestry at the center of all activities to becoming a program-centered church with empowered lay ministers leading various program units. He began a process of developing lay leadership. With his great teaching ability, Ralph used Bible classes and fine sermons to enable parishioners to recognize and respond to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of these efforts was an enriched Sunday School, an enlarged music program and a deeper commitment to outreach and our responsibilities as members of the Episcopal Family.

Good stewardship and concentrated fundraising enabled St. Timothy's to pay off the mortgage (1980) and refurbish the buildings. Furnishing of the church was completed. The parish hall was redecorated and all the buildings were given a fresh coat of paint. A special fund raiser enabled the renovation of the church interior (1983-84).

In 1984, Ralph brought in Bishop Jack Wyatt to lead the Vestry in a retreat workshop focused on a self evaluation of our ministry. We were introduced to the concepts in Arlin Rothauge's book Sizing Up a Congregation for New Member Ministry. We began the process of moving from a pastoral organization model to the model for a program church. We instituted a commission system with lay leadership of each commission and Vestry membership on each commission to provide coordination across ministries. We published a guide to St. Timothy's, "St. Timothy's from A to Z" to inform our members of the over 30 ministries within the parish. In 1987, the property west of the church was purchased by a medical partnership and St. Timothy's entered into an agreement to share part of our parking lot with them on weekdays in exchange for their paying for repaving the lot, adding additional landscaping, and maintaining the pavement, landscaping and lighting. The curb-appeal of our facilities was greatly enhanced by this new partnership.

As we finished the parking lot renovation, the Worship Commission requested the Vestry look into replacing the electronic Wicks organ in the church. After prayerful consideration and parish-wide meetings for discussion, the decision was made to upgrade to a Schoenstein pipe organ. A special appeal to the parish provided the necessary funds. Despite the discovery during the permitting process of the need for a significant seismic upgrade to the church to support the organ, the project was completed in 1988.

Soon after our annual meeting in February, 1992, Ralph Jeffs announced his plan to retire after 19 years as our Rector. On June 15, The Rev. Richard B. Ford became our Interim Priest and we began our search for our third Rector. During the interim period, lay leadership rose up to fill the gap left by Ralph's retirement and by Tina Sundquist's resignation as Assistant Rector. Our staff was further depleted when our music director and organist, Steve Gillenwaters, fell ill and died in early 1993.

Kevin Phillips: 1993 to 2006

During the Search, we took a close look at ourselves and where we wanted to go. We recognized that we were not getting the influx of new, young families needed to keep our parish diverse and vibrant. Our parish was healthy, but we needed an infusion of youthful exuberance. After a year-long search, the Vestry called The Rev. Kevin A. Phillips to be our third Rector.

In September 1993, Kevin, Holly and their six-month old daughter Claire moved from Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington Kentucky to the Bay Area. Kevin came with ten years of ministry experience and three years experience as a priest. Kevin's stated ministry goal was "to challenge people to engage the faithfulness of God that day by day they may be touched by transforming love so that they may touch others."

Kevin's first focus was to further develop the lay leadership so that together we could embrace the challenges that our unique position in Silicon Valley gave us. His first challenge for us was to embrace the ancient covenant of grace first made between God and Abram (Genesis 12), to accept and acknowledge God's blessing of our community and to share that blessing with the world.

Kevin taught us about spiritual development going through three stages - the purgative stage, where we remove the barriers between ourselves and God, the illuminative stage where we study the history of God's interaction with people and strive to discern his will, and the unitive stage where we become one with God and pursue his purpose in the world. Kevin was surprised that an analytical reading of the Word was not more a part of our community, particularly when we had so many engineers and physicists in the congregation. To rectify this and begin our development, Kevin began a program to prepare lay leaders to teach the Bible. He raised money for the teaching manuals for the Making Disciples Through Bible Study course. He decided to personally teach two sessions, each meeting one night each week for an entire year, a huge commitment for a new father with a baby at home. We soon learned that Kevin is a very gifted teacher, and the opportunity to study with him was a real blessing. During the class we not only learned much more about the Bible, but also became aware of the motion of the Holy Spirit in our own lives and saw God's role for us in His plan. The course was transformational.

Kevin's intent in this Bible Study was to make disciples who could carry the Word to the rest of the congregation. He was successful. Pat Greene, Joanna Shreve and Bill Shreve led the next round of Disciples classes, and Kevin launched two other classes, Divine Drama and Crossways for those who were deterred from Bible study by the full-year commitment to Making Disciples.

Later, after Cristopher Robinson joined us, Kevin launched the Bethel Series Book classes that are still going on today. Here, selected leaders received two years of intensive training including exams before they became certified instructors. Classes in The Book led by these lay disciples are still an integral part of our community.

Bible study was beginning the process of development of lay leaders, so he moved on to building our sense of community and interconnectedness. Kevin invited Ann Sullivan to join us, and Ann brought forward the idea of small group ministry through Covenant Groups. Kevin and Ann organized a class to train covenant group leaders and seven Covenant Groups were launched in 1994. The covenant groups have been a way for us to pull together more closely as a community and also a way to introduce new comers to St. Timothy's in a manner that is less threatening than an invitation to attend church. Covenant Groups continue as a means to build community and provide mutual support at St. Timothy's.

At this point, Kevin's ideas for new mission and accelerated spiritual development were coming faster than the parish could assimilate them. We needed a plan. Kevin recruited Roger Barney to lead us in a strategic planning exercise in June 1994. This was our first engagement with Kevin as visionary leader. Together we began planning our future as a parish. This first planning exercise led to our mission statement, a multi-year plan, and a set of strategic goals. Strategic planning evolved to a more formalized structure adopted from the Percept Group which we called Revisioning. We are beginning our third Revisioning planning cycle this year. The Strategic Planning Committee meets monthly to keep the planning process alive and to insure our Revisioning documents do not get filed away and forgotten.

We lost one of our long-time leaders and spiritual role-models when Pat Sammel died. The parish and her husband Ed did not want her to be forgotten, so in her memory, Ed built the beautiful memorial garden with a columbarium that we have next to the sanctuary. We still miss Pat, but her spirit lives on here at St. Timothy's.

Kevin understood that the traditional Episcopal services were sometimes difficult to access for newcomers and particularly for some young adults. Kevin really wanted to reach out to this group, so he recruited Peter Sammel, a long-time parishioner who was also a musician, to work with him on creating a 5:00 Contemporary Service. This style of worship was successful and grew. In 1999, we began remodeling the sanctuary to create more adaptable space for new worship formats. At the same time, we planned an ambitious site renovation plan to meet the requirements for a greatly expanded church as we entered the 21st century. The first phase of renovation was completed, but the new building plan was shelved as money dried up after the dot-com bust. We have a modern sound system and multimedia projection system to expand the ways we can celebrate God's presence among us.

As our parish grew and we added more young families, Kevin recognized problems with the traditional 8:00 and 10:00 services. The Rev. Noel Higgitt and Kevin developed a new service to meet the needs of children, and the Rev. Mary Blessing was called upon to help build a new model for family ministry. The result of that partnership was the addition of a 9:00 family service where children are an integral part of the worship, with Sunday School, now Godly Play, integrated into the worship schedule.

Younger families also created the need for full-time youth ministry. Through special donations from parishioners, we were able to hire Kathy Castleton in September 1996. Kathy's mission was to empower youth through their participation in our covenant community. Kathy built up a youth ministry team of mentors and expanded the number of youth in the program dramatically. This ministry continues today under Jonathan Stube.

Pastoral care is an area traditionally dominated by priests, but with the demands of a larger congregation, the laity were called upon to take a more active role. Judy Bailey was already coordinating a team of volunteers to help out with special needs of parishioners. Mary introduced a group of us to the Stephen Ministry program through an introductory session in San Rafael. After that, Judy and Susan Slakey spent a week in Seattle being trained as Stephen Ministry leaders, and the program was launched the next year. With the addition of Gwen Bindon and Sue Ellen Johnson, we now have four Stephen Ministry leaders and they have trained over 20 Stephen Ministers.

In 2000 we were able to hire the Rev. Maly Adams as Priest Executive to supplement our parish clergy team. Maly's gift of administration filled a big gap on the St. Timothy's staff. Together Kevin and Maly built a staff around the same model Kevin used in the larger community. They held weekly staff meetings that resemble covenant group meetings where new ideas for St. Timothy's future were given their first expression and review. Whether we were looking at new liturgical forms or more efficient use of our facilities, the staff helped filter new concepts and adjust them to fit our parish.

Kevin saw the opportunity to reach into the business community with support and the spiritual side of leadership development when he met The Rev. John Huntington and Jim Thomas, a seminarian. Together they formed the Business Leadership Spirituality Network. John started leading Leadership Formation Groups. As the activity grew, Jim Thomas, now ordained, was hired to be CEO and help build the network. Through this structure, business leaders in Mountain View and Boston have benefited from this unique venue for building leadership skills in a Christian context.

Kevin and Maly have skillfully identified lay leaders' gifts and challenged us to use those gifts on new ministries for evangelism and the furthering of our community. Many ministries resulted from these challenges. Julie Nelson, David Foster, David Mintz and others organized men's and women's retreats. A team of leaders led by Anne Wilde created a program of adult education and spiritual development. We conducted the Alpha dinners to give people the opportunity to discuss basic faith issues in a non-threatening setting. Donna Fuzere organized the Silver Fox program for seniors to get together for fun and fellowship. The Nomies met around the needs of young singles in the community.

In December 2005, Kevin announced that he had accepted a call to become the Rector of St. David's Episcopal Church in Ashburn, Virginia. He left us a lasting gift of empowered leadership. In these past 12 years we have sponsored 5 new seminarians - Cristopher Robinson, Garrett Mettler, Kate Wilson, Julie Nelson, Laurel Johnston - and two have become priests already. In addition to new priests, we have raised up a long list of lay leaders over the past 12 years. This is the legacy we will carry forward as we continue to spread the Good News.

The Vestry was saddened to learn of Kevin's new call, but after much discussion, prayer, and a wide range of emotional responses, we saw clearly that God is calling Kevin, Holly, Claire and Jonathan to be agents of change in Virginia. We celebrated our shared ministry over the past twelve years, and now we are ready to move on.

We are entering the next stage of our journey as a parish toward the unitive goal that Kevin laid before us 12 years ago. We strive to be one with Christ and to spread the Gospel. We are moving on with a strong group of lay leaders as well as a skilled and experienced staff under Maly's stellar leadership. We are called to reach out to our broader community with God's love as we work to discern who God has prepared to be our fourth Rector.