Honeybrook, Pennsylvania

St. Mark's Episcopal Church

Denomination: Episcopal

Organ: Beautiful Small Well-Regulated Pipe Organ

Last Service: First Sunday of Christmas (December 29th, 2024) December 29th, 2024

Presider: Rev. Marcia Wilkinson / Multiple Interims / Rev. Fr. Kim Guiser

St. Mark's, Honeybrook, Pennsylvania

There are secret places in the world. St. Mark's Honeybrook is one of them. A small, very small building in the far distance country of Philadelphia, of West Chester, - not suburb but country - up on the top of a hill in the middle of farm lands. Rev. Marcia Wilkinson was a friend of mine from my days at St. Andrew's. She was a member at St. Andrew's when I first started there and helped me with some services at St. Andrew's before she received the call to St. Mark's. Her organist, sadly, was not well and she needed a long term substitute. Sure, I'd do it. I drove out to St. Mark's. It was a drive! Not a big church but still very impressive standing up on the hill as you rounded a bend in the road. St. Mark's didn't have the facilities of the other churches for whom I had worked - there was a sanctuary upstairs and then downstairs was a parish hall. St. Mark's was built into that hill on which it stood. Even though one walked into the santuary from the ground floor parking area, technically it was the top floor.

St. Mark's might have been small, but it was one of the most beautiful Sanctuaries I had worked in. It reminded me very much of my early days working at the Memorial Chapel. And the had a wonderful, little pipe organ that was clear and bright. They had just had it reconditioned a few years before my arrival. It was only five ranks and just had basic foundational stops but, boy, O, boy, could it sing when it's keys were pressed. St. Mark's also had just a small handful of choristers - at most just six. Even though they were not many, they were very interested in music and trying their best to sing a traditional Episcopal service.

Rev. Wilkinson retired during my time at St. Mark's. The organist never came back. I told the congregation that I would stay until they found a new priest (I'd been through this exercise before). Also, it never truly felt like my post as I was always there under the auspices of filling in for someone else. So, after they found Fr. Guiser, I, too had also found a new post but I often wonder what could have been.