About
Grace Episcopal Church is an inclusive church. All are welcome! When you come to a Sunday service at Grace, you can expect a warm welcome from the ushers who will give you a bulletin containing announcements and the scripture readings for the day. The liturgy program is displayed on two screens at the front.
Sunday services are always services of Holy Communion. We use the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) for most of our services, as a symbol of our unity and connection with other Episcopal and Anglican churches. In this way, we feel at home in any Episcopal church anywhere in the country.
The BCP contains two "rites." Rite I is the older of the two and uses the language of "thee" and "thou." Our Rite I service is at 8:00 a.m. and is a "said" service, meaning there is no singing.
Rite II uses more contemporary language and has a variety of forms for the Eucharistic Prayer and the Prayers of the People. The Rite II service is at 10:00 a.m. and is a "sung" service, meaning we sing parts of the liturgy and have music and hymns at this service.
We have no specific "dress code" for worship - come as you are!
Grace Episcopal Church, Fairfield, is a parish within The Episcopal Church and The Episcopal Diocese of Northern California. We are an affirming, inclusive church, welcoming all. The Episcopal Church is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. We are guided by Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.
From The Episcopal Church website: We Episcopalians believe in a loving, liberating, and life-giving God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As constituent members of the Anglican Communion in the United States, we are descendants of and partners with the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church, and are part of the third largest group of Christians in the world.
We believe in following the teachings of Jesus Christ, whose life, death, and resurrection saved the world. We affirm our faith through the words of the Nicene and Apostolic Creeds.
We have a legacy of inclusion, aspiring to tell and exemplify God’s love for every human being; women and men serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church. Laypeople and clergy cooperate as leaders at all levels of our church. Leadership is a gift from God, and can be expressed by all people in our church, regardless of sexual identity or orientation.
We believe that God loves you – no exceptions.
Grace invita a todos a disfrutar y participar en el amor de Dios por nuestra comunidad aprendiendo, sirviendo y mejorando.
Grace Episcopal Church believes that
as children of God, we are all ministers,
all of the time.
Ministry is all that goes on among the people of Grace Church, whether it happens formally or informally. The Church gives us a setting for finding opportunities to develop our ministry as an open, caring, Christian community, so that we might celebrate God's love in ourselves and others.
Some of us assist during worship services as acolytes, lectors, eucharistic ministers, ushers, greeters, and altar guild. Some of us sing in the choir or play music during worship services. Some of us host the coffee hour after services, and others organize skating parties, ski trips, picnics, and special dinners.
Some of us teach in Sunday school; some are called to form small groups to explore our faith; some to support community outreach efforts, where we serve God's people in various ways. These activities are not separate but are all expressions of the same ministry, that of serving God through serving the church and the community. We have identified some general areas of ministry that bind us together in parish life:
- Outreach - support for local, national, and international organizations and reaching out in Jesus' name
- Children and Young People - Sunday School classes for children of all ages and childcare provision during services
- Adult Education - adult Bible Study, formation classes, book groups and reflection groups
- Fellowship - organizing parties, outings, dinners and luncheons, field trips, picnics, and holiday programs
- Stewardship - planned long-term financial giving & pledging; gifts of time and effort in support of parish activities and outreach
- Buildings and Grounds - care and maintenance of the church and our campus grounds
- Worship - service as acolytes, eucharistic ministers, and lectors, and planning worship programs to explore the many avenues of faith
- Administration - maintaining the business of the church with office staff and facillitating the use of the building by visiting groups
Join us in our mission as we proclaim God's love and Christ's redeeming reign!
On the last Sunday of April in 1867, a small gathering of Episcopalians met at the Methodist House of Worship in Suisun City, with the Reverend Mr. H.G. Perry of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Benicia as the celebrant.
They continued to meet, using supply priests from Saint Paul's and other churches. In July of 1867, the parishioners incorporated the Parish of Grace Episcopal Church in Suisun City.
Suisun City was by then a bustling commerce center, where Suisun Valley farmers and ranchers brought their produce and livestock for transport down the Slough, through the Carquinez Straits at Martinez, and out to the San Francisco Bay and the world beyond. Fairfield, a growing community and the county seat, waited until 1903 to incorporate as a city.
By all accounts, Grace Church prospered in those early years, able in 1870 to acquire the church building from their friends the Methodists. By 1888 Grace Parish had grown to the point of buying a lot on Main Street in Suisun City, where they built a new church, a wooden frame structure of native redwood, which was the fashion during that period in northern California. That building still stands, belonging now to the First Church of Christ, Scientist, at the corner of Morgan and Main Streets in downtown Suisun.
Grace Parish stayed in the church it built in 1888 until December of 1954, when the congregation moved to new facilities built at the corner of Kentucky and First Streets in Fairfield. Major renovations throughout the 1960's and 1970's have turned the original modest, flat-roofed structure into its current functional layout of nave and sanctuary, chapel, offices, classrooms, and meeting rooms, with a landscaped courtyard in the center of the compound.
-excerpted from A History of Grace Episcopal Church, 1867 - 2002, by Warren C. Sheldon
