The Story on Pennswood Road
The parish that would become Church of the Redeemer was organized in 1851 by the Reverend Henry Brown, then rector of Old St. David's in Radnor. For its first thirty years the congregation, originally known as St. Luke, met in a building at the corner of Lancaster Avenue and Buck Lane. In 1860 the vestry bought the parcel on which the church still stands, "containing 9 1/4 acres at $150 an acre," and after the Civil War the property sat largely untouched until the rectory was built in 1872 at a cost of $12,700, set down in what was described as "a forest of trees."
Under the long tenure of the Reverend Edward L. Lycett, who became rector in 1856 and served for twenty-two years, the parish grew into something lasting. The present church was designed in the Gothic Revival style by the architect Charles M. Burns and was first used on Easter Sunday, 1881. The Parish House, also by Burns, followed in 1885; a choir room was added in 1891; two bays were added to the nave in 1912, increasing seating by a third; and the chapel was built in 1914. Throughout the sanctuary, memorial windows created by some of the most respected stained-glass studios of the era were installed between the 1880s and the 1920s, and most of them remain.
The present rector, the Reverend Peter T. Vanderveen, is the fifteenth to serve in that office. The fifteen rectors between Brown and Vanderveen include James Haughton (1887 to 1909), Ernest C. Earp (1929 to 1949), Timothy Pickering (1967 to 1988), and the Reverend Peter W. Sipple (2004 to 2009), under whom the parish undertook the renovation of the church in 2009. The Lycett name lives on at the parish: the Lycett Legacy Society, the parish's planned-giving recognition program, honors the third rector.
Among the names woven into the sanctuary is that of John Borland Thayer, a parishioner whose memorial plaque stands immediately behind the organ console. Thayer died in the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912; his wife and son survived, and his grave is in the churchyard. The inscription quotes Revelation: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
Three Sunday Mornings, and Evensong by Month
On most Sundays the parish offers two principal celebrations of the Holy Eucharist. The 8:00 a.m. service is Rite I, the more formal language of the Book of Common Prayer, without music, a meditative, spoken liturgy that the parish describes as "a simple yet grounded recitation of our faith."
At 9:30 a.m., the principal service, the liturgy is Rite II, sung by the choirs with full congregational participation. This service is broadcast live on the parish's livestream and on its YouTube channel. Once a month, on the last Sunday between September and May, the 9:30 liturgy becomes an abridged form of Choral Matins with Communion, "designed to give emphasis to beauty, prayerfulness, and the unique expression of the Psalms."
On the first Sunday of each month at 5:00 p.m. the parish offers a service of Choral Evensong sung by the adult choirs. One observer, quoted in the parish's own description, called Evensong "a fragment of the worship which is offered to God by Christian people every hour of the 24 in every part of the world." On the third Sunday of each month at 5:00 p.m., Evensong is sung by the Choristers, the parish's treble choir of children in grades four through seven. Both Evensong services are held between September and May.
For those who cannot be present in person, two short services of Compline are sung over Zoom each week: at 8:00 p.m. on Sundays and at 9:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Zoom link is posted to the parish calendar.
Children are welcome throughout worship. Children's Chapel is offered during the 9:30 a.m. service for children age three through third grade, who follow the cross after the Gospel for a lesson suited to them and return to the nave at the Peace. The Nursery, on the second floor of the Parish House, is open for children age three and younger from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m., and a children's bulletin is available from the ushers for older children following the service from the pews.
A Choir for Every Voice
Music has been central to Redeemer since the first choirs sang in the new sanctuary in 1881, and the parish today maintains one of the larger voluntary choral programs in the region. Six choirs rehearse and sing each week: the Choristers (grades four through seven), the Cherub Choir for younger children, a Youth Choir, the Chancel Choir, the Redeemer Choir, and a section of professional staff singers led by the Director of Music, Andrew Senn.
Senn came to the parish from First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, where he had been Director of Music for seventeen years. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, he was an assistant organist at the Wanamaker Organ, an organ and choral scholar at Truro Cathedral in Cornwall under Andrew Nethsingha, and a finalist in improvisation at the 2013 Luxembourg International Organ Competition. He has been a recitalist at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and St. Thomas Church in New York, and elsewhere in the United States and Europe. His recordings have been released on the ProOrgano label. Senn's husband, Edward Landin Senn, directs the Cherub Choir and serves as associate organist at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church; their twins Arabella and Anthony have grown up inside the music program.
The parish's two current Michael Stairs Organ Scholars, Ted Babbitt and Daniel Colaner, are graduate students at the Curtis Institute of Music studying with Alan Morrison. Babbitt joined the staff in the fall of 2026 after earning a Bachelor of Music Education from Mercer University; Colaner, a Wanamaker Assistant Grand Court Organist at Macy's Center City, came to attention at twelve years old with same-day performances at Carnegie Hall and St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Beyond the Sunday services, the choirs tour regularly. The Redeemer Choir sang at Canterbury Cathedral in 2025, and the parish youth group has traveled on mission work trips from Navajoland to Asheville in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Choral scholarships are available through the Margaret Orr Memorial Choral Scholarship Fund, established by the Orr family in memory of their daughter Margaret, who grew up singing in the parish choirs and was killed in an automobile accident in 2012. The fund supports children who wish to take part in choir tours, music camps, and other musical outreach.
Forming Faith from the Cradle
Christian formation at Redeemer is organized around what the parish calls the Arc of Formation, a set of age-specific milestones spanning age three through twelfth grade. In place of benchmarks or grades, the Arc offers a series of "touchstones or path-markers" intended to help families track a child's growing faith over years rather than semesters. Each age level has its own written Arc, and a master calendar lists lessons and activities by season.
The Nursery, in Room 202 on the second floor of the Parish House, welcomes infants through age three between 9:15 and 11:45 a.m. After the 9:30 service, Church School gathers children in age-appropriate groups for a combined opening and then breaks them into classes: a Montessori-based preschool class for three-year-olds through kindergarten, a Godly Play class for grades one through three, an Upper Elementary class for grades four and five, and a Middle School class for grades six and seven. Older children serve as acolytes, choristers, vergers, and lectors; high school youth are invited into the Confirmation cohort, which meets on Sunday mornings between 10:45 and 11:30 a.m. and uses a curriculum adapted from Confirm not Conform.
For adults, a Sunday morning Speaker Series meets at 10:45 a.m. in the Pembroke Room of the Parish House. Recent series have included programs on ecology and sacred spaces, with speakers from Laurel Hill, Mural Arts Philadelphia, Haverford College Arboretum, and the John B. Ward arboriculture firm, and a multi-week series called Faith Under Fire: the Art of Defiance, examining the work of artists who have supported people of diverse faith traditions under pressure. On Thursday mornings at 7:30 a.m. a Men's Bible Study gathers in the Pembroke Room and on Zoom to read Paul's first letter to the Corinthians over breakfast; a parallel Youth Bible Breakfast for high schoolers meets at 7:15 a.m. in the Raymond Library. On Thursday afternoons at noon, Women Exploring Scripture gathers over Zoom and in the Raymond Library to work through the Acts of the Apostles. On Tuesday mornings at 7 a.m., the Gathering of Men meets for fellowship and open-ended conversation in the Parish House Conference Room.
Foyer Groups, small gatherings of eight to ten parishioners who meet over a meal three or four times a year, are the parish's most consistent tool for knitting newcomers into the life of the community. The Newcomers, Engagement, and Welcoming Committee pairs greeters at the door with a Newcomer Committee member stationed at the exit of the 9:30 service to answer questions.
Stained Glass, Fieldstone, and a Reborn Parish House
The church is a single-volume Gothic Revival building clad in Pennsylvania fieldstone, with a crenellated bell tower, a west rose window, a porte cochere, and intricately carved gargoyles worked into the masonry. The interior was completely renovated and redesigned in 2009. The stained glass, much of it from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was produced by some of the most accomplished Anglo-American studios of the period: Heaton, Butler and Bayne of London; Tiffany Studios of New York; the Mayer firm of Munich and New York; and the C.E. Kempe studio. The windows illustrate the themes of Jesus' ministry, including the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the Baptism of Our Lord, the Calling of Matthew, the Great Commission, and the Ascension, together with the themes of Epiphany. Several are memorials to members of the Ewing, Curwen, Miles, Rawle, Henszey, Hutchinson, and Cassatt families; one, the Education of the Virgin, memorializes Katherine Kelso Johnston, the niece of the painter Mary Cassatt.
The Parish House was originally built in 1885, also to Charles M. Burns's design. In 1958 it nearly doubled in size with a classroom and office addition. In 2020 and 2021, the 1950s addition was demolished and replaced; the original 1885 building was fully renovated to state-of-the-art standards; and the whole complex, Burns Hall, Masterman Hall, the Pembroke Room, the Raymond Library, the Hospitality Suite, a commercial-grade kitchen certified by the Montgomery County Board of Health, and a suite of classrooms, was reopened in 2021. The completed project received a Grand Jury Award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.
The parish churchyard and Memorial Garden occupy a full residential block of the eleven-acre campus. Burial plots, sixteen feet square and divided into eight graves, are available for full burials and cremations. The Memorial Garden provides slate-covered spaces for two or four cremated interments each. The Flower Guild, whose teams arrange the altar flowers each Sunday, is composed of parishioners active in local garden clubs; many are award-winning arrangers. Members of the Needlepoint Guild, working with the head of the Needlework Guild at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, are producing handcrafted cushions for the new Communion rail.
Beyond the Churchyard: Community Connections
The parish's outreach is organized through the Community Connections Program, a structure that pairs financial grants from the parish with hands-on volunteer relationships between parishioners and partner organizations across the region. The Community Support Committee awards grants each year to 501(c)(3) organizations working to improve the lives of those living in poverty, primarily within the Diocese of Pennsylvania. The November 2025 Christmas Village, the parish's long-running annual fundraiser, contributed the largest share of the year's grant pool; the vestry added funds from the operating budget to bring the total to roughly $73,000.
The Community Connections Committee, chaired by Barbara Billings, maintains an open menu of volunteer placements for parishioners willing to give time on a weekly, monthly, or one-time basis. Redeemer hosts Family Promise Montco PA, formerly the Interfaith Hospitality Network, four times a year, providing meals, supplies, and cards of encouragement to families experiencing homelessness. The Merry Meals program at Christmas invites Redeemer families to fill grocery bags for local families in need through partner agencies including ElderNet and St. Barnabas Mission.
Parishioners volunteer with Episcopal Community Services, the official outreach arm of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, which runs more than thirty programs in the Philadelphia area. Regular placements include the Community Cook-Off at St. Barnabas Mission, the Afterschool Tutor program in West Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and Darby, and the Community Food Cupboard. Other long-standing partnerships include the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia, where volunteers help in the clothes closet and the cafe; Darby Mission, where Redeemer prepares and serves "Darby Dinners" on the first and third Tuesdays of the month; ElderNet of Lower Merion and Narberth, which provides rides, errands, and visits to older and disabled adults; Meals on Wheels; St. Gabriel's Mission Lunch Program, served by Redeemer teams on the fourth Saturday of each month; St. James School; Episcopal Legal Aid; and the Diocese of Pennsylvania City Camps. The parish also participates in the annual ECS School Supply Drive and helps to fund a diocesan Speed Networking panel for the ECS RISE workforce-development program.
Walking Alongside One Another
The Pastoral Care Ministry, coordinated by the Reverend Jo Ann B. Jones, brings clergy and trained lay caregivers into the lives of parishioners across the parish. The clergy are available for counsel and guidance in emergencies and in ordinary circumstances and are willing to meet parishioners at the church offices, in coffee shops, at home, or at hospital bedsides. The Lay Pastoral Care Visitation Team is composed of parishioners who have taken pastoral-caregiving training and discerned a call to this ministry; some visit a single person regularly through the year, others visit on an episodic basis, and the team gathers monthly in the Parish House for prayer, fellowship, and theological reflection.
Eucharistic Visitors take consecrated bread and wine from the Sunday Eucharist to parishioners unable to attend church, typically visiting one or two homebound parishioners every four to six weeks. Lay Healing Ministers are available in the chapel during the administration of Communion at the 9:30 a.m. service to offer prayers and the laying on of hands to individuals and families. The Meals Ministry provides meals to parishioners recovering from medical circumstances when food preparation is impossible.
A Prayer Request form accepts the names of those to be added to the parish prayer list; first names may be added at any time, and full names are added only with the permission of the person or their family. Names typically remain on the prayer list for a month unless otherwise indicated.
Joining, Giving, and the Lycett Legacy
No formal act of membership is required to worship at Redeemer, attend classes, receive Communion, or support the ministries of the parish; all persons, adults and children, are welcome to receive Communion at any service. Becoming a member is offered in several ways, depending on background. Episcopalians from another congregation can transfer their letters; members of other Christian denominations can be enrolled as baptized members; the unbaptized may arrange for baptism at one of the four feast days specified by the Book of Common Prayer: the Baptism of Our Lord, the Easter Vigil, Pentecost, and All Saints' Day. Adults and youth in eighth grade or above may prepare for Confirmation or Reception, which takes place at the bishop's visitation.
Member Access, the parish's online database, gives members 24-hour access to their own records, the church directory, event registration, and giving. It integrates with the Church Life mobile app, available free from the Apple App Store and Google Play. Newcomers may also fill out a pew card at any service or complete the online newcomer form.
The annual operating and outreach budget of the parish is supported primarily by pledges from parishioner households; in 2025, an annual budget of approximately two million dollars was met by pledges of about $3,433 per pledging family on average, supplemented by roughly $1,693 from the endowment and about $656 from other sources. Pledges and one-time gifts may be made online, by text to 73256, through Venmo at @TheRedeemer, through PayPal, by check, or by gifts of appreciated stock. Taxpayers aged seventy-two and older may direct distributions from their IRAs through the IRA Charitable Rollover. The Lycett Legacy Society recognizes parishioners who have named the parish as a beneficiary in their estate planning; between 2007 and the present, Redeemer has received more than $734,000 from Lycett Society members or their estates, including a recent one-million-dollar charitable remainder trust pledge.
The People Who Make It All Happen
The Reverend Peter T. Vanderveen, the fifteenth rector, has served the parish since 2009. A graduate of Calvin College in Michigan and Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, he came to Redeemer from St. Ann's Church in Old Lyme, Connecticut, where he had been rector for fourteen years. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Episcopal Church at Yale and is an instructor in philosophical theology for the Ministry Exploration and Education Program; at the national level, he is a reader for the General Board of Examining Chaplains.
The Reverend Jo Ann B. Jones has served as Associate Rector since her ordination in 2017. A former attorney, she was General Counsel to the Philadelphia Housing and District of Columbia Housing Authorities, Assistant General Counsel for Drexel University, and Deputy Director of the Office of Housing and Community Development in the Nutter Administration. She was a longstanding member of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas before pursuing ordination in the Diocese of Pennsylvania and earning her M.Div. from the General Theological Seminary.
The program staff includes Andrew Senn as Director of Music; Glenn Beamer as Director of Children's Ministries; Rebecca Northington as Director of Youth Ministries; Ken Garner as Director of Communications and Stewardship; Joshua Castano as Parish Administrator; Roseann Christian as Office Coordinator; Debbie DeBenedictis as Finance Manager; Bob Mikrut as Head Verger and a Fellow of the Vergers Guild of the Episcopal Church; Paulo Reyes as Sexton; and Lano Adeniyi as Social Media Intern. The two Michael Stairs Organ Scholars are Ted Babbitt and Daniel Colaner; Edward Landin Senn directs the Cherub Choir.
The parish's work is sustained by more than fifty lay volunteers serving on committees and ministries: Altar Guild, Flower Guild, Greeters, Ushers, Lectors and Intercessors, Eucharistic Ministers, Acolytes, Vergers and Junior Vergers, Needlepoint Guild, the Newcomers, Engagement and Welcoming Committee, the Pastoral Care Visitation Team, Eucharistic Visitors, Lay Healing Ministers, the Meals Ministry, the Community Connections Committee, the Community Support Committee, the Stewardship Committee, the Finance Committee, the Music Committee, the Family Promise Montco PA team, the Churchyard Committee, the Technology Committee, and others. The vestry, elected in rotating classes, works with the rector and wardens, Charlie Merwin as Rector's Warden and Eric Rabe as Accounting Warden, to govern the parish.
The church building is open every day from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. for those who wish to step inside for a time of prayer. The Parish Offices are open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with summer hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The clergy may be reached at any time through the after-hours number, 610-526-0487.