The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, one of the Episcopal Church’s leading thinkers around 21st century ministry and mission, will serve as chaplain for Chautauqua in Week Five.
She will preach at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title is “The Good Life,” and the scripture reading is Luke 10:38–42, the story of Jesus’ visit to the home of Mary and Martha.
Spellers will also preach at the 9:15 a.m. morning worship services Monday through Friday in the Amp. Her sermon topics include “Save the Best for Last,” “I Know What I’m Thirsting For,” “Now You’re the Light, “Come Together, Right Now” and “Drink This Cup.”
The author of The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community and Radical Welcome: Embracing God, the Other, and the Spirit of Transformation, Spellers will also have a book, Church Tomorrow?: What the ‘Nones’ and ‘Dones’ Teach Us about the Future of Faith, coming out in December 2025.
In this book, Spellers explores the questions and contradictions of a generation in regard to the role of faith in their lives. She traveled around the United States to talk with people who feel a yearning for spirituality but don’t know where to find it. She listened to them, and she engaged with them to collect whatever wisdom they had to share. She examines some pressing questions in the book: Why are they passing on church? What spiritual pathways are they seeking and creating? And most importantly, how could their insights help to shape the future of Christian community?
Spellers worked for nearly a decade as canon to the Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. She currently assists at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York.
Prior to her service with Curry, she directed mission and evangelism work at General Theological Seminary, and as a canon in the Diocese of Long Island, founded The Crossing, a groundbreaking emerging church within St. Paul’s Cathedral in Boston, and led numerous church-wide renewal efforts.
A native of Frankfort, Kentucky, and a graduate of both Episcopal Divinity School and Harvard Divinity School, she received an honorary doctorate from the General Theological Seminary in New York City in 2018.
