Getting involved with God isn’t something you can do alone. A life of prayer and meaning embraces others who long, like you, to find the place where all the beauty comes from. We welcome you to worship with us Sunday mornings at 8 or 10 o’clock. Explore an Alpha Course or a monthly book club. Check out our programs for kids, for students, and for the treasures among us who sing Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It and remember where they were when news came that FDR was dead of a stroke in Sulphur Springs. Help others through one of our many outreach programs. We work hard to help you find your way, and to make St Stephen’s “loose around the edges and solid at the core.”
The Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth, Jr. was called as Rector of St Stephen’s Church in 2016. The son of Akiko Tamaoki & Bud Ellsworth, Fr Ellsworth holds degrees from Wheaton College and Yale University, with concentrations in religion and literature, biblical languages, and historical theology. Sometime Associate Rector of St Francis Church in Potomac, Maryland, and St Bartholomew’s Church in the City of New York, he and Victoria have four children and two grandchildren. He enjoys working with terrific colleagues (including the Most Rev’d Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, pictured here), reading, collecting illuminated manuscript leaves, owning a share of the Green Bay Packers, and hiking next to the woman he gets through the nights with and enters every new day beside.
Contact the Rector by calling 415-435-4501 or use this form to email him.
The Rev’d Alberta Brown Buller is our Deacon. She has a passion to bring the ministry of the Church to the needs of the community, and so works part time as a Chaplain at Marin General Hospital. Deacon Alberta is also on the clergy staff of our mother church, Christ Church, Sausalito. She serves each parish liturgically on alternate Sundays, and she engages in joint ministries common to our two parishes between those times. She and her husband Dave live amongst the redwood trees in West Marin. Originally from Connecticut, Alberta grew up attending St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Britain. She and Dave love spending time with their blended family of five adult children and six grandchildren, traveling the world, photography, and being near the ocean.
deacon.alberta@ststephenschurch.org
415-435-4501 ext. 16
David Hirsch is our Director of Family Ministry. He has worked in Student and Family Ministry for fifteen years with four churches and with a national youth conference para-church ministry, Youth Conference Ministries, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He has also worked in the entrepreneurial support space as well as beginning a ministry to youth workers called Haven. He works from a relational model emphasizing relationship-building between people and Christ. David is married to his lovely wife Anna. They have two energetic, curious and determined little girls. He enjoys music (he plays a mean guitar, and sings), movies, the outdoors, good food, travel, family, and community. He wonders if you believe any of this because stuff on the internet isn’t true just because it’s there.
david@ststephenschurch.org
415-435-4501 ext. 12
The real skipper of the clergy team, Assisting Priest, the Rev'd Richard Schaper, CFP, was sometime Gift Planning Officer of the Diocese of California. A member of St Stephen's Parish, his life as a Benedictine monk, hospital chaplain, parish pastor, and Certified Financial Planner has prepared him to offer a pastoral and spiritual perspective in financial and estate planning. In assisting donors, his primary allegiance is to the well-being and intentions of the giver. After study at Colgate University, Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar—he won’t tell you this, but the Rector will), the University of Chicago, and Yale University, Richard completed courses at Golden Gate University and the University of San Francisco in financial planning and fundraising. His wife, the Rev'd Anita Ostrom, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist. They make their home in Mill Valley. Richard comes from a seafaring family and enjoys sailing and fishing.
In nearly thirty years as a church musician, our Organist and Choirmaster John Karl Hirten has served Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York City, St James Cathedral, Brooklyn, Old St Mary’s, San Francisco, and now, for more than twenty years, at St Stephen’s, Belvedere. John has also been Organist at Fordham University Chapel, Temple Beth Israel Judea, San Francisco, and he’s been an Adjunct Faculty Member of Golden Gate Baptist Seminary, Mill Valley. His varied background in church music has earned him the description “an ecumenical wonder” (GIA Quarterly). A highly regarded composer, he has published over thirty compositions, including a symphonic composition for the Mill Valley Philharmonic. For more information on John's compositions, and his other professional work, see his website hirten.com.
johnkhirten@ststephenschurch.org
415-435-4501 ext. 17
Elizabeth Gravely, Office Manager and Executive Assistant to the Rector, is on the Board of the University of California Marin Master Gardeners. Formerly the Executive Assistant to the CEO of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., of Arlington, Virginia, she was also a registered sales assistant there. After earning a BS in Business / Finance from Virginia Commonwealth University, she worked in real estate sales and with a Washington, DC full brokerage firm. She lives in Larkspur with her husband and their Australian shepherd, Miles. A member of the San Francisco Road Runners, Elizabeth has run 18 half-marathons and 9 marathons, including the Marine Corps, New York City, Sacramento, Boston, Big Sur, Napa, DC, San Francisco, the Double Dipsea, and the Angel Island half numerous times. She runs the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays from 10a to 4:00p.
elizabeth@ststephenschurch.org
415-435-4501 ext. 10
Dee Bell-Becker is our Communications Associate. The sometime Parish Administrator at Christ Church Sausalito, she came to the St Stephen's staff in 2011. Her experience in media communications includes working with the Vice-President of Foote, Cone & Belding on publicity for the Levi 501 Blues campaign, Alaska, and National Semiconductor. She was also there as Executive Assistant for the Los Angeles television division. She's also been Executive Assistant for the top three at Pixar. Sometime publicist for Yoshi's Jazz Club, she continues to create the publicity for her own recording / performing music career, formerly with Concord Records and now with Laser Records. He jazz CDs (under the name Dee Bell) include collaborations with Stan Getz, Tom Harrell, Houston Person, Andy Narell, Marcos Silva, and Barry Finerty, and they've been in the top of the national and international radio charts. Her latest CD, Silva.Bell.Elation, was released in January 2014. Dee holds a degree in Art Education from Indiana University with a specialty in inner city education, and she's taught music, art, and K-6 classes in Marin County. She lives with her husband Jim, their 25-year old son, and a demanding parrot in Dillon Beach.
office@ststephenschurch.org
415-435-4501 ext. 23 | Office hours: Tuesday from 11:30am to 5pm
Betsy Menzel, Financial Accounting Manager, was baptized, confirmed, and married at St John’s Episcopal Church in Elkhart, Indiana. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College, Betsy moved to Chicago where she earned her MBA at Northwestern University while working in a management training program at The First National Bank of Chicago. She and her husband Walter moved to the Bay Area in 1983 and settled in Tiburon a year later. Betsy worked in the municipal bond business both in trading and sales until 1990 when she took time off to raise her two children who are now both adults. A member of St Stephen’s, she served on the recent Rector Search Committee. When she isn’t in Rwanda keeping a gimlet eye on mama gorillas, she is in the office on Mondays from 10a to 5p and other times as needed.
betsy@ststephenschurch.org
415-435-4501 ext. 15
Our Venue Hire | Facilities Rental Manager, Satoko Akuhara Boris was born in Japan and raised in San Francisco where she attended public schools. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from San Francisco State. She worked in the Art Gallery Industry as assistant director and senior consultant for 15 years where she was in charge of her first fundraiser, HeART for AIDS. Some of her fundraising projects include the Sonoma Jazz Festival, All Star Helping Kids, Night for Light (Episcopal Charities), Marin Headlands, Tiburon Schools, Boy Scouts, and Redwood High School. Additionally, she is a business development consultant for small companies through which she has helped artists, photographers, event planners, caterers, and auto brokers. She has served as a board member for Tiburon Little League, Foundation for Reed Schools, and as a board member for Redwood High School Foundation. Raised an Episcopalian. She married her husband Jeff at Grace Cathedral. They live in Tiburon, and their son currently attends the University of California, Berkeley. Satoko has no set office hours. She is in as needed.
satoko@ststephenschurch.org
415-435-4501 ext. 14 | 415-845-5065
Our Childcare Provider, Sally Burr has been a Belvedere resident for 20 years. She moved to San Francisco in 1984 from her home town, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She loves nature and animals. She adopted two one-year old cat brothers last year named Simon and Schuster. Shy Simon is all black, and gregarious Schuster is black and white. Sally works as an executive assistant in San Francisco's Financial District. In her spare time she loves to take photos of her dog and cat friends. She's a life-long bicycle enthusiast and has raced her road bike in California and lead tours in Italy and France. Now she just commutes 20 miles to her office in San Francisco on her bike in the morning and takes the ferry home at night. Sally has enriched her life by getting to know the toddlers and their parents at St. Stephen’s.