History

Established as a mission in the early part of the last century, St. Mary’s church originally stood
next to the Guild Hall in an upper garden area of the property, now known as “The Ruins.”
During the 1920’s, when Laguna Beach was home to fewer than 1,000 residents, the mission
provided a place of worship for visitors to the tiny artist colony. Clergy from Trinity Church,
Orange, ministered to the pastoral and liturgical needs of the mission’s communicants until the
church obtained parish status in 1931.

The cornerstone for St. Mary’s present-day parish was set in the spring of 1957 and the existing
church structure completed in 1958, replacing the original building which had become unsafe.

Fueled by the inspirational leadership of two consecutive extraordinary rectors who, through
preaching, programs, and education, challenged individuals to pursue active faith journeys
steeped in curiosity and trust in the Gospel, St. Mary’s has a reputation for making a profound
difference in the lives of its congregation and the community. The contemporary ethos of St.
Mary’s took seed in the cauldron of the late 60s when this church led a sleepy Laguna Beach to
address serious gaps in the social service infrastructure of the city.

This ministry and identity of social activism, the compassion to identify and address needs in the
local and extended community, is not just what we do, it is who we are. Inreach or Outreach,
when there is a need to feed the hungry, comfort the homeless, minister to the sick, or help the
poor, you will find a group of St. Mary’s people volunteering to lend a hand.

Non-profit organizations, such as the Friendship Shelter, the Laguna Beach Community Clinic,
the Resource Center, the Episcopal Service Alliance, Sally’s Fund, ACTION (AIDS Care Teams
in Our Neighborhoods), and La Playa Center all began as work at St. Mary’s or were founded by
parishioners.

In addition to its history of local outreach, St. Mary’s reaches out to the larger world through its
unflinching commitment to the Diocese of Los Angeles Mission Share Fund. St. Mary’s for
many years has been among the top contributors to the fund in terms of per capita giving. The
church shares nearly 20 percent of its income for the greater good of the diocese and the world.

Parish Staff

The Reverend Elizabeth I. Rechter
Rector
erechter@stmaryslagunabeach.org
 

Reverend Elizabeth joined St. Mary's officially on October 3, 2005.  She comes to St. Mary’s from the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta, a 5,000-member congregation where she served for about six years in a variety of positions, including: Canon Associate in Education and Pastoral Care; Canon Missioner for outreach and other pastoral ministries; and Canon for Evangelism.

The family moved to Atlanta in 1994, and Rechter became the first woman to serve as senior staff at the Cathedral of St. Philip. Her passions for empowering women, outreach to the poor and interfaith work grew there. “Outreach is a great passion of mine,” she says. “The church’s work is to be in relationship with all people and with the poor. If we’re not in relationship with the poor, we aren’t being church.” She joined the Interfaith Alliance of Metro Atlanta and traveled to Morocco for a relationship-building journey with people of the Islamic faith. She received a 2003-2005 Lilly Foundation Grant for interfaith study. And, in May of 2005, she participated in an Anti- Defamation League “March of the Living” tour of Holocaust sites in Poland and then traveled to Israel. 

She hails from Aurora, which she describes as a small town outside Ithaca, New York, one of six children in “a very church-going” family. “I loved church,” recalls Rechter, a cradle Episcopalian. When she was about 12, her church merged with a local Presbyterian congregation because of finances and population “and we kept the Presbyterian minister,” she says. The merger ignited an ecumenical streak that blossomed into interfaith ministry later, after she received a call to ordained ministry.   “I came home for Christmas as a sophomore in college,” recalled Rechter, who was then a pre-med major at Douglass College at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She was planning a career as a physical therapist. “I was in church when, out of the blue, it came to me. I’d never even thought about people becoming priests, about how it happened. There was a moment when I realized: this is what I want to do. So, I decided to investigate it.”

During those years of exploration, she enrolled in religious classes, graduated from college, coached tennis at Rutgers, married Jay Rechter, moved to Washington, D.C., and served as an intern at St. James Church in Potomac, Maryland. Eventually, she sought ordination in the Diocese of Washington, D.C. Their son Jonathan was born the year before she graduated from the Virginia Theological Seminary, with a master of divinity degree. A daughter, Caroline, was born three years later, while she served as an assistant at Trinity Church in Princeton, N.J.  Rechter has also served congregations in Washington, D.C., Virginia, as a seminarian assistant.

Joanne Roper
Office Manager
jroper@stmaryslagunabeach.org

Bob Gunn
Music Director
bgunn@stmaryslagunabeach.org

Tinia Orduna
Coordinator for Christian Formation
usorduna@stmaryslagunabeach.org

Kathleen Winters
Communications Coordinator & Bookkeeper
kwinters@stmaryslagunabeach.org