Founded in November of 1857, St. John's is the third older Episcopal church in the Diocese of California. From its earliest days, St. John’s has had a pretty consistent ethos. Here from a member in the late 19th century: "While this church has never been the religious home of a rich or fashionable congregation, it has always been the chosen field for a small, but growing band or quiet, earnest, and practical Christian workers." 

In 1871, St. John’s opened St. Luke’s hospital which is still in existence down on Caesar Chavez. In 1882, the church planted Holy Innocents Episcopal Church on Fair Oaks in Noe Valley. By 1889, the St. John’s community was outgrowing the current building, and they hired Coxhead to build a new church for them. They wanted a church that could seat somewhere between 700 and 800 people. Coxhead designed something for them that people were either appalled at or loved – just massive. During the Great Earthquake however, the fire was creeping in this direction from downtown and it was decided that they needed to dynamite a lot of the buildings right along here as a firebreak. They dynamited the massive Coxhead church. Another theory goes that, at that time, Sunny Jim Rolph, who happened to be not very well liked on the Board of Supervisors was a Senior Warden of this parish, and so it was thought that this was a good way to give him his comeuppance by dynamiting his church. By 1909, Coxhead again finished a church for St. John’s, the one we currently worship in. It is an exact copy of a parish church in Norwich, England called St Stephen’s. 

In the 1970s, St. John’s Educational Threshold Center (now Mission Graduates) was founded at the church and led by parishioners, most notably Liz Specht. At the same time, El Porvenir (‘The Future’) was founded to provide clean drinking water to communities in Nicaragua. In the 1980s and 90s, the St. John’s community was ravaged by the AIDS Epidemic. Our priest at the time, Jack Eastwood, remembers: “That became a part of the ministry from 1985 at least until 1990. During that time, there weren't many services in San Francisco to help with people who were affected by the epidemic. During the years of '85, '86, '87, I remember that we developed some groups here in the parish. People needed transportation to the doctor or to the hospital, so we had people who were a practical concern type group. We have some names for it. I forget what they are, but I know what they were doing. We had people who were visiting those in the hospital or sick at home and under care.” 

Now, St. John’s is home to the Gubbio Project which offers sacred sleep and supplies to unhoused neighbors every weekday, the Food Pantry on Saturdays, American Indian Cultural Center classes on Thursdays, Food not Bombs on Wednesdays, and much more. We are a vibrant, growing, and prayerful community that strives to reflect the wonderful diversity of age, race, gender, sexuality, language, and nationality in our neighborhood. Another former priest, Richard Smith, reflects on the throughline of St. John’s: “I like to think that our ‘red doors’ have been a big thread all throughout our story: welcoming people who were excommunicated in one way or another during the time of AIDS, or people who have been outcasts, people who are un-housed, a variety of people who have no place to go but offering sanctuary here. We're a safe place to be. That is, I hope, what we are, and those red doors always remind me of that.”