The Rev. Rebecca Barnes to leave St. Luke's after 8½ years

Serving at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church has been an “incredible blessing” for the Rev. Rebecca Barnes.

Eight and a half years after becoming the first woman to lead the congregation at 232 Wyoming Ave., Scranton, Barnes will hold her final service as rector of St. Luke’s on June 16 before taking on her new role as dean — or the senior clergy — of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Buffalo, New York.

A West Pittston native, Barnes entered the Episcopal General Theological Seminary in New York City in 2009, where she earned a Master of Divinity and Master of Sacred Theology. She was ordained in 2012 following a 20-plus-year career in the classical arts world and higher-education administration in New York. After serving in two New York City churches, she returned to Northeast Pennsylvania, holding her first service in Scranton on Thanksgiving Day in 2015.

“I’m very grateful for my time at St. Luke’s and all the opportunities that I’ve had to serve, not only the parishioners but the community at large,” Barnes said. “I carry that with me. It’s always hard to say goodbye.”

During her time in Scranton, Barnes, who is known by her congregation as “Mother Barnes,” was heavily involved in the area’s greater religious community, worked to establish programming at St. Luke’s to help recently incarcerated individuals reenter society, fostered the arts to make St. Luke’s a place for enrichment for the entire community, and promoted inclusivity to ensure her church was a place where people knew they were welcomed and accepted.

“What I really tried to do in my time here was to not just have the church be the place that people come into, but that the church went out to the community,” Barnes said.

Barnes, who married her wife, the Rev. Elizabeth Grohowski, in 2011, has officiated numerous weddings for same-sex couples and baptized their children at St. Luke’s, which was already very affirming for the LGBTQ+ community prior to her arrival, she said.

She recalled a woman approaching her one day and asking if she could attend the church because she was transgender. Without hesitation, Barnes reassured her, “The day that you’re not welcome here, I’m not welcome here.”

“And I meant that,” Barnes said, explaining her church flies the Pride Flag for Pride Month every June to broadcast the message: “You’re welcome here, and if you haven’t found a place that you can call home, know that we’re happy to have you.”

In 2016, St. Luke’s filed articles of incorporation for the nonprofit Cypress House Bakery, a post-prison reentry program operating out of the church to teach the recently incarcerated life skills like managing their finances while also paying a living wage. They are about to start construction to renovate the church’s kitchen for the bakery, and Barnes, who was also the CEO and board president of the bakery, hopes it will open in the next six months. She looks forward to hearing news of its eventual ribbon cutting and its first apprentices being hired.

“There’s a passage in the Bible about ‘one sows and another reaps,’ and I feel that that’s very much part of this,” she said, emphasizing the bakery is the culmination of work from a team of people. “We have worked hard to make this happen, and I’m just happy that it’s come together to this point already.”

Barnes joined the Scranton Area Multifaith Ministerium in 2017 and served as its president from 2019 until she stepped down this month.

“I have marvelous colleagues on the ministerium, and it’s been a joy to serve with them,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed a very warm ecumenical relationship with the Catholic Diocese of Scranton and done a lot of work in terms of social justice ministry, and that’s been very important to me.”

Rabbi Daniel Swartz of Temple Hesed in Scranton, an active ministerium member of 18 years and a former vice president, has known Barnes since she first arrived in Scranton. The two have worked together both inside and outside of the ministerium, he said. At the ministerium, Barnes has worked to ensure it is engaged on an ongoing basis with the community, including addressing a lack of prison chaplains, getting different faith groups involved with food banks and food drives, and issuing statements addressing peace, justice and bigotry, Swartz said.

“She’s been very welcoming and very eager to be involved in the spiritual well-being and the broader well-being of the community as a whole and trying to bring people together,” Swartz said. “She will be greatly missed.”

St. Luke’s will hold a community farewell gathering for Barnes on June 9.