The Rev. John A. Porter - Rector

Fr. John A. Porter was raised in North Carolina in a Presbyterian family and received his B.A. and M.A. in English.  His first career was as an English teacher on high school and college levels, as well as overseas in Greece, where he studied Greek and lived for a time with a shepherd.  A conversion experience while he was serving as a teaching fellow in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1980s brought him back into the Church.  He did his theological training at the Reformed Presbyterian Seminary in Pittsburgh before he became an Episcopalian, and then earned the Certificate in Anglican Studies from Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge.  From 1992 to 1994 he taught New Testament and Greek at St. Philip’s Theological College in Tanzania, East Africa.  He was ordained as a transitional deacon in the Diocese of Pittsburgh in 1996, and was priested in 1997 by Bishop Alden Hathaway at the Church of the Redeemer in Sarasota, Florida, where he served for seven years as a curate.  In 2003 he was called back to Pittsburgh to be the rector of Grace Church.  He is married to to his wife Beth, and they have two children, Stephen and Sarah.

The Rev. Dr. Rodney A. Whitacre

Articles by Dr. Whitacre