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About Us

Mission and Vision

The Mission of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Exton, is to create many doors by which people are invited to enter the Church and to exercise hospitality by welcoming all persons who seek a closer relationship with the Sacred – those who have much faith and those who have little; those who have tried to live their faith and those who have struggled.

Our Vision at St. Paul’s is that worshiping should be fun.  Worship puts a smile on your face and a skip to your walk without using guilt as a means of interacting with the Sacred.

Guiding Principles

  • Be welcoming, be inviting, and be hospitable to all
  • Be a parish for members, be there when they need or want support
  • Be open to new ideas
  • Focus on love, not sin
  • Invite people to share their own experiences and to join us on our journey
  • The liturgy is our framework, and we have enough room to work within the liturgy
  • The only requirement to share in communion is to be hungry for spiritual food

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Exton is located at 1105 East Lincoln Highway/Lancaster Avenue, Exton, PA 19341. 

The Church Campus sits prominently on 7-acres in West Whiteland Township.

Church Staff

Rev. Maxine Dornemann, Rector

Mary Davis, Rector’s Warden

Joanne Frybarger, Property Manager

Gail Yard, Secretary/Receptionist

Lisa Hartman, Music Minister

Jim Davis, Youth Ministers

Our History

Keep looking for updates in this section as the plans for the 200th Anniversary Celebration “kicks off”.

St. Paul’s Church had its beginnings in 1827, when the Reverend Samuel Brinckle, Rector of Old St. David’s Church in Radnor met with interested residents in different schoolhouses in both East and West Whiteland.   Unfortunately, transportation to church services was difficult in rural Chester County during the early 1800’s, due to the poor quality or lack of publicly accessible roadways.  This was particularly true for some parishioners of St. Peter’s in the Great Valley who lived in the Whitelands.  They, as well as a few un-churched inhabitants of Chester County requested that the Reverend Samuel Crawford Brinckle preach occasionally in West Whiteland school houses on evenings when his schedule permitted.  This arrangement brought attention that a more local church was needed for those in the Whitelands. To address this need, a meeting of interested individuals was called at Steamboat Tavern with the purpose of establishing a new church in the Whitelands. Col. Cromwell Pearce, Sr., a member of St. Peter’s, was chosen as chairman of this project, and Joseph B. Jacobs as elected secretary. These two men were charged with the task of choosing a site for possible purchase “as near the 24th milestone (on the Philadelphia Lancaster Turnpike)” for the erection of a new church in the Whitelands.

The Whitelands Community responded by raising half of the monies needed to erect this new house of worship –  $1,901.75.  Persons from many denominations made contributions with ¾ of the subscribers of the total amount raised coming from Quakers.   On May 28, 1828, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was consecrated by Bishop William White, the first Bishop of Pennsylvania and a founding father of the Episcopal Church in the United States.  Paul was chosen as the patron saint for this new congregation. The decision seemed most fitting as Paul carried the Good News of God in Christ to the known world of his time. The Good News found a new home in West Whiteland. Originally, the orientation of the congregation faced south, rather than north, which is opposite of direction that the congregation sits today.

In the 1840’s, there were many advancements that brought growth and enrichment to St. Paul’s Church. This church of the antebellum era, in rural Chester County, was first a place of worship, a place where baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals were held; but it also was a place for social gatherings for the wider community.  The women of the Church contributed a great deal financially toward improvements and repairs of the Church in those days, and this involvement by the women of St. Paul’s has been a constancy throughout St. Paul’s history.  St. Paul’s also has a rich tradition of addressing social issues beyond the Parish. In the years preceding the Civil War, parishioners struggled with their interpretations of the Christians virtues of obedience to authority, compassion for the less fortunate, and the dignity of all human beings in light of the social and political environment of the time. The Chester Valley was in considerable turmoil over the issue of slavery for years before the Civil War began, due to the very active Underground Railroad :station” in Exton.  Oral tradition tells us that St. Paul’s was on the path of the Underground Railroad and may have played an important role in helping slaves to reach their freedom in the north.   Parishioners were known to have been actively involved in disobeying the Fugitive Slave Law.

On October 1, 1871, the Vestry closed the church for its first major repairs to address the needs of a growing congregation and the modernization of the local community. Nothing remains of the original building structure today except for the Church walls and roof. These major repairs completely changed the interior of the Church, adding a receding Chancel and robing room at the north end, an organ gallery, and seating was expanded to accommodate 250 people.  A triplet window was placed in the north wall of the Church, and a tower with an 85-foot spire was erected at the south side of the building. The Church reopened in December 1872 in time to celebrate Christmas.

In the fall of 1912, the Parish Hall which is now Getman Hall was erected and quickly became a community center, proving to be of great value as a neighborhood house for gatherings. 1918 was an important year in the life of St. Paul’s, when the Church Farm School purchased land adjoining the Church. That summer, under the leadership of the Reverend Dr. Charles Shreiner, thirty-five boys from the Church of the Atonement, Philadelphia, together with a group of Girl Scouts who were housed in St. Paul’s Parish Hall, worked at the farm, raising food to help the food crisis of World War I. Meals were served in the basement of the Parish Hall.  The Church Farm School students and St. Paul’s parishioners worshiped together until September 1963 when the Church Farm School began worshiping in their own chapel on the school’s campus.  In 1928, the triplet front window was given to the church to celebrate St. Paul’s 100th Anniversary!

The McShane Victory Bell was installed in the St. Paul’s Church steeple on November 11, 1918, to commemorate the World Armistice Day. The bell at St. Paul’s was silent for several years but was restored recently so that it can be rung on special occasions of the Church and the country.

The inscription on the front of the bell, which faces east, reads:

“VICTORY” BELL
TO COMMEMORATE THE WORLD ARMISTICE

NOVEMBER 11, 1918.
“GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO,
ET IN TERRA PAX,
HOMINIBUS BENEVOLENTIA.”

The Latin translates into:
Glory to God in the highest,
And on Earth Peace,
Goodwill to mankind.

The inscription below shows a symbol for the bell maker, which is most likely the McShane Bell Foundry Company’s logo. The company was founded in 1856 and is still in business today.

MC SHANE BELL FOUNDRY CO.
BALTIMORE, MD. 1919.

The reverse side of the bell contains a list of names.

P. ASPARAGUS, J. CLARK, A. JOHNSON, J.V. NEWLIN.
E.D. ATLEE, N. CLARK, H.A.W. KATES, C.F. POWELL.
F. ATLEE, H. CUFF, C.S. KATES, 3RD. H.C. PREVOST.
W.S. BAKER, P.B. DAGUE, R. KIRK, J. PRICE.
G. BALDWIN, W. G. EDGE, A. B. LEWIS, H. PRICE.
O.P. BEEMAN, M. EDWARDS, J.F. LEWIS, JR. B. RUSH, JR.
T.C. BROGAN, H. GOODING, M. LIVINGSTON, JR. R.K. STANFORD.
G.G. CHANDLER, S.W. GOODING, W.R. MAULL, J.R. THOMAS.
MARY ASHBRIDGE CHASE, M.F. HAPPERSETT, R.S. MCCAULEY, F. TROST, H.C. WARNER.
E. CLARK, S.C. HAPPERSETT, D. MCILVAINE, H. WESLEY, R.C. WOOD.
W.D. BAILEY A.H. HARDART C. REESE.

Both the inscription on the front and the names on the back are cast into the bell and are raised characters. The block of names above the line are all separated by commas, except for the three that end with the abbreviations JR and 3RD, with each line ending in a period. The three names below the line are different from the rest and are separated by spaces, but the line still ends with a period. The last three are on the upper of two bands at the bottom of the bell that are separated from the main body of the bell by cast channels. At least two of the names on the bell match gravestones in the St. Paul’s Cemetery. Both of them, Mary Ashbridge Chase (Howse) and R.K. Stanford, show that they served in the military in World War I and survived the war. The current assumption is that the names above the line are those who served in the Great War and survived, while those below the line perhaps did not survive the war.

Mary C. Howse

Robert K. Stanford

In the fall of 1912, the Parish Hall which is now Getman Hall was erected and quickly became a community center, proving great value as a neighborhood house for gatherings.  While the Parish Hall was the site of many events, community gatherings, and church functions for 100 years, in 2014 it was decided that the Hall was in disrepair and needed to be updated to accommodate the growing Church community and the many activities of the modern St. Paul’s.  Major renovations in 2014 transformed the old building into the modern Getman Hall that we use today.  Everything in the facility was updated from “the ground up” including new disability accessible restrooms, a state-of-the-art industrial kitchen, HVAC, plumbing and the banquet and choir rooms.  Today, Getman Hall serves not only as a meeting place for St. Paul’s events, but also as a meeting place for the larger community.  For more information about Getman Hall and the other facilities on our Church Campus that can be rented, please click here Getman Hall and Rental Venues

As the parish family increased in membership, the Lockwood-Reilly Building was erected just north of the Parish Hall in 1981. The Rector’s Office, the Church Office, and our Sunday school rooms which were previously located in the Parish Hall now are located in this building.

In 1984, St. Paul’s was placed on the National Historical Landmark Registry, in recognition of the historical significance of the church. With this designation comes many restrictions and stipulations for the type of changes and improvements that can be made within the historic church.  The interior of the church underwent another round of major renovations during the summer of 2002. The exterior was repaired and repainted at the same time. A new large cross was added to the Sanctuary, replacing the candle chandelier which had been in place for several generations.

Several major repairs and changes have been made over the last 20 years a  including a new heat and air conditioning system for the church, an overhaul to our organ, weather-safe windows in the church, a speaker system, a new church roof, the transformation of the old Parish Hall to the modern Getman Hall, the construction of the O’Connell Terrace, the Walkway, the Lych Gate, the Community Garden, the Scattering Garden, and disability access improvements – ramps, cut-ins in pews to accommodate wheelchairs, restrooms, handrails.

In May 2004, the parish celebrated its 175th Anniversary. Throughout many generations, St. Paul’s has been a community of faith that has served God’s Mission in Jesus Christ. We are grateful to past members, whose commitment was the founding of a place of worship and keeping it alive throughout our history.  In 2028, we will celebrate the 200th Anniversary of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Exton.  Look for more information on this important anniversary celebration in the coming months.

Getman Hall
In 2014 a major renovation took place that has transformed the old Parish Hall building into Getman Hall.  Everything was updated, new restrooms, a state of the art kitchen, beautiful banquet and meeting rooms.  Getman Hall serves not only as a meeting place for St. Paul’s events but also as a meeting place for the larger community.  For more information about Getman Hall, please click on the link below.

Getman Hall

Lych Gate
The Lychgate is located at the old entrance to St. Paul’s. In colonial times through to the mid 1900s, the Lych Gate was the place where the unclean would stop and wait until the priest arrived to bless them.  In the Judeo–Christian tradition a dead body was considered unclean or unholy. So the pall bearers would carry the body to the Lych Gate where the priest would greet the pall bearers and mourners. It is under this Lychgate that the priest conducted the first part of the funeral service under its temporary shelter. Once the body was blessed, it could enter upon hallowed or blessed ground. Generally, the ground outside a church is not considered sacred. But, when the church in constructed in or next to a cemetery then the ground in and around the Church has been consecrated. So, it is with St. Paul’s, immediately beyond the East wall is the 200-year-old cemetery. This combination circumstances demonstrates the significance of the Lychgate to not only the orthodox Christian but to the historical authenticity of church structure.

New Walkway
We continue to restore the beautiful walkway that leads to the front of the church. Pavers (bricks) are engraved with names and remembrances.

At present, there are three sizes available: 9 x 9; 6 x 9; and 6 x 6. The 9 x 9 paver has five lines of text, with 18 characters per line. The 6 x 9 has four lines of text, with 18 characters per line. The 6 x 6 has 2 lines of text, with 10-12 characters per line.

Donations: $300 for a 9 x 9, $200 for a 6 x 9, and $100 for a 6 x 6.

Please contact the church office if you would like to purchase a paver or click on this secure link to purchase a paver .

Scattering Garden
The Scattering Garden is truly another enhancement to the campus of St. Paul’s.  The garden is a designated area in a cemetery where cremated remains are meant to be scattered.  The Scattering Garden at St. Paul’s was created within our cemetery in response to a growing preference for cremation and as a place to memorialize loved ones. The hardscaping was crafted from centuries-old tombstones brought to St. Paul’s when a consecrated cemetery had to be relocated. The entire project was built by volunteers. The garden itself has been planned as a native woodland, designed to nourish the environment as well as the soul. Nestled in a shady corner of the cemetery, the garden features plants native to the ecosystem. Winterberry hollies and dogwoods provide larval hosts and nutritious berries for songbirds. Various sedges offer seeds for birds and small mammals. An array of flowering woodland plants presents a three-season buffet for native pollinators and St. Paul’s Blessed Bees. A handsome brass plaque memorializes those who are interred.

Accessibility for Persons with Disability

  • In 2019, a much-needed wheelchair accessible ramp and accessible entrance was added to the back of the Church building.  The construction was designed to be ADA compliant while remaining consistent with the Church’s historical building guidelines. The ramp which is heated in the winter to prevent ice/snow accumulation allows those who need assistance with a wheelchair or walker to easily enter the church at all times of the year for services and other events held in the sanctuary.  A beautiful stain glass window was also added to the back wall of the Church at that time.
  • In the Church Sanctuary, there are two cutouts in designated church pews to accommodate wheelchairs, scooters, or large walkers.
  • In the small parking area between the Church and Getman Hall, there are designated parking spots for persons with disability.
  • Getman Hall is accessible via a ramp at the right entrance to the courtyard, adjacent to the designated parking spots, and there are handicap accessible doors and restrooms in the facility.