We are a diverse, family-friendly, progressive congregation steeped in the traditions of historical worship. Our biblical model is that of people from every nation, background, age and language worshiping God together.

Fr. Chuck was born in 1962 in LaGrange, Illinois, the son of an Episcopal priest, the Rev. Joseph A. Howell, and the late Georgia Howell. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Chuck received an AB degree from the University of Chicago where he majored in the History of Religions and minored in Russian language and literature.

Chuck worked in the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston as a social worker for the Department of Public Welfare. Chuck met his soon-to-be wife, Liz, in Boston and they were married at St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s on October 1, 1988.

Chuck graduated from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in 1995 and accepted a call to Grace Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He served Grace Church for 11 years, the last 8 as rector. While at Grace Church, Chuck helped found Sudanese Grace Church, a mission congregation composed mostly of Sudanese refugees, and served as its first vicar. In September 2006, Chuck began his ministry as the tenth rector of Christ Church New Brighton.

Chuck and Liz have a charming young daughter named Georgia and a fierce guard dog named Flopsie (don't let the name fool you).

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Fr. Walsted was educated in Massachusetts and Oregon and took his B.S. from the University of Oregon in Eugene in 1956. He had switched his major from Architecture to History when he discovered in himself a vocation to the priesthood and began to prepare for seminary.

He received his theological degree from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, and was ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood in 1959 in the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon. He served parishes in Salem and Portland, Oregon, before entering the Order of the Holy Cross in 1963.

Fr. Walsted left the Order of the Holy Cross in 1977 and came to New York City where he has lived since. From 1982 until his retirement in 1994 he served as priest-in-charge and Rector of Christ Church, Staten Island. A noted iconographer, he has completed several hundred icons for churches and private collections throughout the world.