The Children's Mission of St. Paul and St. James

Our Staff

Gretchen Wolff Pritchard (Founder, Children's Missioner)

I was born in Illinois, but grew up in Washington, DC, Paris, and London, thanks to my father’s career in the US Foreign Service. My road to the Episcopal Church ran through Anglican schools in London and my brother’s stint as a choirboy in Washington Cathedral. I was baptized at 14 and started teaching Sunday School as soon as they would let me. I majored in English at Bryn Mawr and went on to a Ph.D. in medieval English literature at Yale.

Eventually it dawned on me that though I might set out to do literary criticism I always ended up doing theology, and that I cared more about preparing kids for confirmation than about teaching Shakespeare to undergraduates. If ordination had been open to women when I graduated from college, I might have applied to seminary. Instead, I got married, finished my Ph.D., and had a baby. When the baby was two months old, St. Paul’s offered me a part-time paid position as Christian education coordinator. Twenty-five years later, I’m still here: the work and I have grown together.

For sixteen years, my job was officially ten hours a week. During that time I was able to be home with my three daughters, minister with a generation of children and their families, and develop a large and still-growing body of programs and resources that were first tried here and then shared with the larger church: lectionary cartoons (The Sunday Paper); resources for communion and baptism (Alleluia! Amen and New Life); pageants and seasonal celebrations (Go, Tell It on the Mountain, Risen With Christ, and I Love Christmas), and now the Beulah Land feltboard story materials that we offer through Beulah Enterprises right here at St. PJ’s. In 1992 Cowley Publications asked me to write Offering the Gospel to Children. (My autobiography, Learning to Love, was published in 1999 by Church Publishing).

In 1995, with my two older children in middle school and high school and the youngest in preschool, my job became a full-time one as the newly merged parish of St. Paul & St. James established the Children’s Mission of St. Paul and St. James. I’m still doing the Sunday School, but as Children’s Missioner I’m also responsible for after-school, evening, and summer programs with inner-city kids, and welcoming families that join the parish through the Children’s Mission.

As parish educator, writer, artist, and evangelist, my work has involved a continuing effort to find creative and responsible ways of offering the Gospel to children. I couldn’t have done any of it without the support of clergy and colleagues here at St. PJ’s, and my family: my husband Arnie and our daughters Grace, Margaret and Marion.

Audrey Jordan (Program Director)

Hi; my name is Audrey Jordan. I’ve been working with the Children’s Mission since the summer of 2000. I was working as a substitute teacher’s aide at my daughter’s nursery school at the time I first saw an advertisement for the job at the church. I love to work with children because every child is different and they’re filled with so many talents, challenges, and questions. I feel I can never be bored with a child around.

I have 2 children of my own, Alexis who is 10 yrs old and Jamaine who is 4 yrs old, and I can tell you being a single parent of these two children has brought many days of asking myself, “How are you going to make it?” Children are precious and just need that someone to listen, play, read, talk and relate to. I have a lot of patience and that’s an important skill to have also, I think, when you’re dealing with children. I never really had a steady adult figure in my life growing up so it’s kind of easy for me to like children because I was always around other children or having to take a leader position as an adult at a young age, to care for myself or my brother Bryan who I’m very close to (he is two years older than me) and also for any other children in my surroundings. I just always wanted someone to love me and care for me but it seemed like no one had time, so I learned love and caring basically on my own.

Once I had my own children I just knew I didn’t want them to have to search for someone to love or care for them. Children don’t ask to come to this world and I just think while they are still little they should be shown how to love and care for one another so when they are adults they will be successful and well mannered to become whatever they desire in this life-time. Working with children just gives you as an adult a chance to look back on a child and say “Wow, I think I really made a difference in his/her life,” and that’s a great feeling. I wouldn’t change it for the world!

Khim Frosolone (Program Assistant, left) is another Children's Mission mom - her sons Datrell and Vito come to Light and Peace and the Summer Program.  She's been a bus driver and a teacher aide for the New Haven Public School system, and has been on our staff since 2002.

Jeff Hutchins (Program Assistant, right) joined our staff in the fall of 2006. He works with kids all day: in the mornings he is the music teacher at St. Francis' parochial school in the Fair Haven section of New Haven. He is working towards a degree at Southern Connecticut State University.

Some years, we are lucky enough to have a seminarian intern from Yale Divinity School. Alicia Brooks was with us for two years—2004-2006. She remains active as a volunteer.

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