St. Paul’s City Church of Murrieta is planning a historic and jubilant service and celebration to install the Rev. Antoinette Burwell as its rector. She is the first African American woman to be installed in this position within the Anglican Churches of North America (ACNA).
The service will be held on Sunday, August 11, at 5 p.m., in the multi-purpose room of Oak Meadows Elementary School, 28600 Poinsettia St., in Murrieta. The public is invited to the service and the reception.
St. Paul’s City Church called the Rev. Burwell to helm its transition to Murrieta, nurture and equip its growing congregation, and to reach the surrounding areas with the gospel. St. Paul’s City Church’s vision is to be a multi-racial, multi-generational church in the Temecula Valley. The church is evangelical, charismatic and liturgical.St. St. Paul’s is also a member congregation of the ACNA and Diocese of Western Anglicans (DWA). Presiding over the installation will be the Right Rev. Keith Andrews, DWA bishop.
A native of Los Angeles, Burwell grew up in a home of musicians, preachers and storytellers. She brings with her a very warm, relatable style of preaching and teaching that draws the listener in. The listener might hear her share a story of listening to her grandmother from under the dining room table – or a vivid and heart wrenching description of what it was like to pray for and impose ashes on thousands of people in New York City on Ash Wednesday after the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. Her passion is serving people wherever they are and bringing the love and grace of God to them, through Jesus Christ.
“Oftentimes, people ask me: ‘How in the world did you get into the Anglican Church since you are an exuberant ‘Bapticostal’ [a combination of Baptist/Pentecostal],” joked Burwell.
“I laugh and say to them: ‘Have you taken time to prayerfully read or sing the liturgy of the church?’ A celebratory worship experience and style is a part of the fabric of my soul. And our Anglican liturgy is very rich! At times, it is almost like listening to a polyphonic choral work by Palestrina,” she noted, referring to a 16th century Italian composer of sacred music.
Burwell earned a Master of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina; a Master of Arts degree in Music Education from CSU-Los Angeles and an Anglican Certificate and Master’s degree of Sacred Theology from General Theological Seminary in New York.
She also served as a pastor at churches on the East Coast and five years as the women’s chaplain at the Anne Douglas Center for Women on Skid Row in Los Angeles. In her spare time, she is working on composing a jazz/gospel mass. Burwell is a gifted and trained choral director, conductor and singer, who often brings her love of music into her preaching.
The Anglican Church in North America unites 134,000 Anglicans in 1,062 congregations across the United States, Canada, and Mexico into a single Church. On April 16, 2009, the Primates of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans recognized it as a province of the global Anglican Communion. The Most Rev. Dr. Foley Beach is the archbishop of the Church.
Members of the Anglican Church in North America are in the mainstream, both globally and historically, of Christianity – the biblically faithful way of following Jesus and being part of the “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” As Anglicans, this orthodoxy is defined by and centered on the church’s classic formularies – the Book of Common Prayer, including the Ordinal, and the Thirty-nine Articles – which all point back to the authority of the Holy Bible and articulate foundational principles of the Anglican tradition throughout the world. The ACNA wholeheartedly embraces The Jerusalem Declaration, the founding declaration of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.
St. Paul’s City Church meets every Sunday morning, at 10 a.m., at Oak Meadows Elementary School’s multi-purpose room in Murrieta. To learn more, visit stpaulscitychurch.org.