Meet St. Clement’s, Clemmons

Brendan Murphy on February 22, 2019

A church dedicated to prison ministry and creation care

By the Rev. Jamie L’Enfant Edwards

Strategically placed near I-40 at the western edge of Forsyth County, the small parish of St. Clement’s, Clemmons, is both a part of the greater Winston-Salem community and a participant in the ministries of Davie County.

Begun in 1985, St. Clement’s worshipped in Vogler’s Funeral Home until moving to the current church building in 1994. As St. Clement’s prepares to celebrate 35 years in 2020, the congregation lives ever deeper into its tagline: Open Minds, Loving Hearts, Giving Hands.  

The people of St. Clement’s love to be challenged, eagerly gathering for discussions about big theological questions, embracing uncertainty rather than rushing to exactitude. New books to study, topics to discuss and ideas to explore are welcomed as members hunger to go deeper, trying always to widen the tent to include all who seek.

As a small parish, St. Clement’s is a warm and giving community, ready to spring into action to help those in need—and ready to exchange the peace with exuberance until the celebrant forces them to return to their seats. Anonymity is hardly a possibility at St. Clement’s, where members stand ready to engage and incorporate newcomers into the life of the community.  

And the giving hands of St. Clement’s consistently show up, whether it be for the food pantry, Morgan Elementary School down the street or circling the Forsyth County Detention Center to pray for the inmates.  Deacon the Rev. Mark Davidson is especially involved in prison ministry, and rector the Rev. Jamie Edwards and the congregation are, as well. We offer a quarterly Eucharist at the downtown jail, as well as participating in worship at the Forsyth Correctional Center (known as the Cherry Street prison). And we have hosted their prison choir, the Cherry Street Ensemble, at St. Clement’s for Sunday Eucharist. St. Clement’s has shown a comfort level with welcoming the incarcerated among us, which is a charism of the parish, so ministry to the incarcerated has emerged as a special focus for the parish. 

Finally, creation care is dear to the heart of St. Clement’s. In addition to showing our love for God’s creatures through our annual Blessing of the Animals service, a parishioner who is a master gardener helped us to “go native,” planting only flowers and plants native to North Carolina. The plethora of happy bees and butterflies affirmed her conviction that doing our part to help restore some of the local habitat lost to rapid development in the area has been a faithful step in using the several acres of our property faithfully to witness to the need to participate in the beautiful and delicate balance of God’s ecosystem.  

As always, we welcome any and all to St. Clement’s, where, with God’s help, we live out our piece of God’s dream through open minds, loving hearts and giving hands.  Come see us!

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