About St. Philip

St. Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church takes its name from St. Philip the Deacon, who was selected as a deacon — someone chosen to look after the poor in the early Christian church — with six others in Acts 6. St. Philip also appears in Acts 8, where he interprets and explains a passage from the Prophet Isaiah to a servant of the Queen of Ethiopia. This is depicted above in a detail from an Icon of St. Philip the Deacon by artist Ann Chapin, commissioned in celebration of the church’s 50th anniversary in 2008.

This story about St. Philip from Acts 8 is, in part, where St. Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church gets its mission statement — to Reach Out, Proclaim, Inspire — since St. Philip reached out to the Ethiopian eunuch when he didn’t understand the Prophet Isaiah; proclaimed to the eunuch what the passage meant; and inspired him to go and serve God himself by baptizing him.