Aaron Skrypski
Accounting warden
Christ Church
Second and Market streets
Sept. 11, 2001, was a turning point for Aaron Skrypski.
“I was in New York and I saw the second plane go into the building,” he recalled. “For a period of time everything was very scary. We were faced with so much death that, afterwards, it became this time where you had to just go and do what you loved.”
What Skrypski loved was exploring theology.
“I had always been fascinated by religion, philosophy, theology, spirituality,” said Skrypski, who was raised in a Methodist congregation in Grove City, Pa. “So I applied to divinity school and got in. I thought I might want to be a journalist and write about how American religion was changing. I hadn’t thought of working for a church in a formal context, but I knew divinity school would push me in the right direction, and it did.”
Skrypski earned a divinity degree from Yale University, where he was exposed to the teachings and traditions of the Episcopal Church, which he said he fell in love with. He went on to law school afterwards and in 2008 moved to Philadelphia, where he now works at a Center City law firm.
Skrypski, 41, began attending services at Christ Church with a boyfriend several years ago; though that relationship didn’t last, his relationship with the church did.
About four years ago, he decided to heighten his involvement in the historic Episcopal congregation. He was elected to the vestry, the church’s governing body, and, after about a year, the vestry elected him to the post of accounting warden.
The Episcopal leadership structure includes the rector, the vestry, the rector’s warden and the accounting warden. Skrypski is the first openly gay accounting warden at Christ Church, which was founded in 1695.
Skrypski oversees the congregation’s finances and manages legal issues. The accounting warden is also sometimes referred to as the “people’s warden,” Skrypski explained.
“If there’s a problem that has bubbled up through the congregation, my job is to raise that with the rector, the rector’s warden and the rest of the vestry,” he said. “It’s this dual role of working on legal and financial aspects and representing the congregation to the governing board and working with the rector on any issues the congregation may have.”
It’s a congregation that draws from the neighboring community and also throughout the region.
Though the church is frequented by tourists, Skrypski said, it’s home to a very tight-knit and dedicated group of congregants.
“It’s beautiful and its history is fascinating and empowering, but the congregation we have is what really makes this such a great place,” he said. “If you picked this congregation up and just put us in a different building, we’d still be a functioning community.”
That sense of community, he noted, has helped the church to have never missed a single service in its 321 years.
For example, during one of last winter’s blizzards, congregants trekked in — Skrypski walked from Graduate Hospital — and all pitched in to clear the walkways around the church.
“If it was just about the history, there would be no life here,” he said. “When you come on a Sunday and you see how warm the people are and the amount of activities we have here, it becomes less of a tourist site and the building — even though it’s beautiful — fades into the background. It’s more about this group of people trying to figure stuff out together, trying to wrestle with what it means to be a person of faith.”
Neighborhood House, adjacent to the church, plays an integral role in inviting the community into the church. A resident theater company operates there, and thousands pass through the building’s doors each week for community and group meetings, events and performances.
Neighborhood House and the church have hosted many LGBT functions, including an LGBT interfaith service last year for Equality Forum.
Skrypski said Christ Church has a vibrant LGBT congregation. Though he’s the first out accounting warden, there have been other LGBT vestry members, committee members and church leaders.
“It’s an incredibly welcoming place and there’s been absolutely no friction at all,” he said about LGBT inclusion at Christ Church. “Our LGBT group is a large group and very diverse so we’re really lucky with that. I have a friend who was baptized here and married her wife in this church. That’s how it’s supposed to be, that’s what an organization like this is supposed to do. I’m proud to be a part of it.”