Parish Clergy

The Reverend Sammy Wood, priest-in-charge

Father Sammy Wood did his undergraduate work at Mississippi State before completing law school at the University of Mississippi. After graduation, he clerked for a United States Magistrate Judge. In 2000, he and his wife Reneé moved to New England and Father Sammy received his Master of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

After discovering the Episcopal Church and being confirmed while at Gordon-Conwell, he received his post-graduate Diploma in Anglican Studies from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. He was ordained a deacon in the Diocese of Massachusetts in June 2007 and a priest at the Church of the Ascension & St. Agnes in Washington, DC, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in December 2007. He was curate at Ascension & St. Agnes from 2007 to 2009 before going to the Church of the Advent in Boston, Massachusetts in October 2009 where he served for eight years as assistant to the rector and associate rector. He was called as rector of the Church of Saint Bartholomew in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2017.

Father Sammy and his wife Renee were both raised in Mississippi. While in Nashville, Renee worked as Senior Director of Finance and Administration at the not-for-profit Thistle Farms and is currently the Chief Financial and Administrative Officer for the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. The Woods have three children, Elizabeth, Patrick, and Flannery.

Father Wood joined Saint Mary’s as our interim rector in 2022 and was appointed priest-in-charge in 2023.

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The Reverend Dr. Matt Jacobson, assistant

Father Matt Jacobson began serving at Saint Mary's in 2015 as a seminarian while studying at the General Theological Seminary, where he graduated from in 2017. He was ordained to the priesthood in September 2017 and since then has been at the parish, initially as an assisting priest, and then as the assistant to the rector.

From 2019-2021, he was also the assistant director, and for a time acting director, of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd at the General Theological Seminary. Father Matt served for several years on the advisory board for the New York Service and Justice Collaborative, the Diocese of New York’s Episcopal Service Corps program, and currently serves on the advisory board for the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine’s Community at the Crossing.

He earned a B.A. in biology at Swarthmore College and an M.D. at the Stony Brook School of Medicine. In addition to his background in medicine, Father Matt has experience in hospital chaplaincy at the Mount Sinai Hospital. Prior to going to seminary, he worked at the Rockefeller University, the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell, and was an institutional investor with several funds in the New York City area.

Father Matt was born in Bologna, Italy, and speaks Italian, in addition to English. He and his wife Meredith, an archeologist on the faculty at Bard Graduate Center, live in the Upper West Side.

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The Reverend Stephen Morris, assisting priest

Father Stephen Morris has a B.A. in medieval history and theology from Yale and an M.Div from Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Academy, as well as an M.S. in special education from Hunter College. Ordained an Orthodox priest in 1984, he served as priest-in-charge of a Manhattan parish while finishing seminary. After graduation, he served as the Eastern Orthodox chaplain at Columbia University and founded a parish on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The parish he founded was instrumental in raising the funds necessary to reopen the Orthodox seminary in Minsk following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has written urban fantasy novels as well as academic studies which deal primarily with Late Antiquity and Byzantine church life. As a parish-founder, he was also a “tent-maker priest,” teaching Special Education (severe-profound/multiple disabilities) in District 75 of the NYC Department of Education for 27+ years. For more than a decade he co-organized a series of international interdisciplinary conferences on various aspects of evil, wickedness, monsters, mythology, and the supernatural. Leaving parish ministry after “coming out,” Father Stephen was accepted as a priest in the Episcopal Church in May 2022 and has served parishes in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Father Stephen, a Seattle native, is now a long-time New York resident. Father of two adult children and grandfather of three teenagers, he currently lives in Manhattan with his partner, Elliot. Please see Father Stephen's website for more information on upcoming writing projects and his most recent blog posts.

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The Reverend Dr. Peter R. Powell, assisting priest

The Reverend Peter R. Powell began attending St. Mary the Virgin in 2002 and has been teaching bible in Adult Ed since 2007.  He has been an assisting priest since 2010.  He was graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary with an M.Div. in 1976, Princeton Theological Seminary with a Th.M. in 1979 and The School of Theology, The University of the South with a D. Min. in 1997.  He was Adjunct Professor of Biblical Languages at Virginia Seminary from 1980-1984 and Instructor of Hebrew and Teaching Fellow at Princeton Seminary in the late 70s.  For 22 years until his retirement in 2010 Father Powell was the President/CEO of Homes with Hope, a Supportive Housing and Emergency Services provider in Westport, CT where he continues to live with his wife, Barbara.

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Music Department

Dr. David Hurd, organist and music director 

Dr. David Hurd is a native New Yorker and has studied at the Juilliard School, the High School of Music and Art, and the Manhattan School of Music. His undergraduate music degree is from Oberlin College, and he continued his studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.   Subsequently he has received honorary degrees from four other academic institutions. From 1976 until 2015, he was on the faculty of The General Theological Seminary, having been named Professor of Church Music and Organist there in 1984. He has taught also at Duke University, Manhattan School of Music, Westminster Choir College, and Yale University. A lifelong Episcopalian, he served on the Standing Commission on Church Music from 1977 to 1986 and was a major contributor to The Hymnal 1982.

Since winning first prizes both in organ performance and in improvisation at the 1977 International Congress of Organists, he has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe, and has been a featured artist at several national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. 

His catalogue of published musical compositions features choral, vocal, liturgical, and organ works, and includes a collection of seventy-seven original hymn settings. In 2010 he became the fifteenth recipient of The American Guild of Organists’ Distinguished Composer Award. 

He was appointed Organist and Music Director of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in 2016 having previously served in New York at Trinity Church Wall Street (and Saint Paul’s Chapel), The Church of the Intercession, Saint James Church, All Saints Church, and Church of the Holy Apostles. 

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More information on Music at Saint Mary's

Parish Staff

The Board of Trustees

Ms. Patricia Ahearn ● Mr. Steven Eldredge ● Ms. Katherine Hoyt ● Mr. Clark Mitchell
Dr. Charles Morgan, vice president ● Mrs. Grace Mudd, treasurer ● Ms. Renee Pecquex-Burroughs
Mr. Dale Reynolds ● Ms. Mary Robison, secretary ● Ms. Reha Sterbin ● The Reverend Sammy Wood, president

Parish Office
145 West 46th Street • New York, New York • 10036 • Telephone 212.869.5830 • Email