St. John’s Anglican Church
Sunday Service
St John’s congregations meet in the church that is bordered by St John’s Road, Blackwatch Pass, and Langton Hill at 8:00 am and 10:00 am most Sundays.
Adult Sunday School is taught between the services and runs from 9:15 am to 9:45 am.
The 8:00 am congregation uses traditional Anglican communion service without music.
Family Communion with music, prayers, Bible readings, and a sermon is generally celebrated at the 10:00 am service.
During the first half of the service, we run Sunday School for the children, though we give their teachers a break during the school holidays.
St. John’s – History
Tradition says that Pembroke Church was first built in 1621; in 1996 the parishioners celebrate its 3 75th anniversary. Although there is no historical record to support the tradition, there is no record giving any other definite date. All that can be definitely said is that a church existed in Pembroke in October 1618, for at that time the Assizes presented Judith, the wife of Roger Bayley, for disturbing the congregation during Divine service by ‘railings, miscalling, and all other uncivil speeches’ in Pembroke tribe church. The records do not help us to determine how many years before 1618 this church was built, but there is reason to think that the Virginia Company had intentions to found a church in Pembroke in 1612 when Governor Moore arrived in his ship, the Plough, with the first settlers. It was certainly not built immediately, but may well have been built in 1615 or 1616.
Bermuda had been claimed by the Virginia Company in 1609 following the chance shipwreck of the Sea Venture. The Company’s shareholders saw an opport11nity of making money by owning and farming shares of land to grow exotic crops to sell in England. Consequently, it was important to them to develop a plan for this uninhabited island showing the boundaries of their shares, and also to provide some means whereby the settlers would have some form of government three thousand miles from London. The plan was not formulated immediately but was developed and modified over the first years of settlement. By 1615, the Company had decided that about one-quarter of Bermuda would be set aside as the ‘General Land’ to provide revenue to support the expense of government, and the remaining three-quarters would be divided into eight ‘tribes’ ( our modern parishes) each containing fifty shares to be owned by the individual shareholders.