The Reverend Sandy Webb has served Church of the Holy Communion since August 2013. Under his leadership, Holy Communion has developed and implemented new models for communicating its message, welcoming newcomers, forming young people, serving the wider community, and having challenging conversations in a spirit of truth and love. The parish also commissioned several new works of visual and musical art during Sandy’s tenure, and completed a capital campaign that raised nearly $11 million and provided for the complete overhaul of the parish’s 50,000-square foot facility.
As rector, Sandy is a permanent trustee of St. Mary’s Episcopal School, and he has made a priority of strengthening the relationship between the church and the school. Sandy is also a leader in the Diocese of West Tennessee, most recently chairing the Board of Directors of the Church Home Trust and the Transition Committee that welcomed the Diocese’s fourth bishop. In the community, Sandy serves on the advisory board for the Salvation Army of Memphis and the Mid-South, and as an occasional consultant to local non-profit organizations through Give Back Memphis.
Before coming to Holy Communion, Sandy was associate to the rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Roanoke, Virginia. He was the founding chaplain to the Roanoke City Fire-EMS Department and a community representative on the institutional review board at Carilion Clinic and Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
A “cradle Episcopalian” from Massachusetts, Sandy always wanted to serve the Episcopal Church as a career. Before seminary, he worked in the executive office of the General Convention at denominational headquarters in New York where he advised several policy-making committees, helped plan a reorganization of the Presiding Bishop’s staff, and coordinated worship services for as many as 8,000 people. In various capacities, his work with General Convention worship spanned a total of fifteen years.
Sandy earned his undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He completed his seminary studies at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, and was ordained at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City in 2010. He has completed two courses at St. George’s College, Jerusalem, and is an alumnus of the New Memphis Institute’s program for senior executives.
Sandy is a regular contributor to the Episcopal Church Foundation’s Vital Practices blog. His scholarly work has been published in the Journal of Episcopal Church Canon Law; his letters and essays have appeared in Vital Practices, The Christian Century, The Living Church, The Commercial Appeal, and The Anglican Digest.
Sandy met and married his wife, Jessica, in Memphis.