Father Mead came to Saint Thomas in 1996 after serving the Church of the Advent in Boston as Rector for eleven years. Prior to that he was Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pennsylvania, from 1978 to 1985. Earlier ministries include positions at the Parish of All Saints, Ashmont (Boston); St. Paul’s, Wallingford, Connecticut; and St. John the Evangelist, Yalesville, Connecticut.

Born in Rochester, New York, in 1946, Andrew Craig Mead received his BA from DePauw University and MDiv from Yale University Divinity School. He was ordained Deacon and Priest in 1971. In 1972 he married Nancy Anne Hoxsie of Narragansett, Rhode Island. They have two children and three grandchildren.

In 1974 the degree of MLitt was conferred upon Father Mead by Oxford University, where he studied at Keble College, successfully defending a thesis entitled A Critical Investigation of the Controversy between Newman and the Tractarians over the Development of Doctrine. During his two-year residence at Oxford from 1971 through 1973, Father Mead lived in and served the Parish of Cowley St. John.

Since 1987 Father Mead has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Nashotah House Theological Seminary, which bestowed the degree Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa, in May, 2002.

In recognition of Saint Thomas Church’s ministry to New York’s British community in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, particularly at an interfaith service on September 20 addressed by Prime Minister Tony Blair and broadcast live in its entirety throughout the United Kingdom, Father Mead was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. The honor was conferred at a ceremony in October, 2002, at the British Embassy in Washington.

Committed to doctrinal orthodoxy in teaching and pastoral work, Father Mead has had long experience in the liturgical heritage of Catholic Anglicanism, grounded in the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer. As a parish priest in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, he provides pastoral leadership through teaching and preaching, sacramental devotion and nurture, spiritual counsel, and pastoral care.