Our Vicar

The Rev. Dr. Stephen C. Sturgeon is a Bay Area native, having been born in Berkeley and lived in Moraga until he was ten years old. An only child, Steve’s parents were both teachers. His dad (Jack) was a history teacher at Del Valle High School in Walnut Creek, and his mom (Jane) was an elementary teacher and, later, a resource specialist. She worked at various schools in Walnut Creek and Concord, retiring from Holbrook Elementary in 2002.

In 1978, Steve’s family moved to the Midwest and took up farming. He lived in rural Missouri thorough high school, and then attended Grinnell College in Iowa. In 1986, Steve’s parents returned to California and settled in Clayton, where his mom still lives. (Steve’s dad passed away in 1999.) Following college, Steve attended graduate school at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he received a Ph.D. in American history in 1998. His dissertation, The Politics of Western Water, was subsequently published by the University of Arizona Press. Steve also obtained an MLS degree from UC Berkeley.

While in graduate school, Steve met his wife Stacy, who has worked most of her life in book-related jobs (academic publishing, medical publishing), and now is the manager of Towne Center Books in Pleasanton and Livermore. In 1999, Steve and Stacy moved to Logan, Utah, where he worked for a dozen years as a librarian at Utah State University. In 2004 their daughter, Gwyn, was born, now a freshman attending Pacific University in Oregon.

After moving to Utah, Steve and Stacy started attending the local Episcopal Church. The priest serving there was the Rev. Ruth Eller (who previously served in various jobs in the Diocese of California), and she encouraged Steve to begin considering becoming a deacon. After going through the discernment process, he was ordained in June 2010. As part of his training for the diaconate, Steve spent the fall of 2009 working part-time as a chaplain at St. Mark’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. In 2011, he returned to St. Mark’s and worked full-time for a year as a student in the chaplain residency program.

In 2012, the Bishop of Utah, Scott Hayashi, encouraged Steve to become a candidate for the priesthood. Steve was ordained in February 2014, and installed as the vicar of his home parish, St. John’s in Logan, Utah, where he served for six years until moving to the Bay Area in the fall of 2020. For the past two years, Steve has been doing supply work at local parishes in the East Bay.  He starts his ministry with St John's and St Michael's parishes on October 16, 2022