About Our Priest
The Rev. Mother Adrienne R. Hymes, Vicar
Mother Adrienne Hymes was called by The Rt. Rev. Dabney Smith, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida, in 2016 to serve on his staff as the Missioner for Church Extension. In this role she served as Chaplain and Director at the St. Anselm’s Episcopal Chapel Center at the University of South Florida (USF) Tampa campus. Hymes was also tasked with leading the visioning, formation and nurturing of the new church “plant,” Wesley Chapel Episcopal Church. Mother Hymes was ordained priest in May 2018 in this diocese.
A natural entrepreneur, Mthr. Hymes’ more than 13 years of experience as a seasoned public relations and marketing executive in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, have uniquely equipped her to engage and access frontiers traditionally closed to the Church. Leveraging these skills enabled Hymes to develop foundational frameworks for St. Paul’s (formerly Wesley Chapel Episcopal Church), and to embrace the necessary nimbleness a new faith community requires to nurture congregational vitality.
Mother Hymes is a clinically-trained chaplain, specializing in loss and grief, having completed a full-time, one-year Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) residency at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, and one year as an ER trauma chaplain at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg. She is an internationally published advocate for the specialized practice of workplace chaplaincy, and has studied the practice extensively in the U.S. and the U.K.
A life-long Episcopalian, Mother Hymes earned her Master in Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, VA (2014) and her B.A. degree in Rhetoric and Communications Studies from The University of Virginia (1994) in Charlottesville, VA. Hymes is a native of Richmond, VA.
