Who We Are
Welcome to Incarnation
The Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, is a welcoming, inclusive community where people come to be fed from the riches of God's love and grace. We live and share the Good News of Jesus Christ through worship, education, fellowship, pastoral care, and service to the world.
The church is located in San Francisco's Sunset district, and worship services are normally offered in both English and Chinese. Our facility is wheelchair accessible, and assistive listening devices are available upon request.
We commit ourselves to affirming lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and welcoming them into this Christian community.
Calendar
Staff
Tom Fregoso has always called San Francisco home. Born and raised in the fog belt, the eldest of three children in an active Catholic family, he began his education at a small preschool on the campus of the University of San Francisco -- a Jesuit hilltop beacon overlooking the city he would spend his life learning to love and serve. From there he went on to Stuart Hall for grade school and Saint Ignatius College Preparatory for high school -- Go Cats! -- where a Jesuit immersion program first opened his eyes to the city's homeless community, the Mission District, and the people who fall through the cracks. That experience planted a seed.
At UC Berkeley, Tom earned a degree in Religious Studies, spending those years wrestling with big questions about faith, family, and belonging. It was at Berkeley's Episcopal Campus Ministry that he found a community where his whole family -- and all families -- were genuinely welcome. He then headed across the bay to seminary at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a few blocks north of campus on Holy Hill, where he also completed a Clinical Pastoral Education immersion as a hospital chaplain at Stanford. That experience deepened his pastoral instincts in ways that still shape how he shows up for people in crisis today.
For nearly three decades, Tom served as a youth and children's minister in parishes across the Bay Area and Southern California. His approach was simple in intention if not in practice: create spaces where young people and families could ask hard questions, put their doubts on the table, and discover that faith is big enough to hold them. He took particular joy in confirmation journeys -- not as finish lines, but as beginnings. His goal was always to send young people out equipped with a spiritual toolbox and a growing capacity for empathy, ethical reasoning, and advocacy, even as they wrestled with race, privilege, and the particular pressures of growing up in a world their parents could not have imagined. Many of those youth taught him as much as he taught them.
Now, as a priest, he is looking to do that with a larger audience.
The Rev. Thomas Fregoso - Priest in Charge
San Francisco has always been a city that reinvents itself -- and asks its people to keep becoming more generous in the process. Tom feels that every time he rides BART or Muni into the city, shoulder to shoulder with nurses, teachers, students, and city workers, all of them doing their part to make this place work for everyone who calls it home. A ninth-generation Californian and second-generation Mexican American, he carries the recent immigrant story not as history but as living memory -- a reminder that this city's magic has always been its willingness to welcome the newcomer, champion the vulnerable, and insist that the next generation inherits something worth having. From Herb Caen to the fog-laced streets of the outer neighborhoods, San Francisco has never stopped being a beacon. Tom has never stopped believing that either.
He is home now -- this time as Priest-in-Charge of Church of the Incarnation, a bilingual English-Chinese Episcopal parish in the Sunset District, just blocks from where so much of his story began. The warmth and compassion of this community -- half Anglo, half Chinese, wholly Episcopal -- have called him to walk alongside them, support them, and grow with them in faith. What drew him here was the same thing that has always drawn him: the people. Ordinary people. Remarkable grace.
Tom is married to the Rev. Krista Fregoso, an Episcopal priest serving a parish in Walnut Creek and, by any honest accounting, his greatest mentor in ministry. She has a gift for building collaborative spaces where people contribute to decisions, champion voices that get drowned out, and engage directly with those most in need. Her theological insight, her formidable endurance on the bike -- including month-long British cathedral cycling sabbaticals on a Lily Grant -- and her constant invitation to share the road together have shaped him in ways that go far beyond the parish. Together they share their home with one rambunctious rescue pup, Delilah, adopted through the Milo Foundation.
It is a privilege to be back in the neighborhood. Tom looks forward to meeting neighbors new and old -- on the street, on the train, and in the pew.
Janet Lee has made the Bay Area her home since she immigrated from Seoul, Korea to America with her family at the age of 12.
In her early years, she has won numerous competitions including Korean Daily Newspaper competition in Korea and went on to winning the Junior Bach Festival, as well as the Colorado Ridge Music Festival, performing with the orchestra at the age of 15.
She is a graduate of Sf Conservatory of Music where she earned her Bachelor of Music and since then, performed many recitals, as well as participated in Master class including Gilbert Kalish.
She also has a Masters degree in Chinese Medicine and has built a successful Chinese Medicine practice in Los Angeles, California, for many years before moving back to the Bay Area.
She has over 30 years of teaching experience in Music and she currently teaches at the West Portal Lutheran School in San Francisco where she teaches Kindergarten to 8th grade Music.
She also has worked as a church pianist/organist and served as a Music Director at several different churches both So. Cal as well as here in Northern California.
Currently, she serves as an organist at Episcopal Church of Incarnation as well as plays piano for the New Nation Korean Baptist Church.
Music is her passion and she is thankful to God for bestowing this gift/talent to serve the Lord.
Janet Lee
Sally Porter Munro is a classically trained mezzo-soprano, certified sound healer, and spiritual mentor with over 30 years of experience on international stages and in healing spaces.
Drawing from her background in opera, the Alexander Technique, Pranic Healing, and sound therapy, Sally offers a unique, heart-centered approach that blends voice, energy, and spirit.
She’s passionate about helping people reclaim their voice, clear energetic blocks, and reconnect with their true selves—whether through singing, sound bowls, or guided healing sessions.
Sally Munro
History
A History of the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco
The Church of the Incarnation has been part of San Francisco's Sunset District for more than 120 years. What began as a small mission has grown into a community defined by its willingness to welcome, adapt, and make room for the people God brings through its doors.
From Mission to Parish (1904-1959)
The story begins in 1904, when the parish was founded as a Mission of Trinity Church on Irving Street. The Sunset District was still taking shape, and the young mission grew alongside it. By 1909, the congregation had moved to its own location at 11th and Irving, and was formally established as Incarnation Church. In 1913, the Rev. W. H. Hermitage became the first Rector, and the community was recognized as Incarnation Parish.
Over the following decades, the parish put down deeper roots. A lot was purchased on 19th Avenue in 1926, and the congregation later acquired property on 29th Avenue. The Rev. Otto Herbert Aanestad began serving as Rector in 1941 and led the parish through the post-war years, a period of growth and building across the Episcopal Church. In 1959, the church at 1750 29th Avenue was dedicated, giving the community the permanent home it still occupies today.
Decades of Faithful Leadership (1960-1989)
The second half of the twentieth century brought a succession of rectors who each served the parish through seasons of change in San Francisco, the Episcopal Church, and the wider culture. The Rev. Hugh Weaver began in 1960, followed by the Rev. James Jones (1965), the Rev. James Vevea (1970), and the Rev. Barry Beisner (1983). In 1989, a pipe organ was installed, marking a milestone in the parish's worship life and reflecting the congregation's investment in the beauty of liturgy.
A Wider Welcome: LGBT Affirmation and Asian Community (1997-2006)
The late 1990s and early 2000s represent a pivotal chapter in Incarnation's story, as the parish made concrete commitments to communities that much of the Church was still learning to welcome.
The Rev. Charles Gibbs began serving as Rector in 1997, and the Rev. Eugenia Kinney also served during this period. Under their leadership, the parish deepened its identity as a place of genuine welcome. In 1999, Incarnation became home to an Oasis group. Oasis was a movement within the Episcopal Church that created intentionally safe, affirming spaces for LGBT Episcopalians and their families at a time when full inclusion was still being debated at every level of the denomination. For Incarnation to host an Oasis community was a public statement: this parish would not wait for the wider Church to catch up before welcoming all of God's people. That commitment to LGBT affirmation remains central to the parish's identity today.
In 2004, Incarnation began offering a Chinese-language service, responding to the growing Chinese and Chinese American population in the Sunset District and the Richmond. This was more than a translation of existing worship. It was an act of hospitality that recognized the neighborhood as it actually was, and it invited a new community into the full life of the parish. That decision planted the seeds of the bilingual English-Chinese ministry that defines Incarnation today. The parish's Chinese name, 道顯堂, reflects a theological identity that belongs to the whole community, not a separate program but an integrated expression of who the church is.
The Rev. David Lui began his tenure in 2006 and continued to build on this foundation, serving a parish that was becoming more diverse and more intentionally rooted in its neighborhood.
Transition and Renewal (2014-Present)
The Rev. Darrin Miner served as Rector from 2014 to 2024, shepherding the parish through a decade that included significant change in both the neighborhood and the diocese. After his departure, the parish entered a time of transition, with the Rev. Christian Laird serving as supply priest through the end of 2025.
In March 2026, Fr. Tom Fregoso began as Priest-in-Charge. The parish continues as a small, bilingual, welcoming community in the Sunset District, shaped by its long history and oriented toward the future. Incarnation's story has always been one of making room: for a new neighborhood, for new languages, for people the Church has not always welcomed, and for whatever God is doing next.
Come join us on our journey.