sf standard feature

Huge thanks to writer Julie Zigoris and videographer Morgan Ellis for their wonderful work on this article- and thanks to everyone at the San Francisco Standard for their support.

Pastor Stacy Boorn doesn’t need to look far for proof of women’s importance—it’s embodied in the landscape beside her periwinkle, lavender and magenta church, a prominent local landmark near one of San Francisco’s highest points.

“We’re in the shadow of Twin Peaks,” Boorn said, referring to the city’s famous bosom-shaped hills. “And holy places are often on mountaintops.”

Like the natural world itself, Boorn’s establishment of herchurch on Portola Avenue—still technically the Ebenezer Lutheran Church, whose first two locations were founded by Swedish immigrants in the Mission District in 1884—was organic. Its first seed was planted in 2003, when a second-grade class created a goddess mosaic on an exterior wall.

That seed grew to a sapling after Boorn……………