The Rev. Frances Ann Hills
The Rev. Frances Ann Hills ("Francie") became the full time Rector of St. James on December 1, 2007. She is a member of the Bishop Search Committee, the Commission on Ministry, and the Constitution and Canons Committee of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. She is active in the Berkshire Deanery and the South Berkshire Ecumenical Group. As a member of the Great Barrington Rotary, she serves on the Youth Exchange Committee. She is on the board of Bostwick Gardens, a low-income housing development, which was named for St. James' first full-time rector, Gideon Bostwick. Francie is also a Chaplain for Trinity Wall Street’s Clergy Leadership Project in West Cornwall, Connecticut.
Before coming to St. James, she served as Rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Elyria, Ohio for 11 years. Prior to taking her position in Elyria, Francie was Assistant Rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Maumee, Ohio for 4 years. From 1991 to 1992, she served as chaplain for a public hospital and as the interim chaplain at St. Andrew's Episcopal Day School in Amarillo, Texas.

Francie earned a Master of Divinity degree from The Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas in 1991 and was ordained to the priesthood on March 4, 1993 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Maumee, OH. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from Oklahoma State University (Stillwater) in 1971.

Charles Olegar
Charles Olegar is presently in his eighth year as music minister at James Church in Great Barrington, and fifth decade as a professional church musician. Olegar began his career at age fifteen, in his native Akron, Ohio, where he studied piano with Nicholas Constantinidis and organ with Farley K. Hutchins. Following conservatory and graduate study in Cleveland and Kent, Olegar entered the profession full-time in 1975, associated with the Episcopal Church for the most part, but also serving a variety of denominations in the Great Lakes and, for five years, the Deep South, which included a period at the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile, Alabama.

Over the course of two decades in western Michigan, Olegar concentrated largely on English church music, forming two community-based choirs of men and boys affiliated to the Royal School of Church Music, which earned several competition prizes and international recognition, including first prizes in England's Edward Elgar Festival. Since 1995, he has placed renewed emphasis on organ playing.

On tour with the Battle Creek Boychoir and Grand Rapids Choir of Men & Boys, Olegar appeared in venues in the eastern half of the USA, Canada, and in England. In addition to such concert halls as the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan, and Interlochen Arts Academy, he has conducted in an array of cathedrals and churches in Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, St Louis, Chicago, Toronto, and Montreal, among other American cities. In England Olegar has performed at Westminster Abbey, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and at the cathedrals in Worcester and St Alban. In 1990, the Wessex Theological Seminary in England made Charles Olegar an honorary Fellow in recognition of his representation of the English church music tradition in America.

Olegar's solo organ playing associated with St. James, Great Barrington, has thusfar generated three CD's: Bach and Beyond, I, ...II, and Travail to Triumph. This past year he released the first of a multi-volume archival memoirs/recordings set from the 1990's, featuring his Grand Rapids Choir of Men & Boys.