Good Shepherd offers a robust program of high church Anglican worship, using the Book of Common Prayer (1979).

[2] The parish was founded in 1869 as part of the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement revival in the Anglican Church,[3] and was admitted to the Diocese of Pennsylvania in 1871.

Its original church building, demolished in 1901,[4] was on the north side of Lancaster Avenue, just east of the present football stadium of Villanova University.

[7] Above the main (north) entrance to the church is a polychrome statue depicting the boy Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

[12] In 1929 the artist and parishioner George Fort Gibbs created seven paintings for the high altar's reredos as a memorial to his parents.

Models for the male images ranged from the artist's sons, to lifeguards on Nantucket Island, students at Haverford College, and (for the Roman soldiers) Italian sailors aboard the SS Leonardo da Vinci.

It was installed at the urging of a parishioner, Lt. Gen. Milton Baker, who also established the nearby Valley Forge Military Academy and College.

[11] There is a columbarium and funerary chapel in the crypt of the church, along with a burial vault containing the remains of benefactor Harry Banks French and members of his family.