Milestone of Faith
ZELIENOPLE — The congregation of St. Paul Lutheran Church, 215 N. Main St., aren't letting the COVID-19 pandemic derail their plans for celebrating the church's 200th birthday.
The church's bicentennial committee has slated a year's worth of events to mark the founding of the church. It started with a New Year's community liturgy at 6 p.m. Dec. 31 to coincide with midnight in Germany.
Ralph Lowe, a member of Calvin Presbyterian Church in Zelienople, was a guest in the pulpit in February in recognition of Black History Month. March's featured event was an organ concert Sunday.
St. Paul's pastor, the Rev. Timothy Dawes, said concerts, visits and special events will continue once a month throughout the year.
It's a fitting celebration for a church whose origins are tightly entwined with Zelienople.
Dawes said St. Paul Lutheran Church was organized Sept. 12, 1821, by a group of German settlers led by Bishop Johann C. G. Schweitzerbarth.Schweitzerbarth, the first resident minister of Zelienople, came to this country in 1819, sent by Dettmar Basse, founder of Zelienople, to establish and build a church in Zelienople.St. Paul Church, according to Dawes, has strong ties to the Passavant family, one of the most prominent and influential pioneer families of Zelienople. Philippe Louis Passavant and his wife, Fredericka Wilhelmina “Zelie” Basse-Passavant, the daughter of Dettmar Basse, donated land for the church and its cemetery.They also donated material and labor toward the building of the church, completed in 1826.William Passavant, the youngest son of Philippe and Zelie Passavant was baptized and confirmed in this church.Passavant founded more than 40 hospitals and institutions throughout the United States.“William Passavant is kind of a star,” Dawes said.Dawes said the church was designed by John Henry Hopkins to be one of the first Gothic churches in North America.“The original services were in German,” he said. “When the non-Germans wanted a service in their own language, they founded the English Lutheran Church nearby in 1843.”Dawes said Hopkins' original church has undergone many renovations in its two centuries.“There have been two steeples added and removed from the front. They added more to the building to put the organ in,” he said.The church added the Strobel social hall in 1960.Dawes said the church congregation numbers 200 but in-person worship services have been attracting 35 to 40 people weekly because of mask and social distancing mandates.There were no services at all between St. Patrick's Day 2020 and Holy Week 2020. Dawes, who also serves as pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, said the churches began streaming a remote service then.With the resumption of in-person Sunday services, Dawes officiates at a 9 a.m. service at St. Paul and a 10:45 a.m. at Zion. “Because of their size, neither church could sustain the salary of a pastor, so they went halfsies,” Dawes said.Future bicentennial events include Bishop Kurt Kusserow, leader of the Southwest Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, serving as guest minister Sept. 19 and a rededication of St. Paul Cemetery Nov. 1, All Saints' Day.“We're going to have the liturgical service outside. Hopefully it won't rain or snow,” Dawes said.“It's maintained the faith of people of all different groups now,” he said. “The church has ministered to the needs of the people for 200 years.”The 200-year milestone is significant among churches in the United States.“In Europe, it's like it's a baby church,” Dawes said.The bishop said St. Paul was not the oldest of the 158 churches in the Southwest Pennsylvania Synod.“Harold Zion in Greensburg dates back to 1772,” Kusserow said. “Our earliest congregants came over the ridge and settled on the west side the same time as Forbes' army.”“Two hundred years is not nothing. And William Passavant was a member of the church,” the bishop said. “He was a giant of a figure in our history.”
