Abiding Peace Lutheran Church sits along US Highway 46 in Budd Lake, a small community in the hills of Morris County, New Jersey. The building is easy to find, with views of Budd Lake from the windows, and the congregation that gathers inside has built a reputation for a kind of welcome that goes far beyond the polite church sign. On October 30, 2022, the membership voted unanimously to become a Reconciling in Christ congregation, publicly affirming the full inclusion and celebration of people of all sexualities, genders, and gender expressions and committing to the work of racial equity. The vote was the conclusion of a formal two-year study, but the posture behind it is older than that. Pastor Serena Rice, who has led the congregation for years, preaches that the call of the gospel is expansive, and the church's own welcome statement names it plainly: whoever you are and wherever you find yourself on your journey of faith, you are most welcome here.
A Welcome That Means What It Says
The Abiding Peace welcome statement is unusually long, and that is the point. It extends a loving welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, or widowed; to people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions; to those who are rich, comfortable, or experiencing financial hardship. It welcomes wailing babies and excited toddlers, those who can sing like Pavarotti and those who can only hum. It welcomes people of all ethnicities, races, immigration statuses, and primary languages, and affirms the church's commitment to racial equity. It welcomes the deeply religious and the confirmed-but-backsliding; those who are questioning their faith, those raised in another tradition, and those who have never before entered a church.
The statement names people who are over 60 but not yet grown up and teenagers growing up way too fast, the inked and the pierced and both, veterans and those in active service and draft-dodgers, people of all political affiliations. It welcomes those in recovery (grape juice is offered at communion) and those still addicted, those who work too hard and those who do not work, those who are vision or hearing impaired, those with physical and mental health conditions, and children, youth, and adults with special needs. It extends a special welcome to those who could use a prayer right now, had religion shoved upon them as a child, or simply took the wrong road and ended up here by mistake. The statement even invites people who find something in it bothersome to come talk about it. The list ends with the line: Whoever you are, we welcome YOU, because we all need this same welcome, and we want to share the welcome we have received.
The words are borrowed in part from the welcome statements of Coventry Cathedral, St. John's Episcopal Church, and Trinity Lutheran Church in Dover, and they set the tone for everything else the congregation does.
The Journey to Reconciling in Christ
In 2021 the congregation formally began its journey to become a Reconciling in Christ congregation, working with the Lutheran advocacy organization Reconciling Works. Using their Setting the Table for All to be Fed curriculum, the church spent a year and a half learning, exploring, sharing, and growing together. On October 30, 2022 the membership unanimously voted to embrace a revised welcome statement that lives into the RIC commitments. In the spring of 2023 the congregation held an eight-week Bible study exploring what the Bible teaches about welcome and inclusion for LGBTQ+ people; recordings of those classes remain available on the church's YouTube channel. The congregation has been clear that the learning is not done, and that the public commitment is the beginning of an ongoing practice rather than a destination.
Abiding Peace is part of the New Jersey Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and its commitments connect to broader synod and church-wide initiatives, including work on immigration and racial justice through the synod's Immigration Task Force and partnerships with Lutheran Social Ministries of New Jersey, Lutheran Disaster Response, and Lutheran World Hunger.
Sunday Morning: Worship, Forum, and Children's Time
Worship is held every Sunday at 10:00 am, both in person and via a Facebook Live stream that anyone can watch even without a Facebook account. The building is staffed on Sundays from 9:00 am to noon, and the food pantry is open for bag pickup during those hours. Most Sundays after worship, at 11:15 am, an Adult Forum gathers for a topical conversation; the forum runs September through June and offers Zoom participation. Sunday School for children is offered every other week during the service, also September through June. Mid-week, the congregation gathers for Bible study, fellowship, or worship at various points throughout the year, with the weekly schedule published in the worship bulletin.
The worship service follows Lutheran liturgy. It includes collective prayer, confession and absolution, readings from scripture, congregational song, and communion. Grape juice is offered at communion so that those in recovery can fully participate. The music is led by Music Director Benjamin Schroeder and includes both a choir and a praise band, drawing on anthems by well- and little-known composers spanning from the Renaissance to the present day alongside congregational music that anyone can join. Through dance, the Word of God becomes visible; through a drama ministry, the stories of the Bible and the voices of faith from today and from the past are told in ways that challenge worshippers to see from new angles.
Pastor Rice's preaching style is conversational, theologically engaged, and often politically frank. Sermons are written and shared, and audio recordings of most sermons are hosted on SoundCloud with links from each written text. Recent sermon series have included a Lenten journey through the Palm Sunday Path, an interdenominational preaching initiative that asks Christian communities to follow Jesus along the path he walked into Jerusalem and on to the cross, witnessing to a way of defiant peace that confronts systems of oppression without using their tools. The preaching draws on Working Preacher, SALT Project, Journey with Jesus, and other progressive biblical commentary resources, and the church's sermon archive stretches back through dozens of posts covering the lectionary year.
The Loving Dialogue Commitment
Abiding Peace has long been a place where people with very different political and theological views sit in the same pews. In early 2017 the congregation began a structured community conversation it calls the Loving Dialogue. The starting question was honest: how do people with diverse political viewpoints talk to each other about things that matter to them, and how does the church engage the call to serve the world around them when those conversations are hard?
The Loving Dialogue is not a list of rules for playing nice. It is an orientation toward community that pushes members to listen well and to seek transformation in themselves and in others. The commitment begins with shared theological foundations: that God is refuge and strength; that God is faithful to save; that faith calls the community to trust in a future filled with hope; that perfect love drives out fear; that members are individually gifted and called together to be the body of Christ; and that the great commandment is to love God and love one another. From that foundation the congregation commits to approach each other as equals with love, tolerance, kindness, patience, trust, respect, acceptance, and awareness of individual complexity. Members commit to call each other to faith, careful listening, accountability, responsibility, compromise, cooperation, peace, growth, action, forgiveness, inclusiveness, and reformation, knowing that they will fail and trusting in Christ's saving grace to renew them and call them to new life. The premise is that the times when members disagree are the times they should lean in and seek a deeper conversation, even if they do not change each other's minds.
Beliefs
Abiding Peace confesses the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as Creator, Redeemer, and Advocate, and Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The congregation believes in the Word of God, received in Jesus Christ the Word incarnate, in proclamation as both Law and Gospel, and in the canonical Scriptures as the authoritative source and norm for proclamation, faith, and life. It accepts the historic creeds (Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian) as true declarations of the faith and the Lutheran Confessions as faithful witnesses and interpretations of the faith. The church is gathered around Word and Sacrament, and its worship flows into witness and service that proclaims God's love to a broken world. It describes itself as awash in God's baptismal grace and committed to creating a safe place for all of God's children.
The congregation is a Reconciling in Christ congregation, committed to the full inclusion and celebration of people of all sexualities, genders, and gender expressions and to the work of racial equity. It maintains a deep and abiding commitment to ministry with children and youth, engages in global mission with deep respect for the gifts of partners in other lands and understands that mission engagement is primarily focused in accompaniment, and commits to being a public church working for justice and peace for all. The congregation values theological education, the vocation of the baptized to ministry in daily life, and interdependence across the three expressions of the ELCA, supporting Lutheran Services in America, Lutheran World Relief, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Lutheran Disaster Response, and the Lutheran World Federation.
Outreach: Food, Faith Kitchen, and the Garden
The congregation's hunger work is rooted in the conviction that being church means responding to the needs of neighbors. The church hosts a food pantry that distributes non-perishable bags during staffed hours on Wednesdays (4:00 to 9:00 pm), Thursdays (9:00 am to noon), and Sundays (9:00 am to noon). Donations can be dropped off during those hours or left under the eaves when the building is closed.
On the first Tuesday of each month, members of Abiding Peace prepare and serve a hot lunch at Faith Kitchen, a soup kitchen in Dover, New Jersey. The church has also been involved with the creation of Mt. Olive Senior Housing and continues to walk alongside the residents there, delivering produce from the church's community garden, hosting an annual birthday party for residents, and offering a monthly prayer service with communion.
The community garden produces vegetables that are shared with Mt. Olive Manor and with the Mt. Olive Food Pantry. And the church's fellowship hall fills with food regularly, because eating together is a spiritual practice at Abiding Peace. The Wednesday AA support group meets at the church at 6:30 pm, and online support group options are available through the church.
Sharing the Building
Under the heading Welcome, Service, Community, Abiding Peace opens much of its building to outside groups. The sanctuary seats up to 100 with moveable seating and a raised altar area and is equipped with a keyboard, sound system, and livestreaming capacity, making it suitable for recitals, performances, life celebrations, and weddings. The Fellowship Hall is a sub-dividable, L-shaped room of 848 square feet connected to the kitchen, with solid surface flooring. The Narthex, adjacent to the sanctuary, has a built-in buffet area convenient for coffee service and food. A 475-square-foot Conference Room can be divided, with separate entrances and a private bathroom, and a 370-square-foot office or meeting room offers lake views and natural light.
Every room has internet and phone lines, and the entire facility is fully ADA accessible, including the restroom. There is a shared warming kitchen (for warming only, not full food preparation), ample parking, and easy access from Route 46. Reservations are taken Monday through Saturday for one-time events or longer-term rentals, with initial payment confirming the booking. The building use agreement requires that all publicity avoid exclusionary language based on gender, sexuality, race, religion, or national origin, reflecting the congregation's welcome commitments. Spaces are rented to non-profits, service providers, arts programs, community organizations, and neighbors at affordable rates, and the congregation sees this work as a natural extension of its calling to be church in the world.
Pastoral Leadership and Staff
Pastor Serena Rice, the congregation's pastor, is also an artist whose fused glass work has a place in the worship space. Her preaching tends to weave personal narrative, biblical commentary, and contemporary social concern into a single sermon, often landing on themes of welcome, vulnerability, identity, and accompaniment. She is also active in the Mt. Olive Clergy Association and across the New Jersey Synod, and she publishes a weekly Friday e-mail reflection for those who would like to be added to the list.
Music Director Benjamin Schroeder directs the choir and praise band, drawing on a repertoire that spans the Renaissance to the present. Administrative Assistant Erin Porter staffs the office on Thursday mornings and responds to rental inquiries and general questions through the aplcbuddlake@gmail.com address.
Office hours are limited. Pastor Rice keeps Wednesday office hours from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm; the office administrator is in on Thursdays from 9:00 am to noon. Because voicemail is not checked every day, the church asks people to e-mail for the quickest response and to call the pastor's cell phone directly only for urgent or hospitalization matters. The church also warns members about persistent scam attempts in which bad actors impersonate pastors by e-mail or text and ask for gift card purchases, with the warning to always contact the pastor directly through a known channel rather than reply to a suspicious message.
Online Connections
Worship is livestreamed on Facebook Live, and the link works for anyone, even those without a Facebook account. Past sermons are written and posted at length, each linked to its audio recording. A YouTube channel hosts a longer playlist of recordings and the 2023 Bible study on welcome and inclusion. Pastor Rice also maintains a SoundCloud account with sermon recordings and a WhatsApp group for those who want a more immediate community channel. The View from the Lake newsletter is published monthly and available as PDFs going back several years, and there is a Venmo option for donations, along with an online donation portal that supports both one-time and recurring gifts.
Visiting for the First Time
Sunday worship begins at 10:00 am and lasts roughly an hour, followed by an Adult Forum at 11:15 am for those who want to stay and dig into a topic. There is no dress code; people wear what they wear. Children are welcomed in worship, with an every-other-week Sunday School option during the service for September through June. The building is fully ADA accessible, with accessible parking and restrooms, and the pastor welcomes people with vision or hearing impairment. Communion includes grape juice for those in recovery from alcohol. Visitors who would like to talk before arriving are welcome to e-mail the pastor at pastorserena@optimum.net; for those who simply want to show up on Sunday morning, the building is easy to find on Route 46, the parking lot is ample, and there will be coffee and people who are glad to meet them.