Faith Lutheran Church sits at 524 South Street in New Providence, New Jersey, a short walk from the train line and the small downtown that gives this Union County borough its name. The congregation calls itself the "Family of Faith," a name members and staff use constantly, and it has become the simplest way to describe the place: a church that gathers weekly around Word and Sacrament and then disperses into a remarkable number of kitchens, food pantries, hospital rooms, classrooms, and soup lines across New Jersey and beyond. Faith is a member congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, part of the New Jersey Synod, and the building has been the home base for that work for decades.
Two Sunday Liturgies, Open Communion, and the Cross That Dominates the Sanctuary
Worship is the center of life at Faith. Two Eucharistic liturgies are offered every Sunday morning. At 8:00 a.m. the spoken liturgy of the word is celebrated with Holy Communion in a quieter, more contemplative setting. At 10:00 a.m. the principal liturgy unfolds with music, congregational singing, the choir, and Communion, and that service is livestreamed on the congregation's Facebook page and YouTube channel for those who cannot be in the pews. Festival liturgies throughout the church year add instrumentalists, soloists, and additional choirs to enrich the morning.
Faith practices an open communion table. The congregation's own description is unusually explicit: all who believe, as Faith does, that in the real presence of the sacrament they encounter God's forgiveness, grace, and gift of eternal life are invited to share in Christ's meal. Visitors are welcomed at the door before and after each service by pastors, members of the Church Council, and First Impressions representatives, who are on hand to answer questions and help newcomers find their way around.
The sanctuary itself reflects the liturgical center of the parish. A large cross dominates the worship space and is described by the congregation as a constant reminder of God's grace. Members of all ages serve as worship assistants in roles including Assisting Minister, Lector, Usher, Acolyte, and Crucifer, and behind the scenes the Altar Guild and Counter teams prepare for each liturgy. All-in-one communion kits are consecrated during the liturgy and made available for pickup in the Narthex after the service.
Sunday Mornings at Faith: Education from Age Three Through Adult
The Christian education hour at 8:45 a.m. is what holds the morning together for families with children and for adults who want to dig deeper. Programs run from September through June on Sunday mornings and pause during the summer, resuming each year on Rally Day in mid-September. Rally Day itself is a marked event on the parish calendar, with the 10:00 a.m. liturgy often given a distinctive musical treatment in recent years, such as a New Orleans Jazz Liturgy.
Sunday Church School begins at age three and walks students through the stories of the faith, hands-on ministry projects, and music. Students in grades six through eight study the Bible and Luther's teachings in a curriculum that feeds directly into the Confirmation program. Youth Forum provides high schoolers with fellowship and a more practical study of faith, with older teens also serving as mentors and peer leaders for younger members. Adults gather during the same hour for the Adult Forum, a long-running series of Bible studies, retreats, symposia, study trips, and intergenerational evenings on topics of interest. Special speakers appear regularly.
The Christian formation pathway at Faith is laid out clearly. Baptism is described as a central act that joins the child to the wider community of Christ. First Communion is prepared for in fifth grade during a Lenten retreat and is celebrated during worship on Holy Thursday. Confirmation is an intensive multi-year program for youth in grades six through eight that combines weekly Sunday School classes, weekday evening course blocks in early fall and during Lent, and weekend intensives. The whole arc is reinforced by an annual Confirmation Retreat, which in recent years has been shared with confirmands from Faith's mission partner St. Stephan's Grace in Newark.
Music at Faith: Choirs, Bells, and the Gluck Pipe Organ
Music is not a department at Faith so much as a way the congregation prays. The principal instrument in the sanctuary is the Gluck Pipe Organ Opus 13, completed in 2011. It combines quality pipes from the church's previous organ, new pipework, and restored vintage ranks, and was designed specifically to lead Lutheran liturgy and hymn singing. Shea Velloso, the Minister of Music, is an organist trained at Mason Gross School of the Arts who has pursued postgraduate work with Paul-Martin Maki and Gordon Turk. He is a past Dean of the American Guild of Organists, Middlesex Chapter, and has appeared on the national radio program Pipedreams.
Five vocal and instrumental ensembles shape the worship life of the church. The Sanctuary Choir, open to singers aged thirteen through adult with no audition required, leads worship at the 10:00 a.m. liturgy on the first, third, and occasional fifth Sundays of each month from September through mid-June. Rehearsals are Wednesdays from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. and cover choral repertoire from many periods, vocal technique, diction, and the basics of music reading. A Summer Choir takes over from mid-June through August, with rehearsals Sunday mornings at 8:45 a.m., preparing unison anthems the day of the service. The Faith Quartet leads worship on the second and fourth Sundays of the month on a rotating, no-commitment basis, ideal for singers who cannot sustain a full rehearsal schedule.
Children are not left out. The Children's Choir, for students in first through eighth grades, rehearses weekly at 8:45 a.m. and sings at the 10:00 a.m. liturgy once a month, as well as at the 4:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service, Palm Sunday, and Easter. A program called Music Makers, held on the third Sunday of the month, introduces rhythm, singing, instruments, and instrument-building. The congregation's bell choir, the Faith Bell Ringers, plays a set of fifty Malmark Handbells spanning six octaves and rehearses Wednesdays from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The choir room and bell ringers are open to teens and adults; prior ringing experience is helpful but not required.
Concerts extend the music ministry beyond Sunday mornings. An annual Memorial Day Weekend Concert presents works by American composers, a Salute to the Armed Forces, and John Philip Sousa marches. A Music of Winter and Epiphany concert each January offers a seasonal program, and a Spring Organ Recital showcases the Gluck instrument. Free admission is offered at all of these.
Hungers and Housing: Soup Kitchens, Food Drives, and Family Promise
Hunger and housing work is the largest single category of outreach at Faith, and the congregation has been at it for a long time. Faith's relationship with St. John's Roman Catholic Soup Kitchen in Newark spans more than forty years. On the second Saturday of each month, volunteers from the parish travel into Newark to cook and serve a noon meal. In addition, the church prepares hundreds of sandwiches each week, averaging 775, with fresh fruit, baked goods, snacks, clothing, and toiletries. Sandwiches, unopened boxes of granola bars, cereal bars, and snacks are delivered to the soup kitchen every Thursday morning at 9:00 a.m., with all donations due in the church by 8:45 a.m.
Faith's hunger ministry also fills shelves at the StarFish Interfaith Food Pantry in Plainfield and the Somerset County Food Bank in Bound Brook. A community-wide Fall Food Drive in November draws hundreds of volunteers to the church to sort and pack donated food, with local Boy Scouts and neighbors joining the effort. On average more than 600 boxes are packed, with about 250 going to local families through the Community Service Association of New Providence and the remainder transported to StarFish on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. A Spring Food Collection gathers specific grocery items, ranging from peanut butter and tuna to reusable grocery bags, paper towels, and coffee, for the same partners.
Family Promise and its predecessor the Interfaith Hospitality Network have been partners of the parish for more than three decades. Faith hosts families experiencing homelessness four times a year, with church members cooking and serving as overnight hosts, providing in-kind donations, financial support, and supermarket gift cards. The CROP Walk, a three-mile walk through New Providence each fall in cooperation with Church World Service, raises funds to fight global hunger, with 25 percent of the money Faith collects returned locally to St. John's Soup Kitchen. In 2023 Church World Service honored Faith with a Legacy Congregation Award for its twenty-five-year partnership, during which the congregation helped raise nearly $138,000 for CWS programs.
The Wider Reach: AIDS Care, Coats, Bikes, and Rooted Local Partnerships
Faith's community ministry goes well beyond food. Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, the parish has provided regular support to Broadway House for Continuing Care in Newark, New Jersey's only specialized care facility for people living with HIV/AIDS and one of a handful in the country. Faith is the only organized group that volunteers on a regular basis at Broadway House, sending volunteers on the first Tuesday of each month from 9:00 a.m. to noon to lead games, activities, and crafts. Members donate magazines and puzzle books, clothing, and subscriptions, and the Knit, Purl and Pray group makes lap blankets, scarves, and hats specifically for the residents.
The Christmas Sharing Tree gathers gifts for children and adults served by social service agencies, including the Community Service Association of New Providence, the ARC of Union County, Cheshire Home in Florham Park, and the parish's mission partner St. Stephan's Grace in Newark. A fall Coat Collection sends new and gently used coats to men, women, and children through Market Street Mission in Morristown. Each summer the parish collects more than 150 backpacks filled with school supplies for children in Plainfield and Newark, with the bulk going to St. Stephan's Grace.
Faith hosts the Dawn Patrol, an early morning AA group that meets in person and online from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday. The church also hosts an annual Thanksgiving Day Alkathon that gathers hundreds of people from the region for speakers, meetings, food, and fellowship throughout the day. Other rooted local partnerships include Imagine, A Center for Coping with Loss, which provides free peer-led programs for children, families, and communities dealing with illness, death, or tragedy, and Roots and Wings, which supports young adults aged eighteen to twenty-five aging out of the New Jersey foster care system. Faith also helped remodel a residential home in 2003 in partnership with the ARC of Union County to provide a group home for developmentally disabled adults and continues to support those residents with visits, gardening, and maintenance.
The Green Team addresses care of creation, running ongoing recycling at the church, volunteering at recycling centers and park clean-ups, planting and tending a community garden, and hosting a green bin in the parking lot to recycle old books and divert waste from landfills.
Global Mission: Tanzania, Newark's Ironbound, and Pedals for Progress
Faith's mission reach extends across an ocean and into the city. The parish has maintained a relationship with Masama Mboreny Lutheran Parish in Moshi, Tanzania since 1989, when the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was beginning a program to bring pastors from growing churches in the developing world to the United States. Over the life of the partnership, Faith has contributed several hundred thousand dollars to the parish in Tanzania, funding that has built a nursery school and kindergarten, a granary, a village electrical supply, and a roof on the church. The parish has also funded hunger and AIDS education programs, supplied medication and surgical and medical equipment, paid for graduate and theological education for lay leaders and pastors, and shared scholarship money for local children. A church bell used to announce worship services was located and shipped to Tanzania with support from the New Jersey Women of the ELCA.
Closer to home, Faith has a long-standing partnership with St. Stephan's Grace Community, a Lutheran congregation in the Ironbound section of Newark that worships in English, Spanish, and Portuguese and is led by Pastor Moacir Weirich. Pastor Moacir and his wife were called as missionaries from Brazil and sent to New Jersey in 1997. Faith provides annual financial support, and the parish's backpack and Christmas gift drives channel supplies and presents to St. Stephan's children. Each month members of Faith tutor children in first grade through high school and teach English lessons to parents and other adults in the Ironbound community. Confirmands from the two parishes gather together each spring for a shared Confirmation Retreat.
Pedals for Progress provides the third leg of the parish's global ministry. Faith collects used bicycles and working sewing machines year-round on behalf of P4P, a 501(c)(3) organization that ships bikes to people in Latin America, Africa, Thailand, and the Pacific Islands, and sewing machines to people seeking income opportunities in developing countries. Bikes may be left in the lower lot next to the utility shed and sewing machines under the sheltered alcove by the main doors at the bottom of the lot; the church holds them until the next collection day. A donation of at least twenty dollars per item is requested to cover the more than fifty dollars per item in collection and shipping costs.
Knit, Purl and Pray: One Ministry That Touches All the Others
If there is a single activity that connects Faith's sprawling outreach portfolio, it is the Knit, Purl and Pray group. Members knit and crochet handmade scarves, hats, lap robes, prayer shawls, pocket hearts, baby hats, blankets, and "happy octopuses" that are distributed to nearly every partner the parish serves: St. John's Soup Kitchen, Family Promise of Union County, University Hospital in Newark, Broadway House for Continuing Care, Imagine, and St. Stephan's Grace Community. The knitters work on their own schedules with patterns and yarn supplied by the church; there are no regular meetings, only a community of dedicated volunteers who drop off completed projects at the church year-round.
Interfaith Life in New Providence, Berkeley Heights, and Summit
Faith is an active leader in the ecumenical and interfaith community that spans New Providence, Berkeley Heights, and Summit. Each year the parish hosts an Interfaith Thanksgiving Service with neighboring congregations, a Community Good Friday Service that draws Christians from across the area, and an annual Hanukkah Menorah Lighting on the church lawn in late November or early December. The lighting draws together clergy and members of local synagogues and other religious communities in a celebration described by the church as an expression of peace and solidarity with Jewish friends and neighbors during the Festival of Lights. Each September the parish hosts an Interfaith Community Service to mark the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, with members of the New Providence-Berkeley Heights Interfaith Clergy Group, partners from synagogues in Summit, and the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge gathering in the sanctuary. After the service, those present stay for fellowship and conversation.
Faith also participates in the Summit Chorale's annual 9/11 Memorial Sing-In of the Mozart Requiem, hosting the rehearsal and concert each year on the Sunday closest to the anniversary. The parish opens its Memorial Garden for prayer and a brief Eucharist on the morning of September 11 and joins the broader New Providence community at Centennial Park for the town's memorial service each evening.
The Pastoral Team and the Wider Staff
The Rev. Jane McCready has served as Pastor of Faith Lutheran Church since June 2014, when she was called by the congregation following her May 2014 graduation from The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. A lifelong Lutheran from New Jersey, she was baptized at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Keyport and grew up at King of Kings Lutheran Church in Middletown. She holds a B.A. from Indiana University in Bloomington and an M.Div. from the seminary now known as ULS. She joined Faith's administrative staff in 2003 while working in arts administration and as a legal assistant, and she has served the parish as Assisting Minister, Altar Guild member, Sunday School and Vacation Bible School teacher, Sanctuary Choir member and soloist, Broadway House ministry coordinator, and on the Church Council, Worship and Music Committee, Confirmation Retreat Planning Task Force, and Christian Education Committee. Her theological field education included chaplain and clinical work at Overlook Hospital in Summit, Field Education at Zion Lutheran Church in Rahway, and an internship at St. Stephan's Grace in Newark. She also serves Family Promise-Union County, the New Providence-Berkeley Heights Interfaith Clergy Group, Imagine, and the New Jersey Synod.
The Rev. Markus Vaga serves as Pastoral Associate at Faith and is an ordained minister in the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church. He received his theological training at the E.E.L.C. Institute of Theology in Toronto and was ordained in 1997 by the Archbishop of the E.E.L.C. He serves as Assistant Minister of the First Synod of the E.E.L.C. in America and provides pastoral support to Estonian-American parishes across the country, including congregations in Seabrook, Baltimore, and Washington, as well as German-language services for the German-American community in the Bridgeton area.
Shea Velloso, the Minister of Music, leads the parish's choral, bell, and concert programs. Sally Reier has served as Ministry Associate since 2018, providing pastoral care and supporting communications, marketing, fellowship, and a wide range of church ministries. Terry Fazio serves as Parish Administrator, supporting the Pastor, Church Council, Ministry Associate, Music Director, and committees throughout the parish.
Practical Information for Visitors
The church office is open Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Visitors are encouraged to come in person and introduce themselves; staff at the front desk can connect newcomers with a pastor or a First Impressions representative. Sunday bulletins are posted online in advance of each service and are also available in the Narthex on Sunday mornings, along with all-in-one communion kits consecrated during the liturgy for those who wish to take one home. The parish livestreams the 10:00 a.m. liturgy on Facebook and YouTube and welcomes comments from those watching online, especially visitors. Online giving is available through Vanco, the secure Wells Fargo service used by the parish.
Faith is described by its members as drawing worshipers from a wide geographic area, with some traveling from as far south as the Jersey Shore and from Pennsylvania to be part of the community. It is an open, welcoming, and inclusive congregation that practices an open communion table. Whether one arrives at 8:00 a.m. for the spoken liturgy or at 10:00 a.m. for the music-led liturgy with the Sanctuary Choir, the welcome at the door and the Eucharist at the altar are the same.