On the Corner of Ninth and Stewart
On the corner of Ninth and Stewart in downtown Seattle, Gethsemane Lutheran Church has built a presence that extends well beyond Sunday morning. The congregation's shorthand for itself is "In Christ, In the City," and the building at 911 Stewart Street makes that literal. The sanctuary shares a roof with Dekko Place, an affordable housing complex run by Compass Housing Alliance, and until 2025 the building was also home to the Women's Day Center of Mary's Place. The address is at once a church, a housing complex, and a hub for community services that have run for more than fifty years.
Gethsemane is a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), part of the Northwest Washington Synod, and one of a small number of ELCA churches designated as Reconciling in Christ (RIC), a designation that signals an ongoing commitment to expanding the welcome that liberates those pushed to the margins. The congregation's own commitments, signed off by the community, begin with remembering that they worship on the land of the Duwamish, that the church was founded by immigrants, that the country is scarred by racism, and that God's love encompasses all. Members affirm that black lives matter, that the earth and all creation must be treasured and protected, that science is a valid practice, that no human is illegal, and that immigration status is not a condition of belonging.
Sunday Mornings Around the Table
Worship gathers every Sunday at 10:00 a.m., with a livestream available for those joining from elsewhere. The service is built around weekly communion, with bread, wine, and juice shared at the Table. The printed bulletin and on-screen materials are bilingual, with the order and prayers presented in English and Spanish so that people can follow along in their preferred language. Worshipers are invited to share their gifts as readers, prayer leaders, communion assistants, and music leaders.
Sunday morning is intentionally intergenerational. Most services include a "bite size reflection" that reframes the day's lesson in a way that lands for younger worshipers. There are quiet toys in the sanctuary, and a room called the PoP (a place of peace and/or play) is open for caregivers with children who need a break. Movement and the noise of little ones are treated as welcome sounds of life.
Parking is free in the Aspira Public Garage on Sundays from 7:00 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.; the entrance is in the alley between Stewart and Howell. The internal gate arm is up during those hours, and visitors can park in any unreserved space. Anyone with mobility limitations can be dropped off at the church entrance before parking. There is no formal dress code; people come as they are.
Music from Choir to Ukulele
Cantor John Paulson, who joined Gethsemane in 2016, oversees a musical life that draws on the congregation's growing cultural diversity. Through 2019 the program included an adult choir, a handbell choir, a ukulele group, a folk band, and frequent guest musicians. Since 2020, with the shift to remote and streamed services, the music has adapted, but the variety has stayed: liturgical singing, instrumental accompaniment, and musical offerings from congregation members remain central. Paulson's own work has won recognition beyond the church; he took second place in the 2023 American Prize in Composition for choral music (professional division, shorter works) for Dream Land.
Rachelle Dolan has served as accompanist since the beginning of 2023, and Nancy Sutter, a member since 2000 who has been active in the choir, the church council, and various committees over the years, volunteers as guitarist for worship. The musical repertoire continues to expand as the Gethsemane community grows more culturally diverse, and congregational participation in all aspects of music remains a guiding principle.
Give. Share. Eat. and the Work Against Hunger
Give. Share. Eat. is the church's flagship community project. Since the program's first event in September 2017, volunteers have packaged and distributed more than 650,000 shelf-stable meals through a partnership with the Hope Center. The meals flow to area food banks, churches, housing programs, and school and college outreach programs across King County.
The math is straightforward: 40 cents pays for a kid's breakfast, $50 covers a family of four for a month of healthy breakfasts, and $2,000 adopts an entire assembly line producing close to 5,000 meals. The twice-yearly packing events run Friday and Saturday shifts, with up to five assembly lines going at once, each with six to nine people, plus runners who keep bulk supplies moving. Children take part through a separate sign-up process. Volunteers check in for orientation thirty minutes before their shift for food-handling prep.
The Hope Center, a nonsectarian nonprofit, hosts the program and is registered with employer-match platforms including Benevity (Google, Microsoft, Apple, AstraZeneca), YourCause (Tableau), and Nordstrom, so donations can often be doubled through workplace giving. Contributions can be made online, through The Seattle Foundation, or by check.
Sanctuary and Accompaniment
On April 9, 2017, after months of study, reflection, and prayer, Gethsemane voted to become a sanctuary congregation. The resolution committed the church to protecting refugees and undocumented persons under threat of arrest and deportation, offering shelter and a safe place for those escaping persecution, and advocating for just immigration policies. The decision grew out of a longer conversation about what it means to be a presence in a city where neighbors live with the daily threat of separation.
In June 2018 the church welcomed Jose Robles into sanctuary; nearly twenty months later he was released. Around that core act of shelter, a wider accompaniment network took shape. Week in and week out, volunteers provide medical, legal, emotional, and educational support to neighbors navigating the immigration system. The work began with a family from El Salvador, including a younger sister who made the journey while four months pregnant.
An immigration fund sustains the program. Members and friends contribute online, by mail to the church office, or through workplace giving portals. The work is rooted in the witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who urged that the church is not simply to bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice but to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.
The Hope Center and Dekko Place
The Hope Center is a nonsectarian nonprofit organized in 2011 that grew out of more than fifty years of community services offered by Gethsemane Lutheran Church. After the 2012 renovation of the church building at Ninth and Stewart, the Hope Center hosted Mary's Place Women's Day Center on-site until 2025 and continued services that had begun as Gethsemane Community Services and the Saturday meal program known as Soup & Movies. Today the Hope Center focuses on building neighborhood partnerships to address food and housing insecurity, often in collaboration with its host congregation.
Dekko Place, the affordable housing complex in the same building, is run by Compass Housing Alliance. The arrangement is intentional: a downtown congregation that wants to be a presence in its city sharing square footage with people who need stable housing and with the programs that serve them.
Tending Life Together
Instead of programming "religious education," Gethsemane prefers the language of tending life together. The framing is explicit: rather than a curriculum, an exploration; rather than classes, conversations. Members gather informally over a shared beverage or meal, sometimes more formally for a discussion group or workshop.
Children explore stories of faith and church traditions within a framework that values anti-racism, gender equality, economic justice, care of the environment, affirmation of LGBTQ+ neighbors, trauma-informed practice, and global citizenship. The Expedition, an online publication, hosts thought-provoking reflections, essays, personal narratives, and theological insights, and features the Rhythms of Humanity podcast, where conversations unfold at the intersection of faith and real life.
For anyone wanting to plug into the church's life beyond Sunday morning, members share their gifts in many ways: reading, prayer leadership, communion assisting, music, hospitality, and volunteering with Give. Share. Eat. or Hope Center projects. The place where deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet, as Frederick Buechner put it, is the language the congregation reaches for.
Walking Together in the City
Gethsemane frames its advocacy as spiritual practice. "Justice is what love looks like in public," the congregation teaches, quoting Cornel West. Members learn and march together, advocating policy changes that support people of many gender identities and expressions, sexual orientations, abilities, ages, races, nationalities, and ethnicities.
Beyond the church's own projects, Gethsemane works with the larger ELCA through the Northwest Washington Synod, the regional expression of the denomination based in Seattle. The congregation also collaborates closely with the Church Council of Greater Seattle, Compass Housing Alliance, and Faith Action Network.
The Pastors and the People Who Lead
Pastor Joanne Engquist has served as Gethsemane's lead pastor since 2011. Her early years coincided with finishing the building and the major financial commitments that came with it; since 2017 she has prioritized the congregation's life in worship, study, play, and service. She previously served congregations in Maine and Massachusetts and taught at Harvard Divinity School. She serves on several ELCA boards and committees.
Pastor Kari Lipke joined the staff in 2019, having previously served as a mission developer nurturing a ministry with and for emerging adults in their twenties and thirties. In 2023 she began working weekdays as a therapist at a community mental health nonprofit that serves low-income clients, focusing on complex post-traumatic stress disorder. She continues to serve at Gethsemane by presiding at worship, preaching on a regular rotation, and providing pastoral care on Sunday mornings. The two pastors share home and life together, along with a ten-year-old Aussie-lab mix and two cats.
Cantor John Paulson has overseen the music program since spring 2016. Accompanist Rachelle Dolan joined in 2023, and Nancy Sutter, a member since 2000, volunteers as guitarist.
On any given Sunday morning at Gethsemane, the room is bilingual, the communion table is open to everyone who wants to come forward, and the noise of children is part of the liturgy. The building at Ninth and Stewart holds a sanctuary, an affordable housing complex, and a sanctuary declaration that has shaped nearly a decade of accompaniment work. For a downtown congregation that wants to be a presence in its city, that is the daily work.