A 200-Year Story on Pascack Road
In the small borough of Park Ridge, at the bend where Pascack Road meets the old stone wall of a small cemetery, stands a sandstone church that has opened its doors to the people of the Upper Pascack Valley every Sunday since 1813. Pascack Reformed Church is the oldest congregation in the Pascack Valley, a community rooted in the Dutch Reformed faith of the eighteenth century and shaped over two centuries by twelve pastors before the arrival of its current minister, Pastor Sharon Gross-Gill. The congregation is known today for its relaxed Sunday worship, its intergenerational Sunday School, the Tri-Boro Food Pantry that operates out of its Fellowship Hall, three weekly AA meetings, and a deep sense of stewardship that includes solar panels on the parish house and native plants on the grounds.
A Congregation of Dutch Reformed Settlers
The early settlers of the Dutch Reformed faith in the Pascack Valley had long traveled to churches in Tappan, Schraalenburgh, Paramus, and Saddle River before they petitioned the Classis of Hackensack on May 27, 1787, for a church of their own. When that first attempt failed, the people of Pascack waited a quarter of a century. In 1812, after the Saddle River church separated from Paramus, the two communities agreed to unite and share one pastor, alternating Sundays between the two congregations.
On October 23, 1812, Peter Wortendyke and his wife Matze, along with Abraham Campbell and his wife Margaret, deeded one acre of land to four trustees for the building of the Reformed Dutch Church at Pascack, for the sum of $60 in current New York State money. The shell of the building was finished in the same season, with members of both congregations helping with the construction and the Rev. Stephen Goetschius presiding at its dedication. The interior was completed the following spring, and the church reckons its founding as May 3, 1813. The front of the building and the side facing Pascack Road were constructed of locally quarried sandstone, while fieldstone was used for the rear and east walls.
On August 29, 1814, with about forty-eight members, the church was officially organized and incorporated as "The Consistory of the Congregation of Pascack in the County of Bergen." Goetschius served both Pascack and Saddle River until 1835, famously riding his horse between them well into his eighties. The Rev. John T. Demarest became the church's first full-time minister in 1854, and a parsonage was built for him on the church property the next year. The 1867 quilt made by the ladies of the congregation, with its appliqued blocks and a center square honoring Demarest's retirement, still hangs in the lobby today.
Sunday Mornings in the Sanctuary
Worship at Pascack Reformed follows a standard Reformed shape: the congregation approaches God with praise and a confession of sinfulness, God speaks a word of grace through Scripture, sermon, and sacrament, and the people respond with gratitude and service. The service is relaxed, uses everyday language, and carries no dress code, so the room on a Sunday morning can include everything from business casual to shorts and sneakers. The bulletin bolds the lines for congregational response, and the service includes Bible readings, a sermon that connects Scripture to the context of current times, choir anthems, and congregational hymns.
The service is held at 10:00 a.m. in the Sanctuary and is also streamed through the church's Facebook page. Communion, the Lord's Supper, is celebrated on the first Sunday of every month, and all who are baptized and confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are welcome to receive it. Children are always welcome in worship; during the school year they may also leave for Sunday School, except on Communion Sundays, when they stay to celebrate with the congregation.
Children, Youth, and Intergenerational Worship
During the school year, children as young as preschool attend Sunday School at the same hour as worship, with every age studying the same Bible lesson using a curriculum tailored to their developmental stage. On Communion Sundays the children return to the Sanctuary, and on designated Sundays throughout the church year they lead parts of the service themselves, reading and singing as part of Intergenerational Worship. The Children's Choir sings during Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter and leads the congregation in song during those intergenerational services.
The youth ministry, known as "Join in our Future," gathers around Sunday School and Intergenerational Worship, and the wider family of the church includes Elders, Deacons, Liaisons, Members, and Friends. The annual Easter service traditionally includes a Message from the Youth alongside the Children's Choir and Chancel Choir.
Music, the Choirs, and the Sanctuary Building
Music has long been central to life at Pascack Reformed. The congregation's first pipe organ, a gift from the family of J. Boyce Smith, was installed in 1921. The present pipe organ was installed in 1960 in memory of Elsie Holloway Gowell, and the Edward J. Sisley Memorial Carillon was dedicated in 1961. Wesley Van Zile serves as Organist and Choir Director, leading both the Chancel Choir for adults and the Children's Choir.
The Sanctuary itself is a study in layers of building. The original 1813 sandstone shell was remodeled in 1873 to 1875 at a cost of nearly $4,000, and in 1891 the balcony was lowered and a new bell installed in the tower. That bell became the first fire alarm for the newly formed Park Ridge Fire Department. In 1959 the 1893 addition was demolished and replaced with the much larger present-day structure, and extensive work was done on the original portion. The stained glass and the choir loft behind the pulpit date from these later renovations, and the steeple was illuminated in 1955 by the Evening Guild.
The Fellowship Hall and the Sunday School Building
The Parish House, now the Sunday School Building, was begun in 1885 and completed in 1887, finally giving the Sunday School, which had met in the church balcony and a barn on Werimus Road, a home of its own. In 1953 the basement of the Parish House was renovated and an addition was added, and in 1965 the Fellowship Hall was attached to the building, opening the church's doors as a meeting place for community groups, a tradition that continues.
Fellowship life at the church revolves around the Hall and the people who fill it. Bible Study, brunches and potluck dinners, Carpenters (the men's ministry), the Chancel Choir, the Children's Choir, the Gathering Circle (the women's ministry), Coffee Hour after Sunday worship, the Greening of the Church at Advent, and community service events all bring the people together. The Quilters' Circle is the same group whose 1867 work hangs in the lobby, and in 2018 the Women's Circle initiated the archival framing of that historic quilt so it can be seen and protected for the future.
Outreach: Feeding the Hungry, Housing the Homeless
The congregation's outreach focus has always been feeding the hungry and meeting basic human needs. The Tri-Boro Food Pantry, housed in a portion of the Fellowship Hall and run by an independent Board of Directors, distributes food Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. Pascack Reformed assists with food donations, monetary support, and volunteer staffing, and donations may be dropped off in the church lobby Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The church is part of the volunteer network that prepares and serves dinner in Hackensack for the Family Promise Walk-In Dinner program, and on the third Sunday of Advent it celebrates White Gift Sunday, when the congregation selects and wraps Christmas gifts in white paper for residents of the Reformed Church Home. Each fall, on the third weekend of October, members join the annual Upper Pascack Valley Crop Walk, joining more than 2,000 communities across the country in raising funds to fight hunger locally and around the world. Stewardship of creation is also part of outreach: solar panels are installed on the Parish House and the Parsonage, native plants are used on the grounds, and the church recycles.
AA Meetings and the Montessori School
For decades the church has opened its doors to Alcoholics Anonymous, hosting three meetings a week in the building: Mondays and Thursdays from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. and Fridays from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. The meetings are open to anyone working the twelve steps, and they reflect the congregation's long tradition of treating its space as a gift to the wider community. A Montessori school also operates on the church property, with contact information available through the church office.
The Liturgical Year
The Sanctuary and the bulletin change with the seasons of the church year. Advent begins with the progressive lighting of four candles, three purple and one pink, around a wreath, with a white candle at the center lit on Christmas Eve. Christmas brings a single Candlelight Communion service at 7:30 p.m. on December 24 and a return to worship on the First Sunday after Christmas. Epiphany, the season of light, begins twelve days after Christmas and ends with the Transfiguration. Lent opens on Ash Wednesday and is observed for forty days through Holy Week, with Maundy Thursday Agape Meal and Communion in the Fellowship Hall and a Good Friday service of Stations of the Cross and Communion. Easter begins at sunrise in the North Cemetery, continues with an Easter Breakfast in the Fellowship Hall, and culminates in the morning Easter Celebration. Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, follows seven Sundays later, and General Time fills the long green season from the Sunday after Pentecost until Christ the King Sunday, when a new Advent begins.
The Historic Cemeteries
The church has been caring for its cemeteries since 1813, when the first burial, six-year-old Katherine Blauvelt, took place at the rear of the building. In 1855 the church purchased fifteen acres from the Wortendyke family, which included three older burial grounds: the Wortendyke Family Cemetery, whose oldest legible stones date to 1780; the African American Cemetery, where members of Bergen County's free Black families of the pre-Civil War era and Civil War veterans of a Connecticut regiment are buried; and the American Indian Cemetery, whose unmarked graves are passed down by oral tradition. A Historical Marker was erected next to the original church building in 1976, the nation's bicentennial, and a second marker is planned for the southern cemetery to honor all three communities of the dead.
The People and the Pastor
Pascack Reformed Church has been served by thirteen pastors in its more than two centuries, including some of the longest pastorates in the denomination's history. The Rev. Francis A. Seibert served for thirty-five years and was the last minister to occupy the old parsonage, and the Rev. Robert H. Pope served for twenty-five years until 1990. In 2015 the church installed its twelfth minister, the Rev. Larissa Romero, its first woman pastor and the first to graduate from Union Theological Seminary in New York. On January 1, 2023, Pastor Sharon Gross-Gill began her ministry as the congregation's thirteenth minister. A graduate of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, she was ordained as Minister of Word and Sacrament in October 2024 and installed in that role in March 2025. The office is staffed on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.