Tucked along Groffs Mill Road in Harleysville, Pennsylvania, Salford Mennonite Church brings more than three centuries of Anabaptist worship to the rolling farmland of Montgomery County. Founded by Swiss-German immigrants in 1717 and gathered in a meetinghouse by 1728, Salford describes itself as "a joyful learning community eager to live and share the peaceable way of Jesus," and the congregation continues to shape its identity around Scripture, four-part a cappella singing, a one-acre community garden, and a firm commitment to accessibility and inclusion. Members travel the same road that the original Ruth families once farmed, and the cemetery stones still speak of generations who lived by simplicity, frugality, hard work, and thrift - values the present-day congregation is glad to claim as its own.
Three Hundred Years on Groffs Mill Road
The Salford congregation was established in 1717 by Swiss-German Mennonite families who had crossed the Atlantic in search of religious freedom. In the early years, worship was held in homes and barns until a simple meetinghouse was built by 1728. The land itself was part of a 200-acre purchase by settlers Henrich and Magdalena Ruth from surveyor-speculator David Powell, set within the Perkiomen watershed that William Penn's agents had acquired from Lenape headman Maughoughsin in 1684 in exchange for two coats, four pairs of stockings, and four bottles of cider.
Throughout the years, the congregation has been known for simplicity, frugality, hard work, and thrift. Those values remain important today. As the surrounding community has grown and changed, the congregation has welcomed members from a wide variety of backgrounds, and the present-day church sees its calling in continuing to live out Anabaptist-Christian values: discipleship, peaceful living, mutual aid, and mutual accountability. Salford is a member of Mosaic Mennonite Conference, Mennonite Church USA, and Mennonite World Conference.
The grounds bear quiet witness to all of this. A large stone in the cemetery serves as an explanatory monument to the founding families, the original land donors, the first pastor, the schoolteacher, and the founding households. In a recent prayer service, elders from the Delaware Tribe of Indians joined the congregation in rededicating that monument with the words "Built on Lenapehoking," honoring the Lenape people as the original stewards of this land.
A Blended Sunday Morning
Salford's Sunday service begins at 9:30 a.m. from September through June, with pre-service music starting at 9:20. In July and August, the service begins at 10:00 a.m., with pre-service music at 9:50. The service lasts about an hour and fifteen minutes and is also livestreamed on the church's YouTube channel.
Visitors enter through the main carport entrance, which is handicapped accessible, and an elevator lift serves each floor of the building. Members of the congregation volunteer as greeters at the door and can answer questions or point newcomers toward the Welcome Desk. At the Welcome Desk, guests can pick up a hearing aid, request an activity bag for a child, learn about Second Hour classes, and find out what is happening around the church. Coffee and tea stations on the levels above and below the main foyer give the congregation a chance to greet one another between the worship service and Second Hour, and many visitors use that time for a quick tour.
The worship service itself includes Scripture, preaching, shared prayer, instrumental music, and spirited singing. Children are welcome during the entire service, and silence is not expected. A Children's Time with a children's bulletin is part of every service, and testimony or personal stories of God in the congregation's life are shared whenever possible.
A Cappella Four-Part Harmony and Contemporary Songs, Side by Side
Music is an integral part of worship at Salford. The congregation blends traditional a cappella singing - often in four-part harmony of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, drawing from a hymnal - with contemporary songs of praise, with or without piano or other instrumental accompaniment. Song leaders draw selections from Voices Together, Sing the Journey, and Sing the Story songbooks, and the Adult and Children's Choirs enhance worship on a regular basis. Instrumental music is frequently offered by members and guests of all ages, and there is something distinctively spiritual about the moment when believers gather to sing together.
Salford also pays Reparative Hymn Royalties for African American spirituals sung in worship, recognizing that this music has deepened Salford's worship while growing out of experiences of oppression and for which the original authors have not been compensated. A commitment read each time the spirituals are sung acknowledges the extraordinary musical contributions made by Black people to U.S. American music and pledges the congregation to sing and hear the songs with reverence, honor the unnamed musicians who created them, and pay royalties to organizations promoting the advancement of Black artists. These royalties have been directed to the Reparative Act Fund at Shalom Community Church.
Children, Youth, and a Week of Peacemaking
Salford takes the formation of children and youth seriously, and families can step into age-specific rooms at any stage from infancy through high school. The Salford Nursery, located just off the main foyer, is staffed during the worship service for children up to their third birthday by adult volunteers who have cleared state-mandated background checks. Changing tables, rocking chairs, and cribs are available, and the worship service is audible in the nursery. During Second Hour, the nursery remains open for those too young for Sunday school.
For children ages 2 through fifth grade, Sunday school meets during Second Hour, and children begin the hour with singing. There is a singing group for ages 2-5 and another for grades 1-5, followed by Bible stories and activities in the classrooms. The Director of Children's Faith Formation coordinates the team of teachers, helpers, and singing leaders, and the Shine curriculum carries the children through the foundational stories of the faith.
Kids' Club, for first through fifth grade, meets monthly for a devotional and an activity such as paper crafts, games, cooking, sewing, and other hands-on projects. Junior Youth, for grades 6-8, gathers on Sunday mornings for fellowship and learning, and on a monthly basis for social and service events. Each winter the group attends a retreat at Spruce Lake Retreat. MYF, the Mennonite Youth Fellowship for grades 9-12, meets in the historic schoolhouse across the parking lot from the main building, with around fifteen youth and a committed team of adult leaders; the group takes an annual summer service trip and attends the Mennonite Convention when possible.
Each summer, Salford hosts a free week of Peace Camp for children who have completed kindergarten through fifth grade. The week centers on the affirmation from the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Children practice peace with themselves, peace with the earth, and peace with others, and develop skills in emotional intelligence, self-regulation, conflict resolution, cooperation, and creativity while making connections between Bible stories and current realities. The week ends on Thursday evening with a program for families, where children share favorite experiences and what they have learned.
Six Adult Classes on a Sunday Morning
Second Hour classes at Salford run throughout the year except in July and August, generally beginning around 10:45 a.m. and ending by 11:45. The adult classes are loosely organized by age or topic, and visitors are welcome to try any of them. Ambassadors and Reaching Out, made up mostly of members in their seventies and above, works through the Adult Bible Study and rotates teaching responsibilities among several class members. Emmaus Road, an all-ages class, typically discusses and responds to that Sunday's sermon. The Friendship Class brings together women between the ages of 35 and 60 who share their journeys and pray for one another. Foundations, with members mostly in their thirties and forties, varies its curriculum according to interest. Gospel Herald reads and discusses articles from Anabaptist World, with other issues of interest folded in. Hilltop, a class for uniquely gifted adults, meets the second and fourth Sundays upstairs above the main lobby and incorporates singing and rhythm instruments into the time. Lectionary Look Ahead practices a Lectio Divina-style reading of a text from the Common Lectionary.
A Welcome Without Exceptions
Affirmed in March 2023 and prepared with the support of James Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Belmont Mennonite Church in Elkhart, Indiana, Salford's Welcome Statement names, as the foundation of congregational life, the conviction that all people are created in God's image, fully embraced by God's love, and uniquely gifted by God. The congregation welcomes all people of any age, racial and ethnic identity, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, marital status, immigration status, background, ability, or economic status to participate fully in every aspect of congregational life.
Specifically, all are welcome to membership, marriage, ministry within the congregation, and pastoral leadership. Marriage is understood as a life-long, covenant partnership of two adults growing together in love and fidelity, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. Pastors are available for counseling and officiating weddings for people of all gender identities and sexual orientations, and Salford's building and facilities are available to host wedding services. The congregation commits to encouragement and support for both marriage and singleness, and to fostering healing and restoration where there is brokenness.
A Community of Belonging
Salford's Accessibility Ministry Team exists to facilitate and resource an environment of inclusion and belonging among diverse needs, particularly for people who are disabled and neurodiverse. Working with the Anabaptist Disabilities Network, Salford has earned the Mobility, Hearing, and Support emblems - recognition that the building is fully mobile accessible, accessible for those who are hard of hearing or experiencing hearing loss, and supportive for people with disabilities and their families. Vision and Sign Language emblems are also available.
A basement classroom has been set aside as The Peace Place, a short-term calm-down and regulation space available during Sunday school and other times under adult supervision, with guidelines on the door and a set of hourglass thermometers for visitors to take five minutes of sensory input or self-regulation before rejoining worship or class. It is intended for elementary-age children and up, and parents may take one child at a time to use the space during worship.
The Accessibility Ministry Team has led a four-week Disability Justice Second Hour series using Amy Kenny's book "My Body Is Not a Prayer Request," and a sermon by Laura Stone, "Wounded and Whole," is shared as a resource for preaching and small-group conversation. Lead Pastor Mark Boorse and his wife Brenda both worked at Access Services, opening their home for respite and life sharing for individuals with mental health and intellectual disabilities for more than forty years, and Brenda continues to share her art and experience with disabilities at Salford.
The Salford-Advent Garden
One acre of the Salford grounds is dedicated to the Salford-Advent Church Garden, a collaboration with Advent Lutheran Church. More than 60 volunteers tend the garden on Saturday mornings from April through October, planting, weeding, watering, and harvesting. Each winter a garden fundraiser dinner is held at Salford to pay for seed and supplies, and members of both congregations share the workload.
The garden produces over 10,000 pounds of fresh, organic produce a year, donated to individuals in need and to local nonprofit agencies including Keystone Opportunity Center in Souderton, Manna on Main Street in Lansdale, Liberty Ministries in Schwenksville, New Life Youth and Family Services in Harleysville, Encore Experiences of Harleysville, Nueva Vida Norristown New Life, and the Salford Mennonite Child Care Center. Garden manager Steve Blank has written weekly garden updates for years, cataloguing harvests of tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, cabbage, beans, and more.
A Three Sisters Garden features native vegetable plants - tuckahoes (sunchokes) and heirloom corn, beans, and squash - that honor the Lenape people who have stewarded the land for thousands of years. Garden coordinator Steve Blank and longtime volunteer Nancy Alderfer were recognized through a proclamation from the Pennsylvania State Senate for their work with the Salford-Advent garden.
Working for Peace in the Neighborhood
Salford's Justice and Peace Ministry Team partners with organizations throughout the community, heeding God's call to peace through just relationships with one another and the earth. Each November, the team hosts a Witting Tree Ceremony to honor veterans who have died by suicide and the human cost of war. The team also hosted Gardening for Peace, an event that drew around 150 people for a garden tour, workshops, a shared meal, a children's program, and the dramatic forging of a gun into a garden tool by Shane Claiborne and Mike Martin of RAWtools.
The Curiosity Project, sponsored by the Justice and Peace Team, is a year-long discernment process that invites the congregation to be guests among strangers in order to encounter others in humility and curiosity and to discern God's dream for the neighborhood. The project defines its neighborhood as the Souderton Area School District and offers monthly spiritual practices - creating space, practicing curiosity, using public transportation, paying attention to economic difference, looking for a person of peace - that give the work a steady rhythm.
Salford joins other local churches in the Witness Walk to End Gun Violence, advocating common-sense gun laws and writing letters to legislators through Heeding God's Call. Coordinators of Justice Initiatives lead teams working for racial justice and right relationships with the land and its original inhabitants. Members of the congregation volunteer regularly at the Mennonite Central Committee Material Resource Center of Harleysville and the MCC Care and Share Thrift Shoppes of Souderton, and a Donation of the Month program gathers specific items for Keystone Opportunity Center, Manna on Main Street, Access Services Homeless Street Outreach of Montgomery County, Dock Village, and Mennonite Central Committee. The congregation also supports church planter César Marin in Mexico, and a Be Transformed art fundraiser has supported the Prometheus special needs school for children in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
A Labyrinth, a Cemetery, and the Lenape Land
Salford sits on the homelands of the Lenape people, who stewarded the lands for thousands of years before European settlement. The grounds include a historic cemetery, and a Lenape prayer service guide is shared with other congregations wishing to undertake similar work. The cemetery monument honoring the founding families now carries the words "Built on Lenapehoking," translated as "homelands of the Lenape people," and the prayer service is a regular part of the congregation's seasonal rhythm.
A grass prayer labyrinth, planted by Linda Martin, Wib Zook, and George Gaugler, sits next to the columbarium near the cemetery and was dedicated with nearly fifty people joining to bless the labyrinth on a November Sunday. Drawing on the medieval European tradition of cathedral labyrinths, the path serves as a symbolic journey toward redemption: a place to walk, breathe, and let go. The public is welcome to walk the paths of the historic cemetery, the prayer labyrinth, and the playground on evenings and weekends.
A commissioned painting titled "Justice Grows in the Garden" by Mandy Martin now hangs in the Fellowship Hall, capturing the vision that grew out of the Gardening for Peace event. Across the grounds, the Salford Mennonite Child Care Center offers preschool and childcare programming for the wider community.
Pastoral Team and Music Director
Lead Pastor Mark Boorse grew up on the family homestead along Groffs Mill Road and earned a master's degree from Lincoln University after studies at Gordon College, Eastern, and Temple. Mark and Brenda met at Access Services and were married in 1984. They share the homestead with their two children, Rachael and Rebekah, son-in-law Joe, and two grandchildren, Luna and Nash. The Boorses came to Salford after Mark participated in a Gardening for Peace workshop, and Mark discerned a call to pastoral ministry in conversation with the congregation and the people in his life. Mark often names the Anabaptist triad that shapes his ministry: Jesus as the center of faith, community as the center of life, and reconciliation as the center of work.
Associate Pastor Andrew Zetts began attending Salford in 2013, became a member in 2016, and first encountered Anabaptism as an undergraduate at Eastern University. He served as a secondary education teacher for nine years - six in the School District of Jenkintown and three at Dock Mennonite Academy - and earned an M.A. in History from Villanova University. Andrew's primary responsibilities include caring for Salford's Mennonite Youth Fellowship and post-secondary young adults and making outreach connections that invite the congregation to be a proactive and responsive presence in the community. He has begun a Master of Divinity program at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary.
Music Director Laura Alderfer brings a lifelong passion for musical worship to the congregation. She began playing piano at the age of seven and was regularly providing music for her church by twelve. A part-time home health nurse with a B.S. in Nursing from Gwynedd Mercy University, she has served for many years as a piano accompanist and has led and coordinated worship services, hymn singing in retirement communities, and contemporary praise and worship in international settings with Mosaic Conference. She is married and has three young adult children.
Director of Children's Faith Formation Jennifer (Jenn) Svetlik was born near Houston, Texas, spent a decade living in intentional community in Washington, D.C., and now lives in Lansdale with her spouse Sheldon Good. She holds an M.A. in Theology from Washington Theological Seminary, speaks Spanish, and is a Godly Play Core certified practitioner. She has two elementary school-aged children and brings a Catholic theological background, a love of creative Bible storytelling, and a heart for centering parents in the faith formation of their children.
Practical Information for Visitors
Salford Mennonite Church is located at 480 Groffs Mill Road, Harleysville, PA 19438, with the church office reachable at (215) 256-0778. Sunday worship begins at 9:30 a.m. from September through June (with pre-service music at 9:20) and at 10:00 a.m. in July and August (pre-service music at 9:50). The service runs about an hour and fifteen minutes. Folks at Salford wear anything from shorts to suits, and visitors are encouraged to come as they are.
Children are welcome throughout the service, and the Children's Time bulletin gives even the youngest worshipers something to follow along with. Childcare for newborns through age two is available in the Salford Nursery, staffed by cleared adult volunteers, and activity bags for children can be picked up at the Welcome Desk. The main carport entrance is handicapped accessible, an elevator lift serves each floor, and hearing aids can be requested at the Welcome Desk.
Sermons are archived on the church's YouTube channel and as a podcast, and giving can be done online through the Give+ Church app or by check. The Salford Mennonite Child Care Center shares the grounds and provides preschool and childcare for the wider community. To learn about membership, to be added to the directory, or to receive the weekly newsletter, anyone interested is invited to speak with a pastor or contact the church office.