A Church Born from a Dance and a Slice of Johnston History
St Paul Presbyterian Church sits on the south side of Merle Hay Road in Johnston, Iowa, across from the city's Public Safety Building, in a community that has grown from an unincorporated town of about 1,500 residents in 1959 into one of the Des Moines metro's most active suburbs. The congregation's origin story is told with a wink. In 1959, Grant and Margaret Voorhees were running the youth group of the only church then in Johnston, and when the kids asked to have a dance, the leaders said no. So the Voorhees went looking for other believers who wanted a livelier kind of fellowship.
On November 20, 1959, a small group of 44 people approached the Presbytery of Des Moines with a request to start a new Presbyterian church in the area. Permission was granted, and the first worship service was held on December 5, 1959, in the old Johnston Lions Club building on Merle Hay Road, with about 100 in attendance. Sunday School began on January 1, 1960, and the congregation was officially organized by the Presbytery on February 28, 1960, at Johnston High School, with 74 charter members. Westminster Presbyterian Church in Des Moines supported the fledgling church, lending pastors, hymnbooks, and communion ware.
Ground was broken for the first sanctuary on November 25, 1962, and the building was dedicated on May 19, 1963. Its design was considered cutting edge and won a national architectural award. On Easter Sunday 1984, ground was broken for an addition that would house eight classrooms, a fellowship hall, a kitchen, and church offices, and that wing was dedicated on October 14, 1984. The construction bug returned in 2004 with a new gymnasium, sanctuary renovations, and a new roof. Today that gym, called the Family Activity Center, is a hub of church and community life.
Sunday Mornings at 9:30: What Visitors Find
Sunday is built around three rhythms. Adult Sunday Study begins at 8:30 a.m. in the Fireside Room just north of Fellowship Hall, where a small group digs into the Bible with the Wired Word curriculum and a free-ranging discussion that often connects scripture to current events. The discussion wraps up about 9:30, just as worship begins. At 9:30, the same hour, St Paul Kids kicks off in its own space, with children from infants through fifth grade welcomed into age-appropriate Sunday School that runs through the school year.
Worship itself is a joyful blend. On any given Sunday the congregation might hear a hymn played on the organ, a contemporary praise song led by the praise team, an anthem from the chancel choir, or a piece from the handbell choir known as the Bellmeisters. About fifteen minutes in, the congregation passes the peace, exchanging handshakes and greetings. Children come forward for a brief children's sermon before being dismissed to their classes, and the adults finish worship from pews that were rededicated as part of the 2004 renovation.
Bill O'Connell, the lead pastor, has been preaching at St Paul since August 2013. His sermons are often described as humorous and consistently focused on applying the Bible to everyday life, and from time to time a film clip makes its way into the message. Services usually run about an hour, and the sermon is closed-captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing and projected on the screen up front for anyone who likes to read along. A downloadable bulletin is posted each Friday. After worship, everyone is invited into Fellowship Hall for homebrewed coffee, punch, and treats, a moment the congregation likes to call the best church coffee around.
Dress is entirely up to the visitor. Some come in suits and dresses, others in jeans and shorts. As the church likes to put it, God looks at the heart, and that is where attention is focused. Greeters stand at the sanctuary doors, ready to answer questions and to point families with preschoolers to the staffed nursery, where a paid professional and a church volunteer care for the children during the service. The parking lot to the south and west of the building is large enough that finding a space is rarely a concern.
Three Musical Ensembles, One Sunday
Music is a defining part of life at St Paul. The Bellmeisters, the church's handbell choir, rehearse at 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday evenings from September through May. Newcomers do not need to know what a martellato ring is; if you can bonk the bell on the table, or whip, swirl, and swing it, you can hang with the Bellmeisters. Their style is described as unconventional, but the results are inventive arrangements that have become a Sunday morning staple.
The adult chancel choir rehearses at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday evenings during the same months. The choir sings a cappella interludes inside traditional hymns, four-part harmony anthems, and unison contemporary praise, accompanied by Mary Schmelzer, an accomplished pianist and organist who joined the staff in spring 2022 after retiring from a long career teaching elementary music. The choir sings regularly in worship.
The St Paul Praise Team rehearses at 7:00 p.m. on Monday evenings from September through May. Directed by Rebecca O'Connell, a marriage and family therapist and the pastor's wife who has been part of church praise teams for more than thirty years, the group leads contemporary music that the church describes as a light in a world that can seem dark and disconnected. Music Director Emily Cammon oversees the Bellmeisters and the chancel choir. A graduate of Luther College and Drake University, she teaches elementary music for Des Moines Public Schools and joined St Paul with her husband, Isaiah, at the beginning of 2023.
Connect, Grow, Serve: The Purpose-Driven Mission
In November 2013, the Session adopted the Purpose Driven Church model of congregational life, and on June 22, 2014, it approved a mission statement rooted in that framework: to glorify God by making disciples who connect in community, grow in faith, and serve in joy. The model is built around the conviction, drawn from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, that humanity's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy God forever, and around the Great Commission in Matthew 28 to go and make disciples. St Paul frames this as a continuous loop: people begin their lives of discipleship at different points, but every disciple is being formed in connection, growth, and service at the same time.
That framework has shaped everything from the church's visioning process to the way ministries are organized. In 2014, 68 adults and youth gathered in six reflection groups to study the Bible and the needs of Johnston and the surrounding area, and the resulting ReVision report continues to guide the congregation's priorities. The church's stated welcome is wide: St Paul welcomes all people into full participation, regardless of gender, race, economic status, political affiliation, sexual identity, or orientation, including in leadership.
Children, Youth, and a Hundred Years of Bible Stories
St Paul Kids meets during the 9:30 worship hour throughout the school year. Children from infants through fifth grade gather to look at the people and events of the Bible and to talk about how those stories shape their relationships with God. After the children's sermon in worship, kids are dismissed to their classrooms, and parents pick them up after the service to head to Fellowship Hall together. Registration for the nursery and Sunday School is open online. Olivia Wagner, a Johnston High School student with years of babysitting experience, staffs the nursery on Sunday mornings alongside a paid professional.
Lisa Wagner, who joined the staff in the summer of 2023 as office coordinator and now also serves as Director of Children and Youth, acts as the liaison between the church and families. Her job, as she describes it, is to make sure the goals parents have for their children's biblical and spiritual education are met while the children are at St Paul. The Director of Christian Education committee is in the hunt for a new youth curriculum to launch in the fall of 2026. In the meantime, St Paul Youth, students in grades six through twelve, meets as Youth Connections one to two times a month during fellowship time, with conversations about current events, icebreakers, and occasional pickleball in the gym.
Adults Learning Together, From Wired Word to Disciple
The education menu for adults is unusually rich. Sunday Study meets in the Fireside Room from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. and is facilitated by Loren Van Essen. Monday Night Bible Study gathers from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. in the Fireside Lounge, with sessions of about ten weeks led by Valerie Beecher and Patti Schroeder. The Monday group has worked through season two of The Chosen, Ray Vander Laan's Path to the Cross for Lent, and Adam Hamilton's The Message of Jesus.
For the more ambitious student, the Disciple Bible Study is a 33-week overview of the Bible, sixteen weeks on the Old Testament and seventeen on the New, taught by Pastor Bill. The class meets once a week for about two and a quarter hours, with daily reading of fifteen to forty-five minutes between sessions, and it runs from late August into early May with breaks for the holidays. Forty-two people from St Paul have completed one of the six classes Pastor Bill has taught since 2014, and several describe the experience as life-changing. The next group is set to begin in August.
Women's Bible Study meets on Thursdays at 10 a.m. in four-week sessions, and the Women's Book Club meets on the first Thursday of each month from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. in the Youth Room. The book club, facilitated by Shelley Dreibelbeis, reads a mix of religious-themed and contemporary fiction, and the discussion is wide-ranging.
Body and Spirit: Fitness as a Front Door
St Paul's Family Activity Center is a 4,400-square-foot gym with men's and women's showers, and the church has turned it into one of the most distinctive faith-based fitness ministries in central Iowa. Body and Spirit Fitness, as the program is called, is built on the conviction that body and spirit are inseparable. Psalm 139 describes the body as fearfully and wonderfully made, and Paul calls it a temple of the Holy Spirit, so caring for the body is part of how the church helps people glorify God.
AMPLIFY is the program's signature offering: a forty-five-minute bootcamp-style class held Monday through Friday from 5:15 to 6:00 a.m. The class focuses on core, strength, and cardio, using high-intensity training, circuits, body-weight movements, and plyometric exercises that scale for every fitness level. Instructors Anne Schoenauer and Liz Metzger run the five-day-a-week schedule, and the next session runs from August 10 through October 16, with a first class free for newcomers. The first class is always free, online payment is available, and no St Paul membership is required.
Pickleball is the other pillar of Body and Spirit. Open play sessions are scheduled seven days a week, with a suggested donation of $4 per person per session, and the gym has loaner racquets and pickleballs for newcomers. Private court rentals are $20 for ninety minutes on one court or $35 for two courts, and the gym also rents for general sports reservations, from youth basketball and soccer to adult leagues.
A Gym Full of Life: Boy Scouts, Rentals, and the Wider Community
St Paul has sponsored Boy Scout Troop 44 since 1979. The troop meets in the Family Activity Center on Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. and serves the Johnston Community School District with a program for boys in grades five through twelve. There are roughly forty registered Scouts, ages eleven to seventeen, and about forty registered adult leaders. The troop is active year-round, with weekly meetings, monthly outings, week-long summer camp, and a high-adventure program. To date, ninety-six of its Scouts have earned the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank in Scouting, and the troop takes on an annual service project and many individual community service efforts.
The Family Activity Center is also a community rental space. The gym rents for $40 an hour for full use or $25 for a half court, and nets for soccer, pickleball, and basketball are available. The Fellowship Hall, with round tables, chairs, and additional tables along the west wall, rents for $40 an hour. The Sanctuary, with padded pews, a stage at the east end, and a grand piano, rents for $40 an hour, with microphones and a projector available for an additional charge. The kitchen and individual classrooms, including the North Room, the Fireside Room, two Sunday School classrooms, and the Youth Room, are available at $25 an hour. Combo packages bundle the spaces at a discount, and the church also reserves the right to adjust or cancel scheduled sessions with one to two weeks' notice in case of conflicts with church activities.
The Food Pantry Garden, the Alternative Gift Market, and the Wider Mission
St Paul's mission work radiates outward into Johnston and central Iowa. The Food Pantry Garden was started in 1999 and each year provides hundreds of pounds of fresh, nutritional produce to low-income families and seniors served by the Johnston Food Pantry. The garden sits toward the back of the church parking lot and is cultivated by church members, community volunteers, and local students, with Val Nichols and Annie Temple coordinating.
The Alternative Gift Market is the church's signature annual event, a chance to give meaningful gifts in someone else's name by donating to local and global nonprofits instead of buying another sweater. The market features more than fifteen local nonprofits and twenty global mission projects, including the Arabic Outreach Center, the Animal Rescue League of Iowa, The Beacon Women's Shelter, Central Iowa Shelter and Services, ChildServe, CROSS Outreach, Crossroads of Iowa, Johnston Partnership, the Johnston Community Food Pantry Garden, Legacy of Light, Many Hands Thrift Store, Nature Bags, Ronald McDonald House of Des Moines, the Rotary Club of Johnston, Self-Help International, Touch of Grace, Veterans in Agriculture, and Wings of Refuge. A recent in-person market raised more than $11,300 in support of eighteen local and twenty global organizations, and an online market runs through mid-December each year.
The Community Harvest Dinner is another annual tradition, a Thanksgiving-style turkey dinner with stuffing, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a long table of desserts, served in staggered seatings beginning with a to-go pickup at 5 p.m. and continuing through 6:30 p.m. Adult meals are $12 and children's meals are $5, with kids three and under free. The dinner brings together members and neighbors, and many guests donate toward meal costs for others. The Artisan Fair, run by the Board of Deacons, is held each August and features art, crafts, and a sense of community, and the Easter Bunny blessing baskets, a newer effort, deliver small gift baskets to assisted living facilities in Johnston and Urbandale in the weeks before Easter.
Vacation Bible School is another community-facing program, most recently Operation Restoration: Mending God's World, and the congregation has also taken part in mission trips including a 2003 trip to Costa Rica and a 2020 Mission Des Moines effort that sent volunteers to the Johnston Food Pantry, the Des Moines Children's Museum, and the St Paul garden.
Hopestream: Walking With People Facing Cancer
Hopestream is St Paul's cancer care ministry, and it is built around the verse from Jeremiah 29:11 about God knowing the plans to prosper and give hope and a future. The ministry provides compassionate, spiritual, and practical assistance to people in the Johnston area who are facing cancer, along with their caregivers, through partnerships that witness to God's love.
Participants receive confidential, caring, spiritual, and emotional support, including help with household chores, regular visits, transportation to appointments, grief support, meal support, resources and networking, and prayer. Caregivers receive regular phone contact, private confidential visits, at-home visits, resources, and prayer from a team of caring, trained, background-checked volunteers. The program is based on the Our Journey of Hope spiritual outreach program sponsored by Cancer Treatment Centers of America, and its services are open to everyone regardless of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, disability, use of public assistance, or sexual orientation. Valerie Beecher coordinates the ministry.
The Deacons: Seeds of Hope, Home Communion, and a Card Ministry
The Board of Deacons at St Paul is a ministry of compassion and quiet faithfulness. Working behind the scenes, the deacons ensure that no one in the congregation or the wider community feels overlooked, and they embody Christ's love in practical ways. Their ministries include Seeds of Hope, a community outreach that delivers baskets of encouragement to local fire stations, schools, and the Blood Center; Home Communion, which brings the sacrament to homebound members; seasonal care of the worship space, including arranging poinsettias and Easter lilies; a Card Ministry that sends notes of care, sympathy, and encouragement; the annual Artisan Fair; Care Notes and Grief Booklets for those in seasons of loss; a Shepherding Call Tree that helps the church stay in touch; intergenerational projects that reach the elderly, including making Valentine's cards with St Paul Kids; emergency financial assistance for members facing unexpected hardship; and milestone celebrations, including birthday and anniversary recognitions during fellowship time.
Mary Pullen and Kathy Heatherton serve as co-presidents of the 2026 board, with Aaron Newton as vice president, Mandy Pion as secretary, and Sharon Bruene as treasurer.
Presbyterian Roots: Two Sacraments, Grape Juice, and the Session
St Paul is a member congregation of the Presbyterian Church (USA). The denomination traces its roots to the Protestant Reformation, beginning with Martin Luther in 1517, and its name comes from the Greek word presbuteros, meaning elder, which reflects the Old and New Testament practice of choosing leaders from among the community's wisest members.
Presbyterians celebrate two sacraments: baptism and the Lord's Supper. In baptism, a person is initiated into the Christian church, not the Presbyterian church specifically, and makes a public confession of faith. St Paul baptizes infants, who are given the chance to make their own confession of faith at confirmation. The Lord's Supper, also called Communion or the Eucharist, is open to every baptized Christian. The bread and wine, grape juice at St Paul, because there are recovering alcoholics in the congregation, represent Christ's body and blood and remind the church of his sacrifice on the cross.
St Paul is governed by the Session, made up of elders elected by the congregation to three-year terms, along with the pastors. The current elders include Jane Young and Isaiah Cammon in Christian Education; Patti Schroeder in Stewardship; Dave Beecher as Clerk of Session; Corrie Strasser; Lisa Stange and Erin Kongshaug in Worship and Music; Jerry and Jana Foley in Membership and Evangelism; Hale Strasser in Building and Grounds; and Lois Kiester in Personnel. The congregation belongs to the Presbytery of Des Moines, which oversees the preparation of ministry candidates, and to the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, which in turn is overseen by the General Assembly, the national governing body.
Weddings, Funerals, and a Wide-Open Welcome
St Paul hosts weddings and funerals as part of its ministry to the wider community. The Wedding Policies and Application lay out the practical details, and the church has prepared an informative and attractive Funeral and Memorial Planning Guide that includes the normal order of a service, hymns and scriptures commonly used, contact information for staff, reception information, memorial gifts, suggested minimum fees, and deacon grieving booklets. The guide is available in printed form on request.
That welcome extends well beyond weddings and funerals. The church is open and safe to all people, and the building is in constant rotation: the gym hosts fitness, youth sports, and pickleball; the sanctuary is used for vocal and piano recitals; and the fellowship hall is home to a monthly sewing group, receptions, and birthday parties. As the church's mission statement puts it, the calling is to glorify God by making disciples who connect in community, grow in faith, and serve in joy, and the doors on Merle Hay Road stay open for anyone who wants to walk in.