A Progressive Congregation at West 86th and West End
St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church has stood at the corner of West End Avenue and West 86th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side since 1897. The red-brick and brownstone sanctuary was designed by architect Robert H. Robertson. The congregation itself traces its roots to 1834, when the Second Wesleyan Chapel was founded on Mulberry Street in Lower Manhattan, and took its present name in 1937 when St. Paul Methodist Church merged with neighboring St. Andrew Methodist Church. Today the church describes itself as an affirming and celebrating community of radical welcome, where inclusivity, social justice, and spiritual growth are at the heart of life together.
Sunday Worship at Eleven
Sunday worship begins at 11:00 AM in the sanctuary and runs about an hour. (From July through Labor Day weekend, the hour shifts to 10:00 AM.) The service is described as a joyful, inspiring, thought-provoking, intimate, and entertaining celebration of life and faith, grounded in the Revised Common Lectionary and built around the church's moving and inspirational sermons and prayers. Near the beginning of each service, one of the pastors invites children and caregivers to the front for a Message for All Ages, an interactive telling of the week's lesson.
On the first Sunday of every month, the service closes with the sacrament of Holy Communion. Following the United Methodist tradition, all are welcome at the table regardless of age or spiritual journey. A piece of bread is offered, which worshippers are invited to dip into a cup of grape juice. Gluten-free bread and a gluten-free cup are always available. Those who prefer not to receive the elements may still come forward and receive a blessing by crossing their arms over their chest with hands resting on opposite shoulders.
Worship is also livestreamed on YouTube, allowing members and friends near and far to participate. The worship and sermon archives and a weekly Sermon & Prayercast are available for those who want to revisit past messages or pray along during the week. Each Sunday, the digital bulletin is shared online, and a paper bulletin is available at the sanctuary entrance.
Coming As You Are: Accessibility, Children, and Communion
Atmosphere is informal. People attend in everything from suits to jeans and t-shirts, and visitors are invited to take any pew and make themselves at home. The 86th Street entrance has a wheelchair-accessible ramp and is stroller friendly. An elevator serves the church offices, meeting rooms, food pantry, social hall, and West End Theatre. The restrooms are ADA-accessible and all-gender.
Children are always welcome in worship. Children's worship bulletins with crayons are available each week. After the Message for All Ages, children ages 4 to 10 may go to Sunday School on the third floor, and children 3 and under may go to nursery care on the first-floor parlor. Families are equally welcome to stay in the sanctuary together. Nursery care is provided by professional sitters through Smart Sitting for children from 6 months to 3 years, from 10:45 AM to 12:30 PM each Sunday.
The volunteer choir rehearses each Sunday at 10:00 AM before worship. No audition is necessary; the only requirement is a love of singing. The Minister of Music, Dr. Frank Glass, has led the choir for more than forty years.
Parking and Getting There
Free street parking is scarce, though usually available on Sundays for those willing to walk a few blocks. The closest paid parking garages include 260 West 87th Street (a two-minute walk), 214 West 88th Street, and several garages in the 89th Street and Amsterdam Avenue area. By subway, the 1 train to the 86th Street stop drops visitors less than one block from the church. On Sundays, worshippers are invited to enter through the West End Avenue doors for worship.
A Church Reborn: Looking Outward Since the 1960s
By the 1960s, the flight of families to the suburbs had decimated St. Paul & St. Andrew's membership. The denomination recommended shuttering. Instead, the few dozen remaining congregants chose to turn outward to meet the needs of the surrounding neighborhood. This decision - an embodiment of the Jeremiah 29:7 call to "seek the peace and prosperity of the city" - shaped everything that came next.
In 1963, the church launched its first Spanish-language ministry, a commitment that continues today in the bilingual Sunday School and the Homework Help tutoring program serving neighborhood children and their families. In 1979, a small food pantry began on the church's third floor. That pantry became the West Side Campaign Against Hunger (WSCAH), which now serves more than 10,000 families each month from its own facilities.
In late 1990, the church began a decades-long interfaith partnership with Congregation B'nai Jeshurun. The following August, when B'nai Jeshurun's roof collapsed, the two congregations began sharing St. Paul & St. Andrew's sanctuary; B'nai Jeshurun continues to hold High Holy Day services and other events there. A sanctuary banner, made collaboratively by the church and synagogue choirs, declares, "How good it is when brothers and sisters dwell together in harmony" (Psalm 133).
In 1991, St. Paul & St. Andrew became a reconciling congregation, formally welcoming and affirming LGBTQ+ individuals into the full life of the church - an early member of what became the Reconciling Ministries Network of the United Methodist Church. Two dozen members led a shutdown of the 2019 General Conference in St. Louis in protest of new anti-queer legislation. After the historic 2024 General Conference removed all prohibitions against ministry with and by queer siblings, clergy and laity from St. Paul & St. Andrew were present for the vote.
The Robertson-Designed Sanctuary and Its Many Lives
The 1897 church building has hosted many lives beyond Sunday worship. Films and television shows including Awakenings (1990), Keeping the Faith (1999), and Spoiler Alert (2022) have used the sanctuary for filming. In 1999, a major renovation of the West End Theatre in the lower level strengthened the church's support of the performing arts. Productions launched there include Bubbling Brown Sugar (1975), which went on to Broadway, and The Laramie Project in 2000. After 9/11, the church sponsored In Our Own Words and, in collaboration with other faith groups, Same Difference, an interfaith response to those attacks. Today, Bedlam Theatre Company manages the West End Theatre.
Over the decades the building has housed a senior center and meals-on-wheels program, a homeless shelter, a neighborhood tutoring program, twelve-step programs, a preschool and after-school programs, dozens of theater groups and musical ensembles, interfaith programs, a host site for community board meetings, and an election polling location. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when in-person worship moved online, the sanctuary famously filled with food to meet the surge in emergency distribution through WSCAH.
The church has been selected as a National Fund for Sacred Places grantee. Capital campaign work to preserve and care for the landmarked building is underway, including restoration of the 129-year-old Spanish tile roof, with members invited to sponsor a tile in honor or memory of loved ones.
Children, Youth, and Family Ministries
Children's ministry begins in the sanctuary itself and extends across the building. Pastor Ashley Cuellar oversees Children and Family Ministries. In addition to the Message for All Ages and bilingual Sunday School, the church offers Faith & Fun Fridays on the second Friday of each month from 5:30 to 7:30 PM (September through June), a free drop-off program for kids ages 4 to 10 with games, music, crafts, and free play. Vacation Bible School runs each summer for children in Pre-K through 5th Grade, with the Youth, Young Adults, and other adult members serving as counselors. Each Advent, the children enact the Christmas story through narration and song during worship on the second Sunday of Advent.
Youth ministry, coordinated by Jessie Floyd, gathers middle and high school students weekly for fellowship, Bible study, service, and silliness. Bibles & Bagels meets the first Sunday of the month at 9:30 AM. Faith & Fun Fridays brings youth together the second Friday of each month at 6:30 PM. A virtual or in-person fellowship time is held the third Sunday of the month at 6:30 PM. The youth also participate in preparing for Miracle Mondays and attend conference-wide youth gatherings, and they enjoy seasonal outings such as apple picking, ice skating, lunches, and lock-ins.
Young Adults and LaMP at Morningside Heights
Sally Rausch serves as Young Adult and Campus Pastor. The Young Adults gather monthly for lunch after worship, usually on the fourth Sunday, sometimes at a restaurant, sometimes at the church. A monthly Zoom Dialogue on the second Wednesday at 7:30 PM brings Young Adults together from as far away as Brazil and Colombia for conversation on topics like Women in the Bible, the Sermon on the Mount, Theology 101, Mid-Faith Crisis, and books by Anne Lamott, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama. Throughout the year, the group organizes social outings - pottery making, rock climbing, professional sporting events, hiking, picnics, theater, and concerts featuring members of the community.
The Campus Ministry partners with Lutheran and Presbyterian colleagues to lead LaMP (Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians), a progressive, LGBTQ-affirming ministry for college and graduate students in Morningside Heights. With students from Columbia, Union, Barnard, Manhattan School of Music, Fordham, NYU, and other schools, LaMP meets every Monday night during the school year, 7:00 to 8:30 PM, at Broadway Presbyterian (114th and Broadway) for dinner and conversation, plus study breaks, retreats, and social-justice teach-ins.
Connect & Care, Pajama Prayers, and Spiritual Formation
Spiritual formation at St. Paul & St. Andrew is intentionally intergenerational. Connect & Care small groups, led by Pastor Lea Matthews, run on a semester schedule and can be joined at any time. Groups meet in person or on Zoom and vary in day, time, and frequency.
Every Tuesday morning at 7:30 AM, Pajama Prayers gathers the community on Zoom for thirty minutes of prayer and connection: a song, a poem, and time to share joys and concerns. United Women in Faith, an intergenerational group open to anyone, meets on the second Saturday of each month on Zoom for Bible study, anti-racism work, guest speakers, fellowship, and social-justice education and advocacy. The group is affiliated with the national United Women in Faith organization.
Souls & Solidarity, a space for spiritual activism and liberative gathering, draws from the text Liberating Church, with its eight marks of a liberated and liberating community, and foregrounds Black church experience and wisdom. The congregation gathers often around tables - post-Sunday worship potlucks, pre-Thanksgiving potlucks, Palm Sunday potlucks, Shrove Tuesday pancakes, Maundy Thursday soup suppers, summertime picnics, and ice cream socials.
Miracle Mondays and the West Side Campaign Against Hunger
Justice is not just something talked about here. The church operates two large-scale outreach efforts that have shaped both the congregation and the wider Upper West Side.
Every Monday, the church opens its doors for Miracle Mondays, a resource fair welcoming refugees, asylum-seekers, and their families. Volunteers help distribute essential goods and food, sign folks up for discounted Metrocards, and run a pop-up clothing store a few times each month. The church also packs welcome backpacks filled with essential goods that go to its mutual aid partner, La Morada, to be distributed to those settling into shelters in the South Bronx. In 2018, the church offered sanctuary for over a year to a Central American family facing deportation.
The West Side Campaign Against Hunger began as a small pantry in a third-floor church cupboard in 1979. By 1990, it had relocated to the church basement. In 1993, director Doreen Wohl created the country's first supermarket-style food pantry, letting people choose the food they needed. A capital campaign raised $4 million to renovate the basement space, and a Mobile Pantry, purchased with support from Councilmember Helen Rosenthal's office, brought food to 20 sites around the city. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire church building became an emergency food warehouse, and WSCAH subsequently moved to an enormous warehouse facility in Washington Heights. Today, WSCAH distributes USDA MyPlate Balanced groceries through its 86th Street market and runs benefits-access support for community members.
A Sanctuary Church for Refugees and Asylum Seekers
The congregation describes itself as a Sanctuary Church, committed to the radical welcome of refugees, asylum-seekers, and immigrants. In response to a major new wave of immigration in 2022, in coordination with NYC immigrant rights groups, the church inaugurated Miracle Mondays. Recent statements have reaffirmed this commitment in the face of executive orders targeting immigrant communities. The church works closely with Immigration Law & Justice New York (a United Methodist Immigration Ministry) and Venezuelans & Immigrants Aid, among other interfaith, legal, non-profit, and mutual aid partners. Holiday Baking each Thanksgiving and Christmas supplies thousands of cookies and hundreds of pies to the church's partner, Goddard Riverside, for community holiday meals.
The Choir, the Arts, and a Singing Sanctuary
Music has long been a hallmark of St. Paul & St. Andrew. In the 1930s and 1940s, the 1,200-seat sanctuary filled with Methodists listening to a paid vocal quartet that once included Metropolitan Opera soprano Eleanor Steber. Today the volunteer choir, led by Dr. Frank Glass, welcomes singers of every age and ability. Glass has written and arranged scores of anthems for the choir, and many of his choral works have been published by J.W. Pepper Music.
The church partners with Carnegie Hall and Broadway Inspirational Voices to host concerts in the sanctuary. Broadway Inspirational Voices, a Grammy-nominated, TONY Honors Recipient ensemble, brings The Gathering to the church each year. The West End Theatre continues to launch new productions, currently under the management of Bedlam Theatre Company.
The Leadership Team
The pastoral team is led by Rev. Dr. K Karpen, who has helped guide St. Paul & St. Andrew since September 1984. A graduate of Cornell and Union Theological Seminary, K has taught at Union, Jewish Theological Seminary, Columbia Business School, and Drew University, and serves on Manhattan's Community Board 7. Rev. Lea Matthews, an ordained deacon, joined the church as an intern in 2014 and brings a decade of teaching experience in Bronx public schools to her ministry of spiritual formation and community organizing. Sally Rausch, a 2025 graduate of Union Theological Seminary, serves as Young Adult and Campus Pastor. Ashley Cuellar, a graduate of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, serves as Pastor of Children and Family Ministries. Dr. Frank Glass has been Minister of Music for more than forty years, writing and arranging music for the volunteer choir. Jessie Floyd, a lifelong member of St. Paul & St. Andrew, joined the team most recently as Youth Coordinator after years of volunteering and co-directing Vacation Bible School.
A Community of Radical Welcome
From a small chapel on Mulberry Street in 1834, to a turn-of-the-century sanctuary on the Upper West Side, to a thriving progressive congregation hosting theater and concerts, food distribution and resource fairs, St. Paul & St. Andrew has remained rooted in the same calling: to seek the welfare of the city. As a recent play about the church put it, this is The Church of "Why Not?" - a place where all are valued because of who they are and the talents, gifts, and energy they bring.