Christ's Table, and All Are Welcome
St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church stands on Hoboken Avenue in Jersey City, just south of where the old Erie Railroad cut runs behind its property. Its banner line, displayed right on the front of the building, reads: "This is Christ's Table... and ALL are welcome here." The congregation belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the New Jersey Synod, and it is recognized as a Reconciling in Christ congregation through ReconcilingWorks, an explicit welcome to LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants of any status, people of color, people with disabilities, those who struggle financially, and anyone unsure about what they believe. Worshipers are asked to come as they are, whether full of faith, full of questions, full of doubt, or somewhere in between.
Worship on Hoboken Avenue
Sunday worship with Holy Communion is celebrated each week at 10:15 a.m. at 440 Hoboken Avenue. The service is offered both in person and on Facebook Live, and the building opens with on-site parking available through the office. Masks are currently optional. If services are called off because of weather, the congregation gathers on Zoom, with the link posted on the church's Facebook page.
Liturgy follows the ELCA pattern and centers on the sacrament of Holy Communion. Baptisms are welcomed into the same Sunday gathering rather than held privately. The space is acoustically lively and rich, a quality that the congregation says makes both its own musicians and visiting ensembles sound at ease in the room.
The Singing Congregation
Music is a hallmark of St. Paul's. The Director of Music, Christopher Greene, leads the service from the organ and conducts a small but powerful choir of church members who sing on most Sundays and prepare special pieces for festivals and concerts. A 4-octave handbell choir, led by Darlene Wyzga, rehearses after worship each Sunday (excluding summers) and rings for services such as Christmas Eve and Easter. Recitals and other musical groups also use the sanctuary from time to time as a performance space.
The instrument behind it all is an unusually adaptable two-manual pipe organ built by J.H. and C.S. Odell in about 1882. It was moved to St. Paul's in 1907 or 1908 from a Reformed church in Plainfield, New Jersey, electrified and converted from a tracker organ to electro-pneumatic action, restored by Odell in 1950, and rebuilt by Stanton Daugherty Pipe Organs in 1995 after a nor'easter damaged the swell chest. The organ marked its 100th anniversary in the building in 2008. Recent water damage has again affected the swell chest and several stops on the great chest, and a full restoration is in progress.
Sunday School and Confirmation
Children are very much part of life at St. Paul's. The Sunday School is a multi-age class that meets after worship almost every Sunday, except during the summer. Each session opens with music, then moves into a time of art, storytelling, conversation, and reflection on the life of Christ, Old Testament stories, and current events and social justice themes at a developmentally appropriate level. Children respond through studio arts, block building, instrumentation, and drama, and at least one parent is always present alongside the teacher.
Older students attend confirmation classes led by the pastor. Adults new to the Lutheran tradition, or simply curious about it, are welcome to join those classes as well. An Adult Education gathering is held on the last Sunday of each month.
The Sharing Place: Lifting the Burden of Hunger Since 1982
St. Paul's is known throughout the area for The Sharing Place, its hunger ministry founded in 1982. One of Hudson County's oldest and largest food pantries, The Sharing Place serves more than 200 households a month with groceries that include fresh produce, meats, proteins, dairy, eggs, and non-perishables. It is a partner agency of the Community Food Bank of New Jersey and receives Community Service Block Grant funding through Jersey City. Food is distributed on the third Saturday of each month from 8:00 a.m. to noon, and the pantry is staffed almost entirely by volunteers. Darlene Wyzga, the church's Office Manager, serves as Executive Director.
St. Paul's Center of Caring and Community Partners
On the church property, the St. Paul's Center of Caring (SPCC) operates a multi-purpose space used for civic meetings, community education, addiction support groups, and private events. The congregation founded SPCC and continues to partner with it. Through SPCC and the parish hall, St. Paul's hosts a range of support ministries, including Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups. Hudson County CASA, which advocates for abused and neglected children, has had its home in the building since 2009.
St. Paul's is also an active partner in Jersey City Together, a local chapter of an independent, non-partisan citizens' organization working on housing affordability, education, and public safety and criminal justice. In past decades, the congregation ran the St. Paul's Shelter for homeless women and children in the church basement, and the former parsonage is leased to Lutheran Social Ministries of New Jersey for a program that cares for children and teens while their parents undergo drug or alcohol rehabilitation.
A Lutheran Home on Hoboken Avenue
St. Paul's traces its roots to 1882, when it began as a German Sunday School mission of St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in downtown Jersey City. It was founded as a congregation in the fall of 1884 with Athanasius Stuckert, a Swiss immigrant, as its first pastor, and was formally incorporated in January 1885. The early congregation worshipped in German. English Sunday School classes and monthly English services began in 1898; the German and English Sunday Schools merged in 1925; and in 1930 the congregation moved to English worship every Sunday, retaining a German service. By 1949, German services were reduced to three a year.
The cornerstone of the present church building was laid in 1906 and the building dedicated in May 1907. The church bell, which had been dedicated in 1893, and the baptismal font, dedicated Easter 1900, were moved from the original site. The Odell organ was dedicated in 1908. The stained-glass windows, made by the famous studio Mainz of Munich, were installed between 1909 and 1922. The tower clock, paid for mostly by local businessmen, was dedicated in 1912; anniversary booklets note the congregation's long-running battle to keep those four tower clocks working through nor'easters and bird droppings. By 1934 the congregation had a communicant membership of about 500 and a Sunday School of 250 children, and the candlelight Christmas Eve service that continues today was instituted in 1938.
The parish hall was constructed in 1966 and 1967, funded primarily by member gifts with no mortgage taken, and was later dedicated as the Richard W. Heins Memorial parish hall in honor of the pastor who served from 1938 to 1972. In 1988 the congregation joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which had been formed that year through the merger of three Lutheran bodies. A major renovation project that began in 2008 reshaped the basement for the church office and Sunday School rooms and made space for community service partners such as Hudson County CASA. The congregation has published a newsletter since 1889; in 1999 its name was changed from Hausgast ("house guest") to In Common, based on Acts 2:44.
What Lutherans Believe
St. Paul's is rooted in the grace-inspired Reformation thinking of Martin Luther, who in 1517 posted the Ninety-Five Theses in Wittenberg. Lutherans hold to the three principles that come from that movement: grace alone, faith alone, and Scripture alone. Salvation is by the grace of God alone, received through faith, with the Bible as the true standard by which teachings and doctrines are to be judged.
The congregation affirms the Triune God: Creator of all that is, Jesus Christ who transforms lives through his death and resurrection, and the Holy Spirit active in the world. The ELCA accepts the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed as true declarations of the faith, and Lutheran worship uses them as ecumenical creeds. Lutherans believe that baptism incorporates the baptized into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, the Body of Christ, and that baptism is both a one-time event and a daily way of dying to sin and rising to new life. Holy Communion is celebrated at every Sunday service.
The congregation is also clear about the wider Christian family. The ELCA is in full communion with the Moravian Church, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church, and continues an ongoing dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, including the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
Baptisms, Weddings, and the Week
Baptisms at St. Paul's take place during the regular Sunday service at 10:15 a.m., and the rite is shared by the whole congregation as a moment of joy. Baptism is offered several times a year, generally on the Vigil of Easter, the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Trinity, the Feast of All Saints, and the Baptism of Our Lord, with flexibility for special circumstances. Two or three pre-baptism classes are typically held with the pastor, parents, and godparents.
Weddings are also celebrated at the church by appointment, with pre-marital counseling of four to six sessions arranged with the pastor. The parish hall and other spaces are available to rent for community groups and private events, with inquiries handled through the parish administrator.
The church office is open Monday through Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and closed Friday and Saturday. The building itself, however, sees steady traffic beyond Sunday: the food pantry on the third Saturday of each month, handbell and choir rehearsals, recovery meetings, civic groups, and the partners that share the parish hall. St. Paul's describes its life together with a question it holds at the center of its welcome: how to make this room, and the church, a more inclusive home for more people.