On the corner of East Orange and South Cedar Streets, across the street from Lititz Elementary School, Trinity Evangelical Congregational Church has been a fixture of downtown Lititz for a century and a half. The stone and brick sanctuary, the lively Sunday morning crowds, and a 150-year arc of history that began in a village octagonal building give the church a presence that is hard to miss in this small Lancaster County town. The church's vision statement sums up its heartbeat in three short phrases: Follow Jesus. Love People. Give Hope.
Sunday Mornings at Lititz Trinity
Two Sunday services anchor the week at Lititz Trinity. The 8:15 a.m. service is a traditional worship gathering, and the 10:30 a.m. service is a contemporary one. Both run about an hour and include a Bible-based message, prayer, worship in song, and a time of giving. The 10:30 a.m. service is livestreamed on YouTube each Sunday, with playback available shortly after the service ends.
Visitors can enter through either the Cedar Street or the Orange Street doors. Greeters at the doors point first-time guests toward the Welcome Center and the Connect Cafe, where coffee and a snack are waiting. From there it is easy to wander toward the sanctuary, a classroom, or the Heritage Room on the first floor, where the church's honor rolls of veterans from the World Wars, the Korean Conflict, and Vietnam are now displayed.
On the question of dress, the church's own welcome is plain: come as you are. Sunday morning attire runs the full range from casual to dressy.
A 150-Year History in Lititz
The congregation traces its founding to 1872, when the Rev. Abraham Schultz, a minister of the Evangelical Association assigned to the Brownstown Circuit, came to Lititz to preach. With local Evangelicals George Shaffner, John Young, and their wives, Schultz rented a curious two-story octagonal building on Centre Street, today Liberty Street, from a millwright named Charles Rudolph Kreiter. The building had been built years before to house a Flying Horse Establishment, what people today would call a merry-go-round, and the early services of the church were held inside that wooden round house.
The first regular services began in July 1872. The following March, Schultz was reassigned and the Rev. Reuben Dreibelbis took over the Brownstown Circuit, which now included the new Lititz congregation. Within two years the group had outgrown the round house, and on May 6, 1874, a meeting of the members decided to accept a lot at the present corner of East Orange and South Cedar Streets and build a church. The cornerstone was laid on July 26, 1874, in a ceremony led by the Rev. Christian Samuel Haman, presiding elder of the East Pennsylvania Conference.
Trinity's current sanctuary dates to 1936. On May 10 of that year the congregation dedicated a new Gothic-style building, the one in which the congregation still worships. The project left a debt that took another twelve years to retire, and in those years the church hosted concerts, rummage sales, and ham dinners to pay it down. The Members of the Men's Bible Class, taught for forty years by John Kahl Mathers, contributed handsomely, and in October 1935 they purchased the rose window that now glows above the chancel at every Sunday service.
The early years were shaped by a series of short pastorates and energetic laypeople. Two large leather bound Record books from 1872 survive in the church archives, both containing manuscript entries written by pastors through the 1880s and 1890s. The names of charter members are remembered too, especially Nancy Weaver Gingrich, born in 1860, who lived until 1953 and was the last member of the congregation to have known the original round house.
In 1894, the Jerusalem congregation, as it was then known, joined other United Evangelical churches in separating from the Evangelical Association. By the early twentieth century the name had changed to Trinity, and through most of the twentieth century the church was part of the East Pennsylvania Conference of the Evangelical Congregational Church.
Pastors Who Shaped the Congregation
Two of the church's nineteenth-century pastors had earlier served in the Civil War. The Rev. Benjamin D. Albright, who pastored from 1882 to 1885, was a private in Durell's Independent Battery D, Pennsylvania Artillery, and fought at Manassas, Antietam, and Petersburg. The Rev. Allen A. DeLong, pastor from 1891 to 1894, served in Company C of the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry, saw action at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, and was a guard at President Lincoln's second inauguration in March 1865. Both were active in the Grand Army of the Republic in Lititz and preached at Decoration Day services at the Moravian Cemetery.
The early twentieth century brought two lay artists whose work filled the sanctuary. Thomas N. Kissinger began painting large canvases for the Christmas services in 1889, his first being a life-sized coach covering the pulpit recess during the children's program. His brother William M. Kissinger and a cigar maker named John Kahl Mathers joined him later. Mathers, by far the most prolific, painted canvases for Christmas and Easter from 1907 into the 1920s, including a Resurrection Morn canvas for Easter 1918 and a shepherds tableau for Christmas 1919. Mathers' wife Katie directed the church's Senior Choir from 1923 to 1932 and played the organ, and together they opened their home for cake and candy sales, class meetings, and prayer meetings. None of the canvases they painted for the church have survived.
On Monday evening, November 9, 1936, the celebrated evangelist and trombonist Homer Rodeheaver, the music director for Billy Sunday and the recording artist who made The Old Rugged Cross famous, drew 827 people into the new sanctuary. The concert, a benefit for the building fund, included gospel songs, trombone solos, congregational singing, and a young women's trio coached on the spot. Rodeheaver returned to Lititz in December 1948 for another program of sacred music.
The Peanut Butter Egg Ministry
For nearly thirty years, the church's most distinctive ministry has been the making and selling of homemade chocolate-covered peanut butter eggs. The tradition began in 1992, when Miriam Moury, wife of then Associate Pastor Fred Moury, launched the project as a fundraiser. In its first year volunteers made 500 dozen eggs. The following year production jumped to 750 dozen, and by 2019 the team was making 3,358 dozen eggs in a single week, more than 827,000 individual eggs over the life of the ministry.
Production is a full-church event. The peanut butter is mixed in batches by volunteers, weighed, rolled, dipped, drizzled, labeled, and packed by a line that includes children, youth, and adults. Lunch and supper are brought in for the workers each day by other members, and the fellowship is part of the point. The eggs are sold in the weeks before Easter, with youth handling many of the orders.
Proceeds have always been tied to missions. The original purpose was to fund workcamp trips for the youth, raising the money that sent Trinity's teenagers to weeklong service projects from Maine to the Gulf Coast. In 2005, for example, all but six of the youth paid nothing for their workcamp, and those six paid less than $100 each. In later years the Eggstra Mission Fund, as the savings account came to be called, has also supported other mission projects, including the Launch Liberia initiative, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and the purchase of a new church van.
The eggs have not been produced in some recent years, and the project was paused again during the COVID era, when a 50% pass-through of prepaid orders still netted $10,000 for the church's mission work.
Trinity Kids: From Nursery Through Sixth Grade
Children's ministry at Lititz Trinity stretches from infancy through sixth grade and runs every Sunday of the school year. Nursery care is provided during both worship services for newborns through age three, and a Sunday School lesson for the nursery class is also offered at 9:15 a.m. Children in PreK through sixth grade gather for Sunday School at 9:15 a.m., then join their families for the first part of the 10:30 a.m. contemporary service. During the offering they are dismissed for Children's Church, which combines a large group lesson with small group time in the elementary wing.
On Wednesday evenings during the school year, Circle Up gathers children in kindergarten through sixth grade in Room 202 from 6:00 to 7:15 p.m. for games, active lessons, and small groups. On Thursday mornings, Story Time welcomes toddlers and preschoolers ages two to six, along with their caregivers, for a half-hour of stories and songs followed by playtime. A summer Vacation Bible School fills the mornings of one week each June.
Jessica Zoll serves as the Children's Ministry Director. A native of Lititz and a Warwick High School graduate, she holds a degree in theatre arts from Point Park University and brings more than a decade of childcare experience to the role.
Trinity Youth: Seventh Through Twelfth Grade
Trinity Youth meets at 9:15 a.m. on Sunday mornings for Sunday School in Room 204 and again on Sunday nights from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. for Youth Group, a time of lessons, activities, and snacks. The ministry is led by the Youth Director, Mike Maurer, who has been a member of Trinity for more than twenty years and teaches mathematics at Manheim Township High School.
During the school year, middle and high school students can also join a Boys Bible Study on Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 7:15 p.m. in Room 204 and a Girls Bible Study on the first and third Wednesdays at 6:00 p.m. in the church library. Each summer the youth travel to Kentucky for a work team trip, where they spend a week building relationships and repairing homes for people in need, the same kind of trip that the Peanut Butter Egg sales have long funded.
Music Ministry
Music is woven into both Sunday services. The Senior Choir, made up of singers in high school and older, rehearses on Wednesday evenings during the school year and sings three times a month in the 8:15 a.m. traditional service. The Praise Band leads the singing in the 10:30 a.m. contemporary service, and an Instrumental Ensemble of intermediate and advanced wind and string musicians performs several times a year.
The tradition of choral music at Trinity runs deep. The church's first known Christmas cantata, Tidings of Great Joy, was presented in 1926, with a thirty-voice Senior Choir directed by Mrs. Kathryn (Katie) B. (Amer) Mathers, who also played piano and served as organist in the early twentieth century.
Adult Electives, Bible Studies, and the Book Club
Sunday morning is a busy time at Lititz Trinity. At 9:15 a.m., adults can choose from a slate of electives that change with the seasons. Recent offerings have included a study of the Book of Hebrews, a class on the women in Jesus' genealogy called Mothers of the Messiah, a class for adults in their forties and fifties called The Journey, and a class for adults in their twenties and thirties called Young & Rooted.
On Monday nights at 7:00 p.m. in Room 103, the Monday Night Men's Bible Study opens to men of all ages. On the first and third Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m., the All Generations Women's Bible Study, sometimes called AGWuBS, gathers women ages sixteen through ninety-nine in Room 107 around a chosen book. The Trinity Book Club meets in Room 103 on occasional Wednesday evenings to discuss works by Christian authors, with the goal of growing in spiritual maturity through the writings of others.
Local Outreach: The Caring Closet and Beyond
On the third Saturday of every month from 10:00 a.m. to noon, the doors of Trinity's Caring Closet open to neighbors in need. Volunteers distribute household and personal care items, including cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, dish liquid, body wash, shampoo and conditioner, toothpaste, feminine hygiene products, and more. The ministry is supported by donations from church members, who drop off supplies in a wagon parked behind the coffee bar in the Connect Cafe.
Beyond the Caring Closet, the Outreach Team is active throughout the year. They lead outdoor worship on the second Friday of selected months, partner with Blessings of Hope, host a community lunch for downtown Lititz businesses, honor local first responders, give away snow cones and hot chocolate at community events, host a car at the Lititz Lions Car Cruise, and collect food for the food bank.
Trinity is also a host church for Released Time, an optional Christian education program for third and fourth grade students in the Warwick School District. The program pulls public school students out of class one day a week for a Bible-centered class, taught by volunteer instructors from area churches.
Global Outreach: Missionaries Around the World
Lititz Trinity supports a long roster of missionaries serving in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The list includes the Rev. Yoriyoshi and Emiko Abe, church planters with the EC Church of Japan in the Tokyo area; Joe and Wendy Toy, who run Open Air Ministries in North Carolina; Ed and Valerie Schubert, who run Casa de Luz, a children's daycare and school in Honduras; Brian and Missy Wagner, who teach at Rift Valley Academy in Kenya; the Rev. BJ and Rachel Whitaker, church planters in Spain; and the Stoltzfus family, also serving at Rift Valley Academy.
Several missionaries are linked to Bible translation. Rev. Dan and Melinda Moury serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Orlando, Florida. Jamie and Anita Farr, also with Wycliffe, are Strategic Innovations Consultants for the Pacific area, facilitating Bible translation among indigenous peoples in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and Fiji. Dan and Mary Lynne Wills lead member care for Wycliffe USA, and Jonathan and Kathy Wilson are based in Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea, working on translation of the Bible into the Bindadere language.
Each November the congregation fills shoebox gifts for Operation Christmas Child, which distributes them to children in more than 100 countries. The church has also sent short-term teams to work with missionaries, including trips to JAARS in Waxhaw, North Carolina, to Meco, Spain for a Vacation Bible School style baseball camp, and to Guatemala to serve in an orphanage.
Seniors at Trinity
The Senior Adult Ministry Team, coordinated by the office, hosts three socials a year, including a fall brunch with games and food, and a Fellowship Friends program that pairs each homebound member with a monthly visitor. A monthly Card Ministry sends birthday and holiday greetings, and a Senior Men's Breakfast gathers men aged fifty and older for food and fellowship on a designated Saturday every other month. The Trinity Seniors Newsletter, edited by Tina Bicksler, keeps older members connected to the congregation.
What Trinity Believes
Trinity's statement of faith, adopted from the National Association of Evangelicals, begins with confidence in the Bible as the inspired, infallible, authoritative Word of God. The church confesses one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The church affirms the deity of Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his miracles, his vicarious and atoning death through his shed blood, his bodily resurrection, his ascension to the right hand of the Father, and his personal return in power and glory.
Salvation is by grace through regeneration by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells the Christian, enabling a godly life. The church affirms the resurrection of both the saved and the lost, to life or to damnation, and the spiritual unity of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Vision of the Church
Five values shape the congregation's life together. The first, Life in the Scriptures, anchors every ministry in the Bible as the inspired, unchanging, authoritative Word of God. The second, Intentional Spiritual Growth, calls the church to invest in people and equip them to follow Jesus. The third, Passionate Devotion to Jesus, gathers the church to worship him with all that they are. The fourth, Authentic Caring Relationships, makes the church a safe place to be real and to belong. The fifth, Relevance for Every Generation, commits the church to invest in children, teens, and older adults alike, sacrificing personal preferences to reach people of every age with the unchanging truth of the gospel.
For 150 years, the people of Lititz Trinity have been carrying that vision into the neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and mission fields that God has placed before them, and they gather on the corner of East Orange and South Cedar Streets each Sunday morning to keep on following Jesus, loving people, and giving hope.