First Presbyterian Church of Warminster gathers on a quiet stretch of Madison Avenue in Warminster Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The congregation is the product of a 2016 merger between Warminster Presbyterian Church and First Presbyterian Church of Willow Grove, and it carries forward the warm, family feel and long-standing community relationships that both predecessor bodies were known for. Sunday morning worship at 9:30 AM is the heart of life at First Pres, with traditional liturgy, choir and handbell music, a children's sermon that sends kids off to Sunday School, and a coffee hour in the Social Hall that often doubles as a packing line for the church's own meal ministry.
Worship on Sundays at 9:30
The Sunday service takes place in the Sanctuary and is described by the congregation as traditional, with music, lessons, and prayer woven through the hour. Worshippers follow along with printed bulletins, monitors at the front, and additional large-print or hearing devices for those who need them. Music is led by Director of Music David Sathra and Organist Kathy Wirth-Bolkus, with the Senior Choir and Handbell Choir carrying much of the liturgy, and Children's Music Director Jonna Eiser guiding the younger singers.
An abbreviated video of each week's service is posted on the church's YouTube channel, so members who are traveling, homebound, or simply unable to attend in person can watch along. Coffee, conversation, and fellowship follow in the Social Hall downstairs.
Sunday School and the Children's Sermon
Children are part of the Sunday worship gathering from the start. The congregation sings and prays together, and after the Children's Sermon the younger members are dismissed to Sunday School classes for the remainder of the service. Sunday School runs from age 3 through high school, with children grouped by age and a Red Cross-certified caregiver looking after the youngest.
For infants and toddlers from 6 months to 2 years, a staffed nursery is open from 9:00 AM until the worship service ends. Ushers can point first-time families to the nursery and to the right Sunday School room.
Beyond the classroom, the children's ministry runs a year-round calendar of activities: chime and choir groups, Vacation Bible Theater each July, mission-focused service projects, and intergenerational events that pair kids with adults from the congregation.
Youth Outings and Mission Trips
Carol Wagenheiser, an ordained Ruling Elder and the church's Children and Youth Ministry and Communication Coordinator, oversees a busy youth program that gathers middle and high schoolers throughout the year. Monthly Saturday Youth Board Game Nights bring 6th graders and up into the Library for an evening of cards, board games, and snacks.
Summers carry two anchor events for the youth. Summer Quest is a three-day at-home mission experience for those who have finished 5th grade, mixing Bible lessons, kickball and gaga games, and short service projects. Each June the high school group heads out on a weeklong mission trip - recent years have taken them to Mission at the Eastward in Farmington, Maine, where they work alongside that organization on home repair projects for neighbors who need warm, safe, and dry housing. Adults are welcome on the trip as well.
Other youth-led service moments include the summer Vacation Bible Theater, regular American Red Cross blood drives, and the Spaghetti Dinner Fundraiser that supports the Youth Scholarship Fund, which underwrites youth events and mission work in and around the church.
Food=Hope and a Wide Circle of Outreach
First Pres has built an unusually large outreach footprint for a single congregation, anchored by Food=Hope, an in-house meal ministry that gathers on the 4th Sunday of each month after worship. During coffee hour, adults and children gather in the Social Hall to put together a wholesome dinner that is then delivered to the Warminster Food Bank or to neighbors at Hope Park in Kensington, Philadelphia. The 10:30 to 11:30 window runs the same way every month, and the church welcomes visitors who want to join the packing line.
Around Food=Hope the congregation supports a long list of partner organizations, each chosen by the mission committee and revisited regularly. Local partners include the Warminster Food Bank, the Ben Wilson Senior Center, the Warminster Volunteer Fire Company, and Willow Grove Community Development, which works on affordable housing in Eastern Montgomery County. The church also supports A Women's Place, NOVA, Chester Eastside Ministries, Cradles to Crayons (the Greater Philadelphia chapter that addresses children's clothing insecurity), the American Red Cross with monthly on-site blood drives, and the global hunger nonprofit Feed My Starving Children, for which the youth group hand-packs meals each year.
The Session - the nine-member board of Elders that governs the church - sets the overall direction for this work, while the Board of Deacons handles much of the day-to-day mercy ministry: running the food closet, lending medical equipment, visiting the homebound and hospitalized, and delivering flowers.
Music in the Sanctuary
Music is woven through Sunday worship and through the wider life of the church. The Senior Choir sings most weeks and takes the lead on festival Sundays. The Handbell Choir adds its own voice to the liturgy. Jonna Eiser directs the children's choirs, which perform in worship and in special services such as the family-friendly 6 PM Christmas Eve service.
The music program also opens the church building to the wider community. Concerts such as the annual Virtuoso String Concert draw listeners from across Bucks County for an afternoon of classical, jazz, pop, Latin, and sacred music performed in the Sanctuary.
Bible Study and Adult Fellowship
Adults who want to dig deeper during the week meet on Fridays for a one-hour Bible Study held in person in the Library and simultaneously over Zoom. The study moves through the weekly lectionary and expands on the texts used in Sunday worship, so the two feed into each other.
Around Bible Study, the adults of the church run a steady calendar of fellowship groups. There are women's fellowship circles, and the Senior Choir and Handbell Choir function as social as well as musical groups. Seasonal events such as the all-church picnic each fall and the Palm Sunday pancake breakfast draw the whole congregation - and a few neighbors - into the Social Hall.
The Deacons' Quiet Ministry of Care
The Board of Deacons is the church's arm of sympathy and service, elected by the congregation for three-year terms. Deacons visit the sick and homebound, deliver flowers, run the food closet, and lend out medical equipment such as wheelchairs, walkers, and bedside items. They are also the people who, more often than not, notice when a member of the church or a neighbor in the community needs a hand, and they coordinate with the Pastor and the Session to respond.
A Congregation of Two Histories
The First Presbyterian Church of Warminster was incorporated in January 2016, bringing together two congregations with deep roots in the area. Warminster Presbyterian Church dated back to 1948; First Presbyterian Church of Willow Grove dated to 1930. Members of the merged body take pride in the way those two histories joined into a single family feeling, and the long-standing relationships across Warminster and Willow Grove remain a defining mark of the church today.
That history also shapes how the church shows up in the wider community. The annual Community Christmas Tree Lighting on the church grounds draws neighbors from across the township for carols, hot chocolate, cookies, and the tree-lighting finale. Each December the church turns its property into Bethlehem Village for a free live Nativity with real sheep, crafts, games, and hot chocolate. Two Christmas Eve services - a family-friendly 6 PM service with the children's choir and a more traditional 8 PM service, both ending with candlelit Silent Night - close out the year.
Pastoral Leadership and Staff
The church is served by Pastor Mindy Campbell, who has led First Pres Warminster since September 2019. Before coming to Warminster she served as Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and as Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Woodbridge, New Jersey. A North Carolina native, she moved north in 1999 to attend Princeton Theological Seminary and now lives in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia.
Carol Wagenheiser, the Youth Coordinator, brings a background as a retired occupational therapist with the Bucks County Intermediate Unit, along with degrees in education from Holy Family University and certificates in Youth Ministry and Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary and Ministry from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. She is also a member of the Senior Choir and Handbell Choir.
Together with the Session of nine elected Elders, the Board of Deacons, Director of Music David Sathra, Organist Kathy Wirth-Bolkus, and Children's Music Director Jonna Eiser, the pastoral staff keeps a congregation that is small enough to know one another by name, and large enough to run a packed calendar of worship, music, fellowship, and outreach.