Congregation

Congregants and supporters of First Baptist Church in Glassboro rallied yesterday for a Service of Solidarity, held in the parking lot of the burned church. The church was destroyed by arson May 30. The congregation has been holding services in the A to Z maintenance building on South Delsea Drive and will continue to do so until the church is rebuilt.

Two local synagogues have plans to merge and form a single Conservative congregation that will build on a site on Skippack Pike in Whitpain. The Norristown congregation of Tiferes Israel and the Lansdale congregation of Beth Israel plan to worship together, according to Jay Weiss, a spokesperson of the Norristown Jewish Community Center. Although the congregation does not have a name yet, the synagogue is hoped to be constructed by October 1989, Weiss said. The building that Tiferes Israel used is under an agreement to be bought by the Sacred Heart Hospital and the Suburban General Hospital, Weiss said.

Cinema verit? filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond got more verit? than they bargained for when they set out two years ago to capture life at First United Methodist Church of Germantown. Their two-hour documentary, The Congregation, airs at 9:30 tonight on PBS (Channel 12). The old stone church on Germantown Avenue is a haven of liberal activism at a time when so much of Christianity is tilting to the right. That drew in the Raymonds as an intriguing modern-day story line. The congregation also was in the throes of a difficult transition from a longtime, lionized pastor to his more conventional successor.

Hymnals in hand, members of Kemblesville United Methodist Church entered their new 160-seat church building Sunday after a short walk across Route 896 from the Kemblesville Elementary School. The congregation had been holding worship services in the elementary school since fire destroyed the church's 139-year-old sanctuary and nearby fellowship hall on Oct. 26, 1991. Officials determined that the fires were intentionally set, but no arrests have been made. The church will have an open house from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday to show off the new $825,000 building and its furnishings.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, the new Roman Catholic parish established earlier this year to serve Buckingham Township, soon will have a new worship site. Beginning Oct. 8, the parish's Sunday Masses will be held at Central Bucks East High School, 2804 Holicong Rd., in Buckingham Township. Masses will be held at 8, 10 and 11:30 a.m. The parish's 5:30 p.m. Saturday vigil Mass will continue to be held at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, 235 E. State St., in Doylestown. Weekend Masses will be held at those locations until the parish has constructed its own building, said the Rev. Joseph J. Quindlen, pastor of the new congregation.

For the 1,100-member congregation of West Chester's Westminster Presbyterian Church, the time had come to make some hard decisions. The space on South Church Street was cramped, parking was a hassle and the building needed substantial work. Like homeowners everywhere, the congregants had two choices - renovate or move. Then came the offer too good to refuse. James K. Robinson Jr., a longtime member of the church, donated 10 acres for a new complex. The land is prime real estate that has been the envy of developers in the region for years.

Ruth Stanley holds dear a fir tree outside the Unitarian Fellowship Church in West Chester. When her husband, Harry, died 13 years ago, she planted the tree at their church. In the weeks and months that followed, Stanley made sure the sapling was well-watered. One Christmas Eve, a friend decorated the tree with candles. When her sons visit, they stop by to "see how Daddy's tree is doing. " But now, the Unitarian Fellowship plans to move to Marshallton. That means selling the three-story Victorian on North Franklin Street where the fir tree stands sturdy.

The 1992 Ford Crown Victoria is more than a revised edition of a popular volume. It is a new book on the full-size domestic sedan. The beauty of the new Crown Vic (apart from its aero styling) is that it manages to retain all the comfortable and convenient attributes its aging congregation loves, while reaching out for younger converts with greater sophistication and performance. Yes, it continues to be a big, comfy, rear-drive sedan with room for six, a studio apartment for a trunk and a husky V-8. And it is still built on a true frame, which means that muscular engine can be put to work towing serious boats and trailers.

Adultery, sin and redemption are on the agenda at the Deerfield Presbyterian Church in Cumberland County today, when the congregation will consider whether to censure Pastor Norman A. Koop and accept his resignation. A church investigation begun earlier this year revealed that Mr. Koop, who is married, had an affair in 1984 with a married congregant. The pastor is the son of former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. In a four-page, single-spaced typed confession delivered to the church leadership on March 5, Mr. Koop admitted committing adultery.

A small Orthodox congregation in Elkins Park was wrongly denied the right to hold services in a residential area, a panel of Commonwealth Court judges has ruled. The decision Friday overturned the Cheltenham Township Zoning Hearing Board and a Common Pleas Court judge who concluded that the Jewish congregation should not be given a special exception to a zoning ordinance because of the traffic problems it could create. Gilbert P. High Jr., the township solicitor, said Tuesday that township commissioners have not had time to determine if they will appeal the ruling, because he received a copy of the ruling only the day before.

The Rev. Myrtle Daniels stepped up to the altar and switched on a reading light. Lucile Stewart-Mitchell took her seat at the piano, pressing open a hymn book. Karyn Fisher turned down music playing on an iPad. "We've had a busy week," Daniels announced, facing a dozen congregants gathered Sunday morning at Mount Zion A.M.E. in Woolwich Township. A week earlier, someone had rearranged the letters on the sign outside the tiny church, defacing it with a racist - and misspelled - message: No Nigers Welcome.

The sign adjacent to historic Mount Zion A.M.E. Church in Woolwich Township, a one-story white frame building, usually reads, "All Are Welcome. " But on Sunday, parishioners discovered vandals had scrambled the letters to produce "No Nigers Welcome. " So the hoodlums were racist and stupid. But they were meddling with the wrong church. All 11 congregants. "I thought people had gotten past that," said the Rev. Myrtle Daniels, who was a Freedom Rider in Mississippi in the 1960s before moving north for school and a more tolerant racial climate.

For the six folks who are often the only congregation at the Old Caln Meeting House near Coatesville, the simple structure on a country road is an old, old relative that gets considerable care. But when an architect climbed an outside ladder in March 2012 to look into the attic, he blanched, according to congregation member Adrian Martinez. "He said, 'Why is this building still standing?' " Fair question. The older section was built in 1726, the other in 1801. The concern was not with age, but construction.

WASHINGTON - President Obama and the first family walked from the White House across Lafayette Square to attend Easter worship at St. John's Church, their most frequent religious venue while in Washington. The Obamas worshipped at St. John's on Easter of 2009, and they have visited the Episcopal congregation, which is led by the Rev. Luis Leon, numerous times, including last year. With Obama there, Leon took a shot at political conservatives, arguing that some conservative positions are holding people back.

The Rev. Dr. Agnes W. Norfleet's call to the ministry was clear, but the answer wasn't. The student who would become the first female pastor/head of staff at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, one of the largest - and wealthiest - congregations in the area, wasn't sure she wanted to be a pioneer. In the 1970s, "women were going to seminary, but there was a resistance to women getting called in church [leadership] positions," Norfleet said. So she went to college to study French.

Ronald E. Evans cherishes the ceramic pitcher and matching washbasin his grandmother brought to Camden from North Carolina. So he carefully placed these heirlooms on a table at St. Bartholomew's Church - to make a point. "People forget that they didn't get here on their own," said Evans, 81, organizer of a program to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. "We got here on the backs of those who came here before us," he added. "And the story's not over yet. " The George Murry Fellowship Hall at the church - the heart of black Catholicism in Camden County for more than 60 years - filled with people Saturday afternoon for the observance of Abraham Lincoln's proclamation.

After spending two years on the streets in Camden, addicted to crack and heroin and sleeping in an abandoned car, Robert O'Neal found shelter and sobriety - in a series of suburban South Jersey congregations. "Their love for the men in the program is genuine," O'Neal, 45, said of the volunteers at the Homeless Hospitality Network, which has more than two dozen member congregations in Cherry Hill, Collingswood, Haddonfield, Haddon Heights, Blackwood, Lawnside, Oaklyn, and other communities.

On the eve of Jesus' birth, the only thing Joseph and Mary wanted was a roof over their heads. That was all the parishioners of St. Peter's Episcopal Church wanted, too, as they wandered from temporary home to temporary home this summer and fall while the roof of their historic Society Hill church was restored. On Monday, Joseph and Mary, played by Harry Tobin and Adair Nelson at the St. Peter's Christmas Eve pageant and family service, found a roof in a humble manger surrounded by toddlers and grade-schoolers dressed as cows, donkeys, angels, and shepherds.

Two years ago, our family began planning to attend the London Olympics. We also began work on the Thompson/Tomson History Walk. After decades of researching our family history, we wanted to walk in the footsteps of our English ancestor, Thomas Tomson, from his ancestral village, Leyton, to the River Thames, where he boarded the ship Abigail in 1635. He arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and, a few years later, hopscotched to eastern Long Island, where he helped found a number of towns, before arriving in Elizabeth, N.J., in 1664 as one of the Elizabethtown Associates.