A Missionary Outpost of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany
“Disciples Making Disciples”
Founding Era – 1909 – 1927
Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off - for all whom the Lord our God will call. Acts 2:38-39
Someone had a vision for an Episcopal church in the hamlet of Elsmere back in the early 1900’s. In November of 1908 several interested men quietly met in a home and prayed that God would guide them as they sought to establish an Episcopal mission in the town of Bethlehem. What guided these men as they met and prayed? We do not know if there was a burning desire or concern. What we do know is that the town of Bethlehem was beginning to grow. The first bridge across the Normanskill was built in the early 1900’s, and what had been a relatively isolated farming community south of the state capitol was changing as people moved out from the city of Albany. We can assume that as the community grew, Episcopalian families moved here and longed for the quality of spiritual life and worship they had become accustomed to at St. Paul’s, St. Andrew’s, St. Peter’s, and the Cathedral of All Saints. We can safely surmise that they hungered for community and spiritual connection and that their desire to experience fellowship with each other and with God in the Anglican tradition was what motivated them to form a congregation here.
The church was established in 1909 in temporary quarters, under the guidance of the Rev. Walker Gage, Rector of St. Paul’s, Albany. We still use the communion silver offered by the first vestry of St. Stephen’s in the fall of 1909, which is engraved with the names of all the men who served as the new mission’s elected leaders. These leaders selected the name St. Stephen, the first disciple to die for his faith, a man full of God's grace and power chosen by the disciples to wait tables and later stoned for preaching the new gospel. The temporary quarters was a blacksmith shop that was located at the present site of the Veterans’ Park next to Stewarts, and photos from that period indicate that the faithful worshipped in tight and modest quarters. Transportation, or the lack of it, largely influenced who attended Sunday services, which were held initially at 4:15 pm. The primary programs were worship, church school, socials and visiting. Although women had no formal role in liturgy or church governance, they were the heart of the church.
The congregation longed for a more permanent home, and raised some of the money to build a church, but after materials and a site had been purchased, had to abandon the project and return the materials for lack of adequate funding. The dream of a permanent home finally came to fruition in the 1920’s as plans were made to build a new church at the corner of Elsmere Avenue and Poplar Drive. Work was completed on the project in 1927.
St. Stephen’s was a family size church during this period. The church was truly a family-dominated group with the minister being part-time throughout this period. The minister had a personal relationship with everyone in the church and everyone knew everyone. The culture at large was heavily centered on the family and one’s immediate neighbors and this was felt at St. Stephen’s as well. The church building was a “tiny” building – truly family size.
We don’t know if the church wrote a statement of purpose back then – probably not – but it might have read something like: “Our call is to worship Almighty God in the dignified Anglican tradition, to nurture our young in the Faith, and to enjoy one another’s fellowship in Christian community.”
Glory Days: 1950’s to early ‘60’s
Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. Acts 2:41
By 1950, the town of Bethlehem was benefiting from the post-World War II Baby Boom and families with children were everywhere. To accommodate this growth, the hamlets of Elsmere, Delmar, and Slingerlands began to expand rapidly, and as neighborhoods sprang up where farmland and forest once had been, schools and shops were built to accommodate the expanding population.
The passionate concerns that drove people in those days were the care and nurture of children, the possibility of nuclear war (and deep animosity toward communism), the pursuit of prosperity, and a sense of belonging. Technology was rapidly developing and by and large, mothers stayed at home with their children while fathers went off to “business.”
Fr. Charles Kaulfuss began his 35-year ministry in September of 1952, and it soon became apparent that St. Stephen’s needed a larger building. The primary programs were still worship and church school, and it became necessary to enlarge our space in order to deliver these programs to our growing church family. Although the church had never been wealthy, the rector and vestry decided to take the risk of building a new church which would provide sufficient worship and Church School space. Planning began about 1954, and the final project was completed in 1957, with a new A-frame church and a flat-roofed parish hall joining the new to the old church. The parish hall was built for the church school and was large enough to accommodate two tables of children at each instructional level. The vestry also took the bold step of creating a two-for-one campaign in order to retire the mortgage early and save several thousand dollars. Such a large church school demanded many teachers, and teenagers were among those who served in this role. Reports from eye-witnesses of the late 50’s and early-mid 60’s suggest that the place was packed. Church school numbers exceeded the capacity of the parish hall, and some classes met in the kitchen and in the old church. There was a regular need for folding chairs in church to accommodate the crowds, especially on holy days like Christmas and Easter, despite the seating capacity of 300. There clearly was a boom on.
How did the church envision its purpose – its reason for being – in those days? Those were times when being a Christian was just part of the culture. Sunday was the day for church and family. Going to church was just what you did, and St. Stephen’s served that purpose for people who found the grand worship and sacramental life of the Episcopal Church attractive. St. Stephen’s provided people with various styles of worship, including a simple recited Communion service at 8 a.m. (this took 22 minutes, we are told!), a 9:15 family Communion service during which children left for church school after the gospel, and an 11 a.m. Morning Prayer service with the choir.
Besides worship, the primary program of the church was the Church School, which was taken very seriously. Mothers brought their children to church, and church school was just like regular school with written excuses required for absences. Children did not receive Holy Communion until after Confirmation, which took place at age 12, and constituted graduation from Sunday School. After their confirmation, teenagers served as teachers, helping to fill that need.
The Sunday liturgy was the exclusive province of the priest. Laypeople were not permitted to do readings or administer the chalice during this time. Fr. Kaulfuss did not permit the introduction of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. This was a time when personal piety would have been regarded as suspect, or certainly too personal. People would not have spoken of serving God as much as serving the Church, and certainly would not have been comfortable talking in a personal way about Jesus – he was referred to as “our Lord.” Fellowship of a non-threatening sort took place during preparations for bazaars, rummage sales, and strawberry festivals, or at a couples’ club supper or parish social event. There were no prayer groups or Bible studies for adults; Christian education was a concern only for children and youth. Attendance at liturgies was high and the life of the parish was vibrant. The Women of St. Stephen’s would undertake service projects during Lent and at other times, but outreach and care for the poor were not front and center for the parish any more than personal piety was. A sense of social belonging and fellowship seems to have been the glue that held the parish together in those days.
The role of women reflected that of the larger culture. No girls served as acolytes, and women did not serve on the vestry until the early 70’s. Women continued to be the heart of the church, spending countless hours teaching Sunday school and organizing social events.
Had St. Stephen’s written a statement of purpose in the 1950’s it might have focused on words like “fellowship” and “responsibility” and “the work of the Church,” as well as “raising our children to be responsible Christian citizens.” Our definition of right size was a full church.
The Present
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Acts 2:42
The Town of Bethlehem continues to grow rapidly, providing a base for new members to St. Stephen’s. Our community is still a bedroom community for the city of Albany, to which a large number of professionals drive home after work in the city. Easy transportation has made it possible for Episcopalians to attend church in Albany, the reverse situation to that of our founding era. Potential church members who wish to stay in Bethlehem have many different congregations from which to choose and are less likely to stay within denominational boundaries as was the case in our glory days. Young adults 20-30 are not often seen in the pews. In the Episcopal Church at large there is presently a great controversy brought to a fever pitch by the ordination of an openly homosexual bishop in New Hampshire. The resulting conflict has caused some to leave the Episcopal church.
Today we are still struggling with some of the same issues as our predecessors. Our primary focus continues to be worship and church school. We have recently taken a financial risk and completed an addition to our building to make more space available to our children. Classes for children in grades pre-K to 5 meet prior to the 10:30 service, and join the congregation during the Prayers of the People. Classes for grades 6 – 12 meet from 9:30 to 10: 15. We are committed to having a strong church school program, but it is difficult to find volunteers to teach. We are currently searching for a part-time coordinator of Christian education. We have not as yet found the best format for our Christian education program for grades 6 – 12. Although our Sunday attendance is very slowly growing after many years of decline, we are not large enough to be classified as a program church. In spite of this, we have a great number of ways in which people may be involved – the list makes us look like a program church. Yet we still feel like a pastoral church, and have some anxiety about growing to a size that makes it difficult for us to know one another. Our largest volunteer list is related to our worship services, followed by church school, and then hospitality. Each Sunday there is a breakfast following the 8 A.M. service and a coffee hour after the 10:30.
Our present rector, Fr. Darius Mojallali, came to St. Stephen’s in 1988. He is assisted by our Deacon, Robert Heighton, a recently-ordained member of our congregation. Under Fr. Darius’ guidance, programs of adult Christian Education have been offered, including two on-going Bible studies. Father Darius mentors the laity well and St. Stephen's has been fertile ground for people to hear and accept God's calling on their lives. Two other members are in the ordination process at present. The list of parish activities includes two that are specifically focused on prayer.
Our service to the community has also steadily grown. We run a summer day camp program which is often overlooked as a program of our parish. For the past ten years we have volunteered at an Albany soup kitchen, have steadily increased our financial contribution to local, national, and international projects, and in the past four years some of our members have begun going out on mission trips to the Sudan, to Argentina and to Latin America. We have recently begun a clothing ministry to the needy.
We are very active, but because we are still relatively few, some of us are doing too much and are burning out. Women continue to be active in parish life, but the number of opportunities to serve has increased at the same time as have the demands of employment and/or driving children to activities.
Our world is marked by an increasing sense of isolation from one another, despite our advances in communication technology; by a growing climate of incivility in public places; and by rampant consumerism which claims all of our time. We demand the best in goods and services, at the lowest cost and immediately. Our families are increasingly stretched for time between school/homework, career/job, organized team sports/creative arts, and shopping. Sunday is no longer a day of rest, and church attendance is optional. Our Saturday evening service, begun in 2000, addresses some of this problem, by providing an alternative to Sunday morning worship.
With all we possess, we still long for a sense of connection to God and to each other. Our challenge is to find creative ways to help people achieve that nourishing sense of connection within the very real constraints on their time. Our challenge is to find ways to make our mission statement real: “To live as a loving community … worshipping God … supporting people in their Christian journeys … making disciples … empowering for service … bringing Jesus to each other and the world."