READING, Pa. \u2014 Trinity Lutheran Church, one of Berks County\u2019s oldest continuously worshipping congregations, is celebrating nearly three centuries of faith, service, and community impact with a year-long 275th anniversary.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1751, the church officially kicks off its anniversary year on Trinity Sunday with a special worship service welcoming nine new members.<\/p>\n
Senior Pastor Hans Becklin said the milestone is both a time to reflect on the congregation\u2019s long history and to look ahead to its future. \u201cWe have our steeple lit at night. It\u2019s for people to have that encounter with God that maybe they\u2019re not expecting. We want to be a place where those encounters can continue for another 275 years,\u201d Becklin said.<\/p>\n
The celebration will continue through Trinity Sunday of 2027, marking 275 years since the consecration of the church\u2019s first sanctuary in 1752.<\/p>\n
A major highlight of opening day is a free public organ recital performed by Trinity\u2019s cantor, Cameron Wentz. The program features music that reflects Reading\u2019s diverse cultural heritage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis congregation was a German-speaking congregation to begin with. Now it\u2019s an English-speaking congregation. But Reading itself has a large Spanish-speaking community, so we\u2019re trying to incorporate all those different elements to make a diverse program,\u201d Wentz said.<\/p>\n
The anniversary year also includes a $3 million sanctuary restoration project. Becklin said the 1791 sanctuary will close Monday for a four-month renovation, which will include repairs to the ceiling, Tiffany windows, exterior masonry, and new lighting and audio-visual systems. Worship will be temporarily relocated to another hall during the restoration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2014 Trinity Lutheran Church, one of Berks County\u2019s oldest continuously worshipping congregations, is celebrating nearly three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[214,128,130,129,213],"class_list":["post-207126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}