A church whose congregation has roots going back to the 19th century is closing and donating hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of its building to charity in a Pennsylvania city named for the biblical birthplace of Jesus. <\/p>\n
Trinity United Church of Christ in Bethlehem will host its final service Sunday as its members end decades as a parish with Christmas season charitable donations of nearly $400,000, the Morning Call of Allentown reported.<\/p>\n
Trinity has \u2014 like many other houses of worship \u2014 suffered a decline in membership and sold the Gothic Revival-style church building with large stained-glass windows to another congregation.<\/p>\n
Three Bethlehem United Church of Christ congregations formed Trinity in 1972: Zion, Calvary and St. Paul\u2019s Reformed Church, which started in 1888.<\/p>\n
St. Paul\u2019s bought the church building in 1957. It was built in 1913 and, after selling it, Trinity church leaders chose donations based on church members\u2019 participation with the recipients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe congregation is very proud of the work we have done in the community through our food pantry and volunteer efforts, and we wanted to leave a legacy to continue those efforts,\u201d said Trinity’s pastor, the Rev. Den Schappell.<\/p>\n
Recipients will include homeless shelters, food pantries, church ministries, the nearby Jefferson Elementary school, the Moravian University music program and a local Boy Scouts of America council.<\/p>\n
Trinity members will hold a final liturgical service Sunday, Schappell said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A church whose congregation has roots going back to the 19th century is closing and donating hundreds of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,28,12441],"class_list":["post-219409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219409","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=219409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}