At 150, Salt Lake City’s First Presbyterian Church strives to be the ‘hands of Jesus’

 

Salt Lake Tribune file photo

(Readers note: Here are the introductory paragraphs of my most recent freelance effort for The Salt Lake Tribune)

    Salt Lake City’s First Presbyterian Church takes pride in its 150 years downtown, where it grew from a dozen worshippers first meeting inside an 1871 livery stable to more than a thousand who marched to the first services at its English-Scottish Gothic Revival cathedral in 1905.

    Indeed, in that initial quarter century, despite doctrinal differences, First Presbyterian’s zeal for public education also earned the Protestant congregation a welcome from the state’s predominant faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Presbyterians founded what later would become Westminster College, along with 36 mission schools and four academies that taught an estimated 50,000 children — many of them from Latter-day Saint families.

    That’s a fine historical foundation, but interim Pastor Steve Aeschbacher says it is the future of First Presbyterian — striving to stay true to its devotion to biblical study as well as its ecumenical approach to shared gospel principles of serving the poor, hungry and homeless — that will define his church in the decades ahead.

    “One of the great things about ministry here is that spiritual things are ‘on the agenda’ for people in a way that they are not in other areas,” says Aeschbacher, who was chosen as interim pastor after the Rev. Michael J. Imperiale retired in June 2019 (a permanent replacement has yet to be named). “Our congregation has a long history of cooperation with other faiths [and] with many local groups to serve the needy, including St. Vincent DePaul, Crossroads Urban Center, the Utah Food Bank, and more.”

. . .  to read the rest of this article, and see some stunning photos that illustrate it, click on this link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/11/07/salt-lake-citys-first/