Weekend of Activities Pays Tribute to San Francisco’s Historic St. Paulus Lutheran Congregation
Weekend of Activities Pays Tribute to San Francisco’s Historic
St. Paulus Lutheran Congregation
150 Years of Service Celebrated with Worship, Music and Community Gathering
19 May 2017 – San Francisco, CA: Like the legendary phoenix, an historic San Francisco congregation is emerging from the flames to chart a continuing and progressive path of service as it looks to the future. Saint Paulus Lutheran Church celebrates its 150th anniversary this weekend with music, worship and community.
Tonight / Friday, May 19: 7pm: a concert of music characteristic of Saint Paulus Church will be presented by music director, Dustin Hart the current location for St. Paulus, 1541 Polk Street, San Francisco.
Saturday, May 20, 5:30pm: A formal banquet including a reception and dinner will be held at St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1111 Gough Street, San Francisco. During this event, special acknowledgement will be given to past church and church school personnel of St. Paulus. A short video will pay tribute to the work of St. Paulus. The high point of the evening will be presentations and remarks by representatives of five organizations to whom St. Paulus has made gifts of $30,000 – LSS, the San Francisco Night ministry, Santa Maria y Marta Lutheran Church, Sojourn Chaplaincy at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and the SF Interfaith Council. The Bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod will provide official church recognition of the St. Paulus Anniversary and receive a gift of $150,000 for denominational expression, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American (ELCA). There will be displays, handouts and opportunity for conversation following the dinner.
Sunday, May 21, 10am-3pm. The weekend will culminate with a festival worship service beginning at 10am at St. Paulus’ current location, 1541 Polk Street, San Francisco. Following the service, St. Paulus will host an open house until 3pm.
About St. Paulus San Francisco:
One hundred and fifty years ago a group of rebellious Lutherans from an adjoining Lutheran church convinced a just fired Lutheran pastor to form a new church in San Francisco. Jacob Buehler did and named it Saint Paulus Lutheran Church. Since then, the church established a Lutheran Day School that has educated thousands of San Franciscan children until 1990. After building a 1000-seat Gothic church building at the corner of Gough and Eddy that narrowly endured the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, St. Paulus was the location of a hospital and shelter for over 10,000 in the aftermath of the disaster.
The landmark edifice was featured in the 1958 Hitchcock movie, Vertigo, and was the site of the extraordinary ordination of the first three gay Lutheran pastors, an event covered around the world with still an ongoing social and religious impact. After a spectacular and tragic arson fire in 1995, St. Paulus’ historic sanctuary burned to the ground. And yet, St. Paulus continued to host, feed, guide, and provide for homeless in San Francisco, spending six years as a storefront church in the Fillmore. Now, the historic congregation enters its fourth year as a storefront church on Polk Street, but is eagerly anticipating the construction of a new Saint Paulus Church facility in 2018 at the corner of Gough and Eddy Streets.