By Dustin Brown
Although the New Apostolic Church has sat quietly at 60-33 Madison St. in Ridgewood for only 69 years, its youthful facade hides a century of local worship which the congregation will celebrate Saturday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Over 400 past and current congregants have been invited back for the congregation’s 100th birthday party, which will feature a walk-through of the church building, performances by the choir and a slide show of church history, as well as plenty of food and fellowship activities.
While in concept the church dates back to Christ himself, lifelong member Kathleen Maguire said the modern-day New Apostolic Church was founded in Scotland in 1830.
“Basically it’s the church that was established by the Lord Jesus when he was here,” said the congregation’s minister, Fred Wenzel. “When he called his apostles to the ministry, he gave them the power to act on his behalf. This is a continuation of the church that Christ established.”
The Ridgewood congregation was established by worshipers originally from Germany, where to this day the church has its strongest presence. Worldwide the New Apostolic Church has a membership of about 10 million people, with congregations spread across South America, Africa, Europe and Asia.
Although membership in the Ridgewood congregation has broadened far beyond its German roots, some of the congregants can date their family’s involvement back to the beginning.
“I grew up with this thing ingrained in the blood,” said Maguire, whose great grandfather Peter Fendt helped to start the Ridgewood congregation in a storefront at Willoughby Avenue and Wilson Avenue in 1901. The congregants erected their first church building in 1909 on Cornelia Street, where it stands today with its cross replaced by a Star of David — a conversion prompted by the building’s sale to a Jewish temple in 1924.
After moving to a knitting mill on St. John’s Place between Fairview Avenue and Grandview Avenue, the congregation erected its current home and moved in May 15, 1932.
According to Gunther Heeger of Maspeth, the originally German congregation became English-speaking in the 1940s and gradually evolved into something he described as “international.”
While the Ridgewood congregation has a number of Spanish-speaking members, the New Apostolic Church has congregations in Flushing and the Bronx where services are conducted entirely in Spanish. Some congregations offer services in Chinese and other languages.
Although a more diverse membership has changed the appearance of the congregation, members’ sense of faith and fellowship has remained constant throughout the course of the church’s 100-year history.
“It was a big part of my life and of the members of the congregation,” Heeger said. “All in all during the evening it was our endeavor to make the church activity our mainstay.”
What has remained less constant is the size of the congregation, which Wenzel said has become gradually smaller over the past generation.
“When I first came back in 1952, this church was always packed,” Wenzel said. “There was a large concentration of Germans in the area, but the younger generation moved out to the island and the elders went to eternity. So the congregation has shrunk over the years.”
Although membership has historically extended from generation to generation, Maguire said the church is reaching out to the surrounding community on a greater scale than ever before.
“This has been an all-out effort in the neighborhood and in the community,” she said. In addition to inviting neighbors to the celebration through local advertising, the church plans to erect a community bulletin board in the front of its property to promote neighbors’ involvement in church life.
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
