St. Paul’s/San Pablo continues to serve its neighbors as a multicultural, multilingual, and inclusive congregation in our 136th year in the Midtown Phillips Neighborhood. We honor past generations, welcoming the gifts and challenges of worshiping together as first-generation immigrants and naturalized citizens. Where once the sanctuary resounded with Swedish and English, now we sing in English and Spanish. In this season of opportunity, we've welcomed Pr. Christine Belfrey our new Associate Pastor for Music and Outreach and hosted our annual summer camp for youth ages 5-14. We also continue to lean into what it means to be a community that explicitly celebrates and affirms our LGBTQIA+ community.
Our neighborhood context continues to change as Minneapolis welcomes new immigrants and struggles to serve unhoused people, requiring us to consider how we extend hospitality to our neighbors and encampments of people with chemical dependency. The church building continues hosting a free neighborhood clinic, Corazon de Plata, a family reunification program that reunites parents in Mexico with their adult children in the U.S., Vida y Esperanza, an AA Spanish-speaking group, the Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts, and most recently, Barebones Productions for their 30th year puppet build. Each week we continue to offer hospitality to over 500 people individuals that walk through the building for the various opportunities offered by our partners.
This year we also launched our Belonging Project a six month collaborate between, St. Paul's–San Pablo and photojournalist John Noltner. We gathered portraits of members in our community and neighbors, asking: “When was a time you felt a sense of belonging?” We compiled 54 portraits, 13 of which are now 12-foot-high banners on the exterior of the building facing 28th Street. John also sat down with four of our featured participants and interviewed them to share a bit more in depth about their sense of belonging and dreams for community. Listen to their stories here.here
"From the moment of arriving to this church, the smile of each member and the Pastor made me feel like a member of this community, thank you." - Marcelo
Share with us in celebrating 136 years of faithful mission! Your gift helps us continue to dream and create opportunities for all to feel welcome, affirmed, and included.