‘Grateful to God That We’re Still Here’: Amid Sea Isle’s Changes, A Tiny Church Marks its 100th Year

Trinity Church circa 1940

The church shown in this postcard scene from the 1920’s when 85th Street where the church is located was known as Cedar Street.

Trinity Community Church. 2023

This summer season marks the 100th year of Trinity Community Church’s petite presence at 85th Street and Landis Avenue in Sea Isle City. As always, the wee church lets its voice be heard with the peal of its church bell before services on Sunday mornings.

“There’s not much left of the original Sea Isle City,” notes Trinity Community Church’s pastor, Chuck Swanson. “We are grateful to God that we’re still here.”

Trinity’s nondenominational, summer-only services, every Sunday from late June through Labor Day, bring together people from many religious persuasions. After preaching on the subject of “unity” one Sunday, Swanson recalls asking the congregation – which numbers some 35 people weekly – about their faith-based backgrounds. To his surprise, the people in the pews were rooted in 13 religions.

“Folks that come here are very accepting and very genuine,” Swanson says. “With so many other things to do in Sea Isle, people make a choice to come here on Sundays.”

Sunday services begin at 10am and end promptly at 11am.

In the early days of Swanson’s pastorship, Lennea McGarr kept things up and running as the longtime church administrator. The amiable minister recalls how McGarr held him to two promises: She asked that the new pastor keep Sunday services to a time frame of one hour, and that he lead the church for at least 10 years.

Swanson kept those promises with help from volunteers like McGarr, treasurer/administrator Cecelia Quigley, and members of the church’s board of trustees, who manage the church’s financing, maintenance, policy making and more.

The minister and family man with a quiet passion for Trinity Community Church has now served there for 13 years. Swanson also serves as associate pastor at Joy Community Fellowship in Haddon Heights. He and his wife, Andria, have been married for 45 years. The couple have four children and five grandchildren.

The religious service celebrating the church building’s “Corner Stone Laying” took place on March 25, 1923.

Cornerstone shown in 2023

Interior of the church, showing the altar.

Swanson’s passion for Trinity surfaces as he displays an album packed full of original artifacts about the history of the little church that first opened as Trinity Lutheran Community Church in 1923. This gem of historic documentation was discovered in the back of a church closet last summer, just in time for Trinity’s 100th anniversary celebration.

Women of faith in the area proved to be forces behind the fundraising, development and building of the church, according to items included in the album. The “Ladies’ Aid Society” was founded “for the purpose of starting a fund to build a place of worship at Townsend’s Inlet, New Jersey” in July of 1919, according to one of the documents.

The ladies wasted no time in putting their craftswomanship and organizing skills to work in creating goods and events to raise revenue to purchase land and construct a church. They knitted, crocheted doilies, sewed items together at “Thimble Bees” and baked cakes and other goodies, most of which were sold at bazaars. Not only that, Ladies’ Aid Society members conducted cruises on the bay as another means of financing their new church.

Details on their fundraising and purchases come in bits and pieces. First, the ladies purchased land that was property from the holdings of Charles Landis, who died in 1900. The sale of this land at the price of $500 came with the stipulation that the property must always remain the site of a church. Years later, it was discovered that the land is held in a trust by the New Jersey Synod Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Nov. 12, 1922. The religious service celebrating the church building’s “Corner Stone Laying” took place on March 25, 1923. Just months later, the church was up and running on Sunday, July 15, 1923, as detailed in a 100-year-old brochure labeled the “Dedication of Trinity EV. Lutheran Community Church.”

Fittingly, the ceremony opened with the singing of the hymn “How Firm a Foundation.”

A Sunday School building was added to the church and dedicated on July 10, 1938.

At some point back in time, Trinity’s church ladies also created and sold a recipe book. If there’s a copy of it anywhere to be found, trustee member Judy Doherty says she would love to find it in order to recreate the book and add more contemporary recipes to it.

During World War II, when the U.S. Army sent soldiers to Townsend’s Inlet to guard the coast, the church served as their bunker, Swanson notes.

Trinity Community Church continues to stand cheerfully on its firm foundation in the midst of sizable duplexes and whizzing traffic. There’s great beauty in its simplicity – its crisp white coloring, bright red doors, and small black steeple. A low fence of distinctive stonework crafted to look like the top of a castle neatly frames the little church building on the property.

That same inviting simplicity graces Trinity Community Church’s interior, which trustee member Tom Doherty estimates at approximately 1,000 square feet.

A golden-brown wooden altar area brightened by emerald green velvet altar linens tasseled in gold sits below a large and striking painting that appears to be “Christ in Gethsemane”’ by 19th century German artist Heinrich Hoffman. Down on his knees with hands clasped tightly in prayer in the painting, a deeply pensive Jesus looks heavenward prior to his crucifixion.

Two sets of eight golden-brown wooden pews, with matching Arrowback chairs for extra seating, face the altar. An antique pump organ – courtesy of highly regarded regional pianist and Trinity organist Shawn Quigley, who restored the organ and donated it to the church – adds a singular sound to the music that means so much during times of worship.

A nearby piano, often played by music director Bev Goshow, adds other elements of sound to services that begin with the singing of the church’s signature hymn about “a fine little Church at the Inlet” where people gather and “speak of our Saviour” and “the kindness of Jesus.”

“We sing hymns,” Swanson says. “Hymns are the universal worship language.”

“And people here really sing,” Judy Doherty says.

When the congregation wholeheartedly sings songs of praise, trustee Dave Goshow, Bev’s husband, opens the church doors so that the music brings joy to the island, he says with a smile.

This trustee also notes that “camaraderie” among the people inside the little church with the little steeple is one of the most appealing aspects of worshipping at Trinity Community Church. Says Bev: “I like to think that when people come through the church door, they become family.”

Tom Doherty focuses on faith at the historic church. “Most, if not all, of the people who worship here are here to worship Christ. That’s what we do on Sundays” he says. “The divinity of Christ and what Christ has done for us is the essence of that worship.”

After some reflection, Swanson further notes, “In the atmosphere created at Trinity Community Church, we show the love of God through prayer, song and preaching.”

Times change, but Trinity’s pealing church bell and its fine fellowship remain the same.