A Message from Pastor Summer

We have entered our anniversary year. We have been waiting for what seems like a long time, and now the time has finally arrived. One of the ways we will be celebrating is by including an article every month telling another chapter in the story of Zion. This month we begin with the forward from 225 Years: A History of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Oldwick, New Jersey by the Rev. Charles O. Thompson. Pastor Thompson’s forward captures the sense of history surrounding Zion. 300 years is only a number until you set that number in context. Enjoy when and where Zion began. “While our forefathers were founding a little church for worship in their new frontier home, great events were in the making in Europe and in the American colonies. In Europe, a new era was opening in which the power of kings fell; and the middle classes, having gained in wealth and knowledge, reached out for political control. Great names were connected with this change in civilization. In 1714, Voltaire, who was to shake the domination of the clergy, was a youth of twenty; and Rousseau, the liberator of the disfranchised masses, was an infant aged two. Adam Smith, emancipator of the business man and apostle of individual liberties, was born in the year Zion’s first pastor died; and Lavoisier, founder of modern chemistry, was still a boy when the present church was built at Oldwick. James Watt, inventor of the first engine capable of driving a machine, and thus the father of the Industrial Revolution, was born at about the time Zion was host to the first synod held in America. The Romantic Movement in art and literature was then flinging out its banners to demand freedom and justice for the humble and submerged. Thus the life of Zion Church began even before the time of modern freedom, democracy, science, and mechanized industry. Her pastor ministered to her people, while they were not only conquering a wilderness, but while they were also adapting themselves to a bewildering maze of new ideas flowing in from Europe. In America, 1714 saw seven year old Benjamin Franklin starting to school in Boston. Augustine Washington was cultivating his Virginia plantation, unaware of the destiny of his son to be named George upon his birth eighteen years later. It was twenty-nine years before Thomas was to be born to the Jeffersons in Virginia. Zion Church was born exactly three quarters of a century before the birth of the United States. Our church and country have grown up together. So we see that this was a time when not only our church was founded, but when in Europe and America a new age and a new civilization was emerging.” And so, the story begins. Peace, Pastor Summer