About Us

Mission & History

Stewardship Mission Statement

St. Paul's Lutheran Church is a diverse family of believers united through our Lutheran faith and our living the Gospel message.  Nurtured by the Lord’s Supper, we are each called to embrace the Lord through our involvement in our congregation. As stewards, we should receive God’s gifts gratefully, cultivate them responsibly, and share them lovingly, thereby bringing Jesus into the daily life of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Our call to stewardship challenges us to:

1. Recognize the gifts each of us has to share -- from individual prayer to involvement in church projects.
2. Be active beneficiaries of God's blessings, giving proportionally of what we first receive.
3. Attend and fully participate in our liturgies.
4. Respond to the spiritual and material needs of our brothers and sisters.
5. Extend our hospitality by making each visitor and member of our community feel welcome.

Our History

On August 18, 1968, a group of Lutherans met in the old Episcopal Church on Second Street for the first Lutheran Worship Service held in Tunkhannock. The Reverend Emil Mach of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Scranton led the service. This fledgling congregation chose to go by the name "St. Paul's Lutheran Church." Soon after, the Eastern District President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod installed the missionary with Reverend Paul Pasternak  as the first pastor.

When Reverend Pasternak accepted a call to another congregation, the people of St. Paul's Lutheran Church called Reverend H. Gene Reichel and he was installed as the pastor on February 10, 1974. Pastor Reichel was instrumental in helping to obtain funding for the church building and its furnishings. The Eastern District, as an experiment to see how quickly a subsidized church could become self-sufficient, gave the St. Paul's Lutheran Church a grant to cover the cost of building the church. Ground was broken for the church on August 22, 1974 and the building was dedicated on July 27, 1975. Although it took several years, the church became self-sufficient ahead of schedule and the experiment was considered a success.

Pastor Reichel served the people of St. Paul's Lutheran Church and the Tunkhannock community until late 1985, when he took a call to a congregation in Elma, New York. The congregation then called a seminarian from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis to become its next pastor. In June of 1986, Steve Graebner was ordained in a service at St. Paul's Lutheran Church. An Endowment Fund was formally established in 1992 with the generous donation from David B. Fitch. The Endowment is setup to preserve the principle amount indefinitely so that the income from Mr. Fitch's generous gift would be utilized to expand the ministry of the Lord in present as well as in future times. With a portion of the annual dividends over the years, St. Paul's Lutheran Church had been able to make a number of capital improvements to the church property, leaving the weekly donations for general operating expenses and outreach projects.

After Pastor Graebner, three other pastors were called to St. Paul's Tunkhannock: Pastor Keith Blom shared his knowledge and leadership skills and prepared a new generation for church leadership. After Pastor Blom was called to a congregation in North Tonawanda, New York, the seminarian Thomas Barton received our call. Pastor Barton reenergized the congregation's commitment to our youth. Under his direction, the Youth Group and Vacation Bible School were reestablished and major improvements were made to our youth Sunday School Program. Reverend Murray Brindle served our congregation until 2017.

We are currently seeking a new pastor and look expectantly to what God has in store for the congregation.