Fill out this form to email this article to a friend
Religion
Church celebrates 50 years
By Times Staff Writer
Published October 16, 2005
Garden of Peace Lutheran Church will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a 10 a.m. festival service Oct. 23.
Bishop Edward Benoway, head of the Tampa Florida-Bahamas Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, will attend.
Other notable guests include the founding pastor, the Rev. Arthur Libby Albers, who was senior pastor from 1955 to 1988, and the Rev. Carl Knitter, who led the church from 1989 to 2000.
Garden of Peace, at 6161 22nd Ave. N, in St. Petersburg, held its first service in a classroom at St. Petersburg College.
Over the years, the congregation met in a memorial hall, a trailer park and at Tyrone Middle School. Its 22nd Avenue N church was completed in 1968.
The church runs a preschool for up to 100 students, offers vacation Bible school and sponsors a community back-to-school event that furnishes backpacks and supplies to needy children.
It also serves meals at a mission house in downtown St. Petersburg and operates as a cold night shelter.
The congregation has a youth program that offers training in drama and theatrical production.
Its youth mission travels each summer to provide home repairs for the needy.
[Last modified October 16, 2005, 01:32:18]
Share your thoughts on this story
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
News
Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
Print
Email story
Comment
Email editor