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Photo by Sarah Owens
Edgewood Presbyterian Church and Second Presbyterian Church officially merged their congregations into one on Oct. 6, 2024. Photo by Sarah Owens.
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Photo by Sarah Owens
The Rev. Joe Genau, pastor of Edgewood Presbyterian Church, tells children about the baptismal font brought from Second Presbyterian Church during the service officially joining the two churches on Oct. 6, 2024. Photo by Sarah Owens.
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Photo by Sarah Owens
The Rev. Rachel Winter, pastor of Oakmont Chapel Presbyterian in Hoover, gives the sermon at the service officially joining Second and Edgewood Presbyterian Church on Oct. 6, 2024. Photo by Sarah Owens.
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Photo By Sarah Owens
Children play outside of Edgewood Presbyterian Church before the service merging Edgewood and Second Presbyterian Church on Oct. 6, 2024. Photo by Sarah Owens
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Photo by Sarah Owens
Don Hagen hands out bulletins at the service officially joining the congregation of Second Presbyterian Church and Edgewood Presbyterian Church on Oct. 6, 2024. Photo by Sarah Owens.
Change can be hard, especially when it breaks from over 100 years of tradition, but Edgewood Presbyterian Church and Second Presbyterian Church have embraced it head-on.
Originally established in 1882, the oldest of the pioneer churches in Birmingham, Second Presbyterian closed its doors in 2023 after their congregation became too small to support maintenance of the building.
Realizing they needed to find a new home, they reached out to Edgewood and proposed a plan to join forces. After spending the last year finalizing the details and working through the sale of Second Presbyterian’s building off Columbiana Rd. in Homewood, the two churches became one in a special service on Oct. 6.
“We're brethren and sisters,” said the Rev. Rachel Winter, pastor of Oakmont Chapel Presbyterian in Hoover, during her sermon at the service. “We're riff-raff brought together from north and south and east and west, but we're family who are called to stick together, because we're invited by God to this banquet feast that has been set for us, and we're stuck with each other now. And what a lovely, fun, incredible thing that is. What an incredible opportunity for this new congregation. What a celebration.”
Winter's father was the previous pastor of Second Presbyterian for over 20 years.
After finalizing the merge with an official declaration by the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley, the corporate expression of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in central Alabama, the two congregations now reside in Edgewood’s building, established in 1912 at 850 Oxmoor Rd. The Rev. Joe Genau, pastor of Edgewood Presbyterian for the last decade, remains in his role.
Edgewood Presbyterian is one of Hollywood's most vocal churches when it comes to LGBTQ+ acceptance, a factor that Genau says was important to clarify when determining whether Second Presbyterian’s congregation would fit with theirs. Thankfully, Genau said, their views on the topic align.
“It became very clear that we were aligned in personality, in sort of ways we could bring new things to each other,” said Genau, “In the mission, around town and around the state, that we support, we have a lot of overlap, and so the two congregations just found a home in each other.”
While the excitement of creating a new congregation is certainly present, Genau said the change hasn’t come without heartbreak.
Second Presbyterian had to handle the loss of their building, their name to history. The church was originally located at 3rd Ave. and 11th St S. in Birmingham and moved to at least two other locations in the city before relocating to the Columbiana Rd. site in 1993.
In closing, they sold part of the land to a developer who will build a medical office building, and the church building itself was bought by Grace Fellowship Church, an independent evangelical congregation that had been worshiping in the building in the afternoons for several years.
“They had to deal with so much grief,” Genau said. “They gave up their building. They're losing the name of their church to history. They had to move. You know, they've given up so much, and yet they've done it with such joy and dignity.”
Don Hagan, a member of Edgewood Presbyterian for over 30 years, is excited about the sense of joy this merger has brought.
“It's just wonderful to be with people that are joyous,” said Hagan. “There's not a lot of joy sometimes in the world right now, so it's good to be around people who are joyous.”
