Wayne Church History

 By Harry Haugh

May 15, 1999 is the 20th aniversary of the burning of the mortgage of our Wayne Church. Pastor Rivera has asked me to give a short history of the Paterson Church and leading up to the Wayne Church, including the mortgage burning service and beyond.

From 1905 and 1917 the Paterson Church met in various places such as Public halls, some homes and ocasionaly in tents. Two of our members here today attended these churches with their families in this time period. Bill Suhrie with his mom and sister and two brothers and Hattie Baker Tyler with her mother. Around 1918 the members moved to the Paterson German Church located on Temple and N. 8th Street in Paterson. The German members would meet in the morning and the English Church met in the afternoon.

In 1934 we purchased a church on N. 2nd Street and Haledon Ave., in Paterson, and worshipped there for many years. In 1936 two of our long time members, Grace and Charles Lambert were the first ones to be married in our N. 2nd Street Church. In 1950 the Paterson Pathfinders became the first Pathfinders club in New Jersey. In 1960 we built our Waldwick Church School, thanks to the Negretti family who donated the property on which our school stands today.

In 1973 we decided to look for property in the suburbs to build our new church. We sold our church in Paterson and for one year we met in the First Christian Reformed Church in North Haledon. We then moved to the Waldwick Church School Auditorium where we held our Sababth School and church services there.

We were still looking for property to build our own church when we found one acre of land on Ratzer Road, in Wayne. Being near Route 80, 23, 46 and 202 and many local roads we knew that the Lord directed us here and we purchased this property at once.

On March 21, 1976 ground was broken for the Wayne SDA Church. During a severe rain and thunderstorm, Newton Miller, the Wayne mayor at that time welcomed us with open arms.

With the help of elder Chris Kober and elder Woodrow Whidden, construction began in our church and by Christmas Day 1976 we held our Sabbath School and Church Services in the fellowship room downstairs since the chapel upstairs was not quite ready to hold services then. Our church building was completed early in 1977 and on April 16 at 10:30 AM we had the consecration of the church under the supervision of Pastor Woodrow Whidden and one of our former elder George Strait gave us a brief history of our Wayne Church. Elder Joel Thompkins, the New Jersey Conference president gave the consecration around and the Hackensack church choir sang "Bless this house".

Harry Lowe an elder of our church at that time gave the benediction to close the morning services.

At 2:30 PM a special consecration services was held for our new church organ. An organ recital was presented by Mr. Van Klaus chairman of the Music Department at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Mariland.

On May 12, 1979 at 2:30 PM we had the service of dedication and mortgage burning. Pastor Woodrow Whidden welcomed everyone and specialy the Garden State Academy choir who presented us with special music. Elder Don Schneider from the New Jersey Conference spoke to us briefly and Elder W. B. Quigley gave us the sermon entitled "The Riches of the Church" .

The mortgage burning was conducted by elder Tom Massingale, treasurer of the New Jersey Conference, and by Lawrence Thompson treasurer of our church at that time.

Elder Chris Kober offered the prayer of dedication and the benediction was given by elder Massingale.

Some of us may want to know the names of those on the building committee who helped plan and build our Wayne Church.

Pastor Colbert, Woodrow Whidden, Harry Lowe, Seymour Tyler, Townsend and Havelyn Douglas, Elizabeth Pfiefer, Herman Wiedmer, Joel Ferguson, Bill Suhrie and Harry Haugh.

Special mention is given to Havelyn and Townsend Douglas for all they did while in this committee. In the last twenty years many good things has happened to our church. Our stained glass windows were donated by Seymour Tyler and the bastestry windows were donated by Helaine and Jim Baldechi. Other items were also given by other church members.

We have many good memories of our guest speakers today who was the pastor in the early 80's: Ed Bowen his wife and children, Joel, Jody and Jason were very much loved by all of us. And my wife and I were very pleased to have him oficiate our son Jim and Susan's wedding in 1981. We were very thankfull to Aunt Martha in her many years of leadership, at least 45, in the kindergarten department. We love her very much also. For many of community services center was led by Elizabeth Pfiefer. She was one of the most recognized leaders in the State of New Jersey in this department.

Now I want to thank Bill Suhrie and Hattie and Seymour Tyler for their input to this history report which the next we will have will be a little bit longer.

Our church is growing. We have many good young leaders in our church. We have many little ones, who also will become leaders some day.

May our church continue to grow and prosper as we await the coming of our Lord.