Pictured on the front of this month’s issue is the oldest German Reformed Church building still in existence, located at Old Goshenhoppen, near Woxall, PA. It was built in 1732, just seven years after the events recorded below. Those events, including the first communion service held by a church of our denomination, were commemorated October 15, 2025, on the Three Hundredth Anniversary of that first regularly organized Reformed Church worship service.
We are indebted to Reformed Church historian Rev. William J. Hinke for pursuing to completion the collection and publication of the letters of our church’s founder, John Philip Boëhm. He writes:
“When John Philip Boehm arrived in Pennsylvania in 1720, and settled in the Perkiomen Valley, his Reformed neighbors persuaded him, ‘shortly after his arrival,’ to hold religious services for them, in which he acted as their reader. Thus he ‘maintained the ministry of the Word, to the best of his ability, and to the great satisfaction of the people, for five years, without any compensation.’
“When in 1725 the number of Reformed settlers in the Perkiomen valley had grown to fifty men, they urged upon Boehm the necessity of assuming the office of minister among them, as there was apparently no prospect of securing the services of a regularly ordained pastor. Boehm objected at first strenuously, interposing to their arguments the plea that his family needed his services. But, as his friends continued to urge him, offering to support him with voluntary contributions to the best of their ability, and pleading with tears in their eyes, that he could not justify his refusal before God, he felt constrained to yield to their entreaties. The urgent need as represented by the delegates and their own earnest plea are recorded vividly in Boehm’s report of 1744. He then wrote: ‘Accordingly they resolved once more urgently to request me, although for full five years I had declined to do so that I would become their pastor. This was so touchingly represented to me by two of their number thereunto commissioned, that our hearts melted together in tears, and in the name of all the people it was pressed upon my conscience whether I had the courage to answer for it at the last judgment, if I should leave them thus without help and allow so many souls to remain scattered among all kinds of sects, of which this country is filled. I thought indeed that it would be better for me if I could escape this yoke and support my family with my work and agriculture, but I was convinced by my conscience that I could not do otherwise. I allowed myself therefore to be persuaded to this work.’
“The first act of the new pastor was to draw up a constitution, which he read before his people and caused them to subscribe individually. The charge was then (in 1725) divided into three congregations, one at Falkner Swamp, the second at Skippack and the third at Whitemarsh. As soon as the congregations were constituted, Boehm was elected as pastor by each one of them. A regular call was issued to him, which he accepted. Thus he ‘began the ministry of the Lord in His name.’ After preaching a few times to his congregations, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. At Falkner Swamp forty members communed on October 15, 1725, at Skippack thirty-seven members in November, 1725, and at Whitemarsh twenty-four members on December 23, 1725. These services were the beginning of regular Reformed worship in Pennsylvania.”