For this new pastor,
installation is a homecoming

Cornelius D. Eaddy

Emanuel Lutheran Church, the tall steepled historic church that all of Philadelphia watched stand through the implosions of the Southwark Project high-rises a few years ago, celebrates the ordination of a unique pastor on January 19, 2002.

Founded in 1847 as a church school, Emanuel is the only daughter congregation of Old Zion on Broad Street, Philadelphia, that is still in its original building. In fact, it stood all by itself when the neighborhood was razed and the Southwark projects were built in the early 1960s. Thirty years later, while the Southwark community, the City, and HUD were deciding what do do with the low-income housing and the high-rises that were sitting mostly vacant, the church struggled to survive against all odds.

In its careful attempt to provide pastoral ministry for this small but vibrant urban congregation in a large edifice, the Southeast Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America asked Dr. Philip Krey, a veteran urban pastor and then Dean and Professor of History at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, to serve as an interim pastor in 1996. Emanuel Lutheran -- famous for its pioneering urban pastors and service to the South Philadelphia Community -- was already being served by a talented and brave lay woman, Louisa Groce, who in her late seventies served as an Associate in Ministry, in the Lutheran Church. Louisa, now in her eighties, who is herself now a pastor in Jersey City, was keeping hope alive while the Southwark project went from crisis to crisis and became all the more empty and deserted.

During the liturgies Ms. Groce and Dr. Krey noticed that one man, Cornelius Eaddy, would come on occasion to worship. When he was there the whole liturgy came to life, and the congregation rallied around his leadership from the pew. They discovered that he had grown up at Emanuel, that his family attended regularly, and that he had gone to a Lutheran college through a special program and had become a school teacher and a Baptist minister. In conversations with the Synod and The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, Cornelius Eaddy decided to prepare to become a Lutheran Pastor while serving as lay minister at Emanuel and keeping his job as a teacher.

Dr. Krey became his mentor, helping him with the Synod to choose the courses and training that he needed to become ordained as Lutheran Pastor in the Church's Emerging Ministries Program, designed for older persons of color or language other than English who wish to prepare for leadership in the Church. Cornelius thus went to seminary in the evenings and weekends, taught sixth graders during the day, and served Emanuel as a lay minister.

Cornelius D. Eaddy, right, with Seminary president Philip D. W. Krey, center,
and mentoring pastor William G. Erat, summer 2000

When Dr. Krey became the president of the Seminary, The Rev. William G. Erat, the Executive Director of Lutheran Children and Family Services (Now Liberty Lutheran) became Cornelius Eaddy's mentor and the interim pastor of this historic church whose steeple soars above the newly-built town houses of Riverview and beside the one remaining high-rise. On Saturday at 3:00 p.m. Cornelius Eaddy will be ordained by Bishop Roy G. Almquist of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Lutheran as a pastor in the 5.5 million member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and this faithful and historic congregation will erupt in joyful applause to welcome a full-time pastor for the first time in over a decade.

Related links: Emanuel Lutheran Church | Southwark Towers Implosion
Installation Sermon by Philip D. W. Krey