Hebron Church in Penn Hills, which dates to township's founding, marks 175th anniversary

During an era of churches closing and congregations merging, church elder Dan Brown said Hebron Church in Penn Hills is still going strong.

The church celebrated its 175th anniversary with a banquet attended by 193 congregants Oct. 12.

“Many churches have either closed up or certainly shrunk. I mean, we’ve seen some in Penn Hills, Catholic churches like St. Bart’s and some others, closed,” Brown said. “And yet, Hebron has still always remained a vital role here, and we try to always be part of the community.”

The church is as old as Penn Hills Township itself — both were established in 1850, making Hebron Church one of the first churches in Penn Hills.

Mark Webb, church elder and leader of the church’s connections team, helped organize the banquet and oversaw the historical research and multimedia presentation. Webb said the actual anniversary was Aug. 30, but they delayed the banquet so it would coincide with the church’s induction into the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC).

“At the dinner, we even had some representatives from the EPC there, and one of them, since we’re switching, had our elders reaffirm their vows,” Webb said.

Under Webb’s direction, Brown teamed up with church trustee Harold “Bud” McCutcheon to research the church’s history and present their findings to the congregants at the banquet. McCutcheon focused on the church’s founding and property histories while Brown explored the history of ministry and life.

McCutcheon traces his own lineage all the way back to the church’s founding as a small country church made up of farming families. His great-great-grandmother, Nancy Johnston Park, appears on the list of 28 original charter members.

He’s not the only one — about 15 congregants stood up when McCutcheon asked for descendants of founding members to make themselves known at the banquet.

“I had them stand up, and I said, ‘These are all my cousins,’ because in some way we’re all interrelated. Think about a farming community,” McCutcheon said. “The kids of the neighbors got married and stuff like that. You didn’t go to a dating app, right? They probably met at the church dances or the church festivals.”

Melissa Webb, Hebron Church’s office manager and family life ministry associate, estimates about 35 of the church’s 344 members today are descendants of its original charter members. Webb is married to Mark Webb.

McCutcheon and Brown researched by consulting church archival documents and “The Changing Hills: A History of Penn Hills, Pennsylvania,” a book by Gary Rogers and Jane Kim-Hawkins. According to their research, the original charter members split off from another Presbyterian church to follow church elders John and James Morrow, forming Hebron Church in August 1850.

“They broke away from Beulah Presbyterian Church because of a difference in whether or not music should be used in the worship services,” Brown said. “Things were a little different back in the 1850s.”

Another difference: Members had their own assigned seats that they paid for to cover congregational expenses — sort of like dues.

“Back in the beginning of the church, we had to pay for the pews — sort of like seat licenses like the Steelers have now,” McCutcheon said. “But it’s funny because — I made the comment and it’s in my notes there — that we tend to sit in the same seats every week, right? It’s like these are our seats, just in our DNA.”

Following World War II, as Penn Hills “took off and grew tremendously” into the suburb it is today so did Hebron Church, Dan Brown said. Brown’s father, the Rev. W. Malcolm Brown, served as the church’s pastor from 1966, when the family moved to Penn Hills, until 1982.

According to Brown, the number of church members went up from “a couple hundred” in the 1940s to about 700 or 800 in the early 1960s.

“In 1976, actually, I think it peaked out at around 1,223 members. That was a huge church,” Brown said.

The church expanded its programs and services as the congregation grew. No longer as concerned as their ancestors were with new worship music, the church hired its first music director in the mid-1960s, along with a youth pastor.

“In the ’70s and ’80s, we had a couple hundred junior high and high school kids who went to camps and conferences and were involved in an active youth program here,” Brown said. “Also during that time was when the adult Sunday school classes and Bible studies grew and developed.”

Though church membership has declined since then to 344 current members — the oldest is 107 and the youngest is 2 months — the church has seen some growth again recently, Brown said.

“We’ve added a number of new members over the last year, so we think we’re going back in a positive direction. So we’re excited about that,” he said.

Having been a member for almost 60 years, Brown has witnessed firsthand how the church has changed in some ways and remained the same in others. Though congregation size has fluctuated, he said the ministry has “stayed solid over the years.”

“We’ve been blessed with a number of very solid pastors who uphold the Scriptures and (have) done a great job,” Brown said.

According to Brown, the church has had 10 pastors over the past 175 years.

Another constant over the past few decades has been the church’s participation in missions.

Brown helped to lead the mission and outreach team for about six years in the early 2000s and has reprised the role over the past couple of years as well.

“We’ve had missions go to Haiti, to the Bahamas and also over to Rwanda and Africa,” Brown said. “The youth have gone to a number of different places. They’ve gone to Oklahoma — some Indian reservations. They’ve served with some community centers down in Atlanta also, as well as in New York City.”

Besides the banquet, Webb said the church plans to continue to mark the anniversary by updating the church directory, producing some commemorative ornaments and perhaps publishing a new church history booklet.