Our Mission Statement

God has placed us on Grant Street and, by his Holy Spirit, works through us, as Lutherans, to create and sustain Christian faith and fellowship in a downtown and metropolitan Pittsburgh community; and, equips us to creatively reach out in service and witness to the Living Christ.

How We Came to Be

First English Evangelical Lutheran Church was born on January 15, 1837, as the first English-speaking Lutheran congregation west of the Allegheny Mountains. The Reverend J.C.F. Heyer was the first pastor of the congregation. Father Heyer was also the first American Lutheran pastor to become a missionary; he served in the Andhra region of India. Other notable pastors of First Church’s past were the Reverend Dr. William A. Passavant, founder of The Pittsburgh Synod of 1845 and father of Lutheran social ministries; and the Reverend Dr. Charles Porterfield Krauth, Lutheran confessional scholar, who later became professor of Dogmatic Theology at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Vice Provost of the University of Pennsylvania.