The Twin Churches of Chester Springs

This appeared on Sunday, April 29, 2007

When I was 10 or 11, my father, a chemistry professor, brought home a vial of mercury for me to play with. I found it fascinating. When I poured some of it out and tried to put my finger on it, it squirted away. You could not pin it down.

Sort of like Chester Springs, in northern Chester County.

I find that Chester Springs — that tweed, cheese and horse-dung community referred to as ”one of the most affluent and desirable locations in Southeast Pennsylvania‘“ — keeps moving, stretching its limits like mercury on a glass table. Supposed to contain only parts Upper Uwchlan, West Pikeland, East Nantmeal and West Vincent, I find that people who live in East Pikeland or Uwchlan or Charlestown are creepingly beginning to answer ”Chester Springs“ when someone asks where they live. Soon it will extend to the outskirts of Exton.

It‘s the Postal Desirability Factor at work. You can‘t blame people who would rather have the distinction of having a Chester Springs address than one from say, Phoenixville or Royersford.

Finding the limits of Chester Springs may be difficult, but for me the heart of the place is right where Conestoga Road meets Fellowship Road. It‘s there that years ago I stumbled across a trio of spiritual symbols of Chester Springs.

Two still stand, the third is no more.

The first two I like to call the Twin Churches of Chester Springs, although they do not resemble one another, not in any physical sense, but rather by the saint from whom they took their names — St. Matthew. On one side of the road you‘ve got St. Matthew‘s United Church of Christ, a comfortable looking, homey sort of a building that just exudes a sense of history.

A few hundred yards up the road you‘ve got St. Matthew‘s Evangelical Lutheran Church, a stately building that would not look out of place among the grand churches of Old City, Philadelphia.

You‘d think that there might be a copycat name-calling game going on between the two congregations, but those I spoke with assure me that‘s not the case. The two churches sprung, you see, from the same source, back when congregations shared buildings for convenience sake.
The Lutheran and Reformed churches went their separate ways in 1879, when the Lutherans decided to build their own house of worship.

The split was supposed to be amicable, and I see no reason to believe otherwise, seeing as the Reformed folks threw in $1,000, a wood stove and half the books in the church library to seal the deal. But I do note that the Reformers took their sweet time granting the dissolution — putting it off once owing to the weather being ”very rainy“ and again because, according to a church history, ”the matter escaped notice.“

Diane Myer, the church secretary at St. Matthew‘s United, told me that the two congregations get together sometimes for joint outdoor services, and I‘m sure the Lutherans do like to come down for the chicken barbeque dinners the Uniteds sell in the summer. There‘s some ambiguity, though, about who is who, and Myers told me that travelers confuse one church for the other ”all the time.“

Oh, and the third part of my Chester Springs triumvirate? That would be the Fellowship Road barn that used to hold a private squash court. Playing squash inside a barn is the height of the tweed, cheese and horse-dung life, it seems to me.