Thank you for coming to learn more about us at AELC. We are church rooted in history, as we celebrate 250 years of worship in our community. With that foundation we have been blessed to serve our community in new and exciting ways. We gather for worship and seek to care for those around us, partnering with other organizations and finding ways to answer God's call to care for all people.
Welcome to Allegheny! We are a church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (www.elca.org) and have been worshiping faithfully in this community since 1757 (as a union church first, and then most recently as a separate Lutheran congregation.)
Allegheny Evangelical Lutheran Church (that’s us) or AELC, for short, moved from its union roots in 1989, and built the church building we currently occupy, opening Christmas Eve, 1993. We’re proud of our connectedness to our local community, grateful to God for God’s steadfast love for this church, and we’re eager to face our future together.
We are a church that walks by faith, trusting God's promise in the gospel and knowing that we exist by and for the proclamation of this gospel word. We proclaim Jesus Christ crucified and raised from the dead for the life of the world. As the apostle Paul wrote (Romans 1:16-17), and we echo in our Constitution (2.02), we are not ashamed of this gospel ministry because it is God’s power for saving all people who trust the God who makes these promises. “We are to fear and love God, so, that we do not despise preaching or God’s word, but instead keep that word holy and gladly hear it and learn it” (Small Catechism).
We understand to be Lutheran is to be ecumenical – committed to the oneness to which God calls the world in the saving gift of Jesus Christ, recognizing the brokenness of the church in history and the call of God to heal this disunity.
We commit to model a community of faith and spirit that works toward openness and understanding, offering justice, healing, and wholeness of life for all people. Liberated by our faith, we embrace everyone as a whole person, complexities and all. We are a church that shares a living, daring confidence in God's grace, and we believe that through our diversity, all can grow and practice a unity of faith that transcends our differences