Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church records

The Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church (LAPC) was originally organized as the Park Presbyterian Church in the eleventh ward of Brooklyn, New York, in 1857. At first, the church was temporarily based in the former home of the Park Congregation Church on Carlton Avenue, near DeKalb Avenue, in what is today known as the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn.

In 1860, the church invited Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler to become its first pastor. Cuyler, a vocal supporter of the abolitionist movement, was then the pastor of the Market Street Dutch Reformed Church in New York City. Cuyler agreed to accept the call to Brooklyn on the condition that the church purchase land and erect a new church building on the corner of Lafayette Avenue and South Oxford Street. The congregation purchased the land just ten days later, and Cuyler was installed as pastor on April 24, 1860. The church building was completed and dedicated in March 1862, and the congregation was renamed the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church.

The congregation was greatly expanded under Cuyler, from 140 members in 1860 to over 2,300 in 1890. During this time period the church's Sabbath School was established, along with a number of church groups, such as the Young People's Associations, the Cuyler Mission Band, and Women's Home and Foreign Missionary Society. Several chapels were organized throughout Brooklyn, expanding the reach of the church beyond the Fort Greene neighborhood.

In 1872, Cuyler caused great controversy by inviting Sarah Smiley, a Quaker preacher, to be the first woman to deliver an address at a Presbyterian service.

Another major event which occurred during the Cuyler pastorate was the establishment of the Presbyterian mission in Korea, which was spearheaded by LAPC Elder Daniel W. McWilliams.

Cuyler retired in 1890 after serving 30 years as pastor for the LAPC. The congregation chose Rev. David Gregg, of the Park Street Congregational Church in Boston, as its second pastor. Gregg accepted the call and was installed on December 14, 1890. The church and its chapels continued to expand under his pastorate. Gregg remained at the church until 1903, when he accepted the call to be president of the Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The third pastor of the LAPC, Rev. Cleland Boyd McAfee, was installed on October 8, 1904. He had previously served as pastor to the 41st Street Presbyterian Church in Chicago, Illinois. McAfee continued the church's support for missions, both locally and abroad, and was a strong proponent of the church's music program. A new organ was installed in November 1910. He resigned in June 1912, when he accepted the call to serve as the chair of Systematic Theology at McCormick Seminary in Chicago.

On May 6, 1913, Rev. Charles Carroll Albertson was installed as the fourth pastor of the LAPC. Albertson led the effort to enlarge the church's endowment fund during his fifteen year service as minister of the church. He was a leading advocate of the Social Gospel movement in American Protestantism. During his pastorate, the Buckhorn Association was established as a mission in rural Kentucky in 1916. Additionally, a Parish House was built in 1917 to house various community-service projects locally in Brooklyn. He retired on Easter Sunday, 1928.

Rev. Alvin E. Magary was installed as the fifth pastor of the LAPC on May 6, 1930. He led the church through a difficult period, as noted in the LAPC's One Hundredth Anniversary booklet, "with the depression, the war years and the confused times of the post-war period, Brooklyn changed in character far more than our immediate neighborhood. Older members of church families retired and moved away or were taken by death. Younger members of these families moved out of the neighborhood or city." Magary remained pastor for 26 years, retiring in 1956.

The sixth pastor of the LAPC, Rev. George Litch Knight, was installed on December 29, 1957. That year marked the 100th anniversary of the church. The congregation had shrunk dramatically in the previous years, from a height of 2,500 at the turn of the century to less than 100 in 1960. Knight guided the church through another period of change. He led the effort to rehabilitate the church building and oversaw the development of the church's Cultural Crossroads program in the 1970s. The church also catered to newly arrived ethnic populations, such as the "Spanish" congregation, led by Rev. Moises J. Senti, and the Korean congregation, led by Elder Chung H. Ro, Rev. John Y. Paik, and Rev. Sung Kook Shin.

Rev. Knight retired in 1989 after leading the church for over thirty years. He was succeeded by Rev. David W. Dyson, who was chosen as pastor in 1992. Dyson was ordained in 1972, and spent much of the 1970s and 1980s as a labor advocate, first for the United Farm Workers and then for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. Prior to coming to the LAPC, he served for two years as executive minister for the Riverside Church in Manhattan. He served as LAPC pastor for eighteen years, where his ministry focused on social justice, retiring in 2011.

As of October 2015, the LAPC is led by Interim Pastor Lindsay Borden.