By Sean Kirst, syracuse.com
Dianne Zain, a parishioner at Elmwood Presbyterian Church, weeps Sunday during the final service in the building for the Elmwood congregation, whose roots go back to 1889. Zain reaches out to comfort Virginia McClemens, 80, who married her husband Dwight in the church in 1961. In the background is Rev. Lateef Johnson-Kinsey, whose Mount Pleasant Baptish Missionary Church has purchased the building. (Sean Kirst | skirst@syracuse.com)
The timing was perfect. Once Sunday’s final service got underway at the Elmwood Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, a morning sun muscled its way through gray clouds. A crowd of more than 100 looked on as brilliant light poured through the stained glass window that dominates the church sanctuary.
The window portrays Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, a magnificent focal point to a church built for a city congregation founded in 1889.The building itself opened in 1917, and an inscription on the window indicates the window was a memorial gift in honor of a dentist named Allan Draper.
Almost a century later, that gift has lost none of its power. The Rev. Jeanne Radak, a former pastor who was among Sunday’s speakers, said the window was always “a gentle and powerful reminder that we can endure more than we think we can.”
Including, it turns out, a major transition in the church.
The Elmwood congregation is moving. It is down to 15 active members, at best, most of them elderly. Parishioners will “nest” with the Robinson Memorial Presbyterian Church in Westvale, although they intend to retain their own identity – and to continue their efforts to help residents of the Elmwood neighborhood.