This stained glass window in the chapel at Derry Presbyterian Church honors a donation by a nearby congregation in the late 1800s, money that helped keep Derry Church afloat.
If you walk through the chapel at Derry Presbyterian Church in Hershey, PA, you’ll see several stained-glass windows with inscriptions on them in the bottom panels. Listed are names of people and congregations from the area who donated funds to the church in the late 1800s when it was struggling to stay on its feet.
“In the late 19th century, Derry was down to just six members on the rolls,” said the Rev. Stephen McKinney-Whitaker. “They had a Sunday school going on, but just six members on the roll. And Old Derry Church was a barn church, had collapsed by that point and it was gone, so they had no building.
“The presbytery and people in the town came together to fund the building of the chapel that still stands today. This was done by people stepping out in faith and saying, ‘You may not look all that viable right now, but we believe the church is important, we believe you are an important part of the community, so we’re going to step up and help you have this church.’”
From its humble beginnings to a thriving congregation that at one point had 1,000 members, Derry Church has flourished since the community stepped in to resurrect the congregation. And that fact is not lost on the members and leadership of the church who walk through the doors on Sunday mornings.
“Even after they helped build the chapel, the presbytery helped underwrite the operating budget of the church for several more years,” Stephen continued. “That’s always why we’ve given extra shared mission money to the presbytery over and above our per capita because we see the value of churches helping churches.”
In October of 2024 in honor of its history and in celebration of its 300th anniversary – and with the “churches helping churches” motto in the background – Derry Church decided to award grants up to $10,000 to churches in the Presbytery of Carlisle to support their capital improvement projects.
“Whatever the capital needs are, if people can say this is how it’s going to benefit the overall ministry and mission of the church, that’s all that we really care about,” Stephen said. “How will this help you do ministry?”
The conversation first started at a September session meeting during a discussion about the church’s Futures Fund, which is for expanding mission and risk-taking ministries. It led to the idea of giving grants to area churches to help them with projects, much like was done for Derry Church 125-plus years ago.
“Our clerk of session did their clerk of session minute meeting swap with a small church in the presbytery,” Stephen explained. “She mentioned to our session that when you share those books with a small church and you see their budget, they barely have enough money to fix the basic things in their building. They are barely getting by. Sometimes we take for granted all that we have. We have the money to fix the building, we have the money for new projects.
“She was sharing with session that a lot of churches aren’t in this position. Just in that moment I had the idea of, ‘Hey, what if we did a grant?’ It was spur of the moment and the session said that’s an interesting idea. Let’s do this.”
After the Presbytery of Carlisle agreed to this idea, Derry Church began writing the application, using intentional wording that it would have benefited from when it was in dire straits.
“It’s for a capital project that they need done that’s going to help expand their mission and ministry and it’s going to help keep them going,” Stephen said. “We purposely didn’t put in a whole bunch of questions about, ‘Are you viable? You might be a small church but are you going to be around in 10 years?’ We didn’t put any of that in because looking on the outside we might not have looked very viable with six members back in the day.
“It’s more if you need it, if this will help you be able to do the mission God calls you to do, then you can apply for this grant.”
The Derry Church congregation poses for a picture in honor of its 300th birthday in September of 2024.
Derry Church set aside enough money in 2024 to hand out four Churches Helping Churches Grants. Three were awarded before the end of the year for projects that included improved lighting and new lines for a parking lot and making a basement area and bathrooms handicap accessible. The bathroom project was for Wesley Union A.M.E. Zion Church in Harrisburg, a predominantly African American church that is not a Presbyterian congregation but one that Derry Church felt called to support.
“We recognized – whether consciously or not consciously, on purpose or not – we have benefited from systems of white supremacy and racism,” Stephen said. “One way or another we benefited from that through different systems, so we want to also invest and support churches of color.”
Because the grant project started late in 2024, Derry Church has decided to again offer the Churches Helping Churches Grants in 2025, with a total of $40,000 again being available this year to congregations in the Presbytery of Carlisle at a maximum of $10,000 per request. The deadline for churches to apply is April 1. (Grant application is available by clicking here.)
“Our hope is that this continues long-term,” Stephen added. “As long as there’s a need and people are taking advantage of it and we have the funds available, we hope to keep doing it.”
The outreach has created new energy within the congregation as it moves into year 301 of serving the community.
“They really like the idea,” Stephen said of the congregation. “They like that we are using our history, this idea that people gave to us and we’re paying it forward now. We celebrated our 300th anniversary last year. We didn’t want to just have a rah-rah celebration of our history. What can we learn from it, how can it guide us in the future, how can it help us be better in the future?
“We saw back in the 19th century churches really were helping each other. Too often we end up being stand-alone, we’re very siloed. We’re designed to be a connectional church just like we’re designed to be a connectional people. We’re just designed to live with and for one another. So, we want to find ways to do that, both in our common lives together in the church and in our community but also in a community of churches in the Harrisburg region and within the presbytery.
“Everybody has been on board with it. This is a good thing. We have the money. We’ve been blessed with bequests and a good stock market the last couple of years. So, instead of just filling our coffers, filling our storehouses, can we share that with others? And that’s what the Gospel calls us to do.”
The grant offering capped a year-long salute to three centuries of service to the Hershey area for this congregation. The celebration also included “Heritage Moments” twice a month on Sunday morning that recapped the church’s history; a book written by children about the church building’s history, with proceeds of the sales benefiting Peace Forrest initiatives in Northern Ireland to plant trees where the land has been heavily deforested; and two “heritage trips” to Scotland and Northern Ireland, one of which included adults and youth learning about peace and reconciliation in that area. A hymn festival and homecoming weekend were also part of the events Derry Church used to celebrate its 300th birthday last year.
“It was a busy year with a lot of big things and good celebrations,” Stephen said.
And with the Churches Helping Churches Grant spilling over into 2025, it allows Derry Church to continue to honor its history while helping other congregations with their future.
“This church is really good about being open to new ideas and to change,” Stephen said. “When somebody speaks, our leaders are listening. It goes back to that Presbyterian ideal that we discern God’s will best when we are together. When we’re talking and listening to each other, that’s when I think some of the most faithful ministry ideas come to the forefront because we’re together, we’re discussing, we’re learning, we’re listening and God’s always at work in those conversations.”
The Derry congregation worships during Easter Sunday in 2024.