Shadyside Presbyterian Church is a large congregation of the

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) The Presbyterian Church (USA), abbreviated PC(USA), is a mainline Protestant denomination in the United States. It is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the US, and known for its liberal stance on doctrine and its ordaining of women an ...

in an historic part of

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

. Located at the corner of Amberson Avenue and Westminster Place in the Shadyside neighborhood, Shadyside Presbyterian Church was founded in 1866 as a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and has enjoyed a long history of local, national, and global recognition for its outreach and service. The Shadyside church building is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

as a prime example of

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revival style incorporates 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish, and Italian Romane ...

architecture. It was completed in 1890 to designs of American architectural firm Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, the successor firm to H.H. Richardson's own office. Throughout its long history, the church has been served by a succession of notable preachers, including Hugh Thomson Kerr Sr., Robert Cleveland Holland, Howard C. Scharfe, and F. Morgan Roberts. Between 2003 and 2012, the congregation had as its senior pastor M. Craig Barnes, noted author and speaker, and professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, until his election as president of

Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton Theological Seminary (PTSem), officially The Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, is a private school of theology in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1812 under the auspices of Archibald Alexander, the General Assembly o ...

. Conrad C. Sharps served as senior pastor 2014–2018. The Rev. Dr. John Allan Dalles, a well-known hymn writer, Pittsburgh native, and graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, was the church's Interim Senior Minister and Head of Staff, 2019–2021. The current pastor, the twelfth in the church's history, is the Reverend Austin Crenshaw Shelley. It was here, in 1933 that the now global practice of celebrating World Communion Sunday on the first Sunday in October was originated, under the leadership of The Rev. Dr. Hugh Thomson Kerr. It also was the first church anywhere to pioneer regular

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a trans ...

broadcasts of its worship, on KDKA, the first commercially licensed

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio st ...

in the United States, and was the first church to broadcast worship to both the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Mag ...

and to the

South Pole The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole, Terrestrial South Pole or 90th Parallel South, is one of the two points where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on Earth and lies antipod ...

References

External links

Church website
* Presbyterian churches in Pennsylvania Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks Churches in Pittsburgh Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Churches completed in 1889 19th-century Presbyterian church buildings in the United States Romanesque Revival church buildings in Pennsylvania Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in Pennsylvania Historic American Buildings Survey in Pennsylvania National Register of Historic Places in Pittsburgh {{Pennsylvania-church-stub