Good Shepherd Sunday

by Reverend Nancy Topolewski

The Sunday after Easter on which the teachings of Jesus in the 10th chapter of the Gospel According to John form the Gospel lesson-this year, on the Fourth Sunday of Easter-has historically been called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” We might also call this Sunday our “Name Sunday”-for ours is the Church of the Good Shepherd. This is not, however, the name with which the church began. From its founding in 1850 until 1933, the church was known, first as the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Newport, and later as Park Street Methodist Episcopal Church. So, what brought about the change?

After World War I, from 1919 to 1920, the church underwent significant renovation and renewal. The Moeller pipe organ was given to the church by the Honorable George A. Fairbanks, in memory of his parents, who were for more than fifty years steadfast members of the church. (The original bill of sale from the Moeller Company, as well as the blueprint for the organ installation, have been restored and framed and are displayed in the sanctuary. Our pipe organ is now more than 100 years old!) The interior of the sanctuary was painted; new carpet and pew cushions were installed, and two murals were added to the chancel walls-the same two murals that we see in the sanctuary today: Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and The Ascension of Christ.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd

The Ascension of Christ

The murals were painted directly onto the wall (they only look as if they are paintings in frames-a style called troupe l’oeil) by Baron Albert von Rieger, a German nobleman who had been held as a prisoner of war in a camp in Vermont during World War I and who created a number of such murals in churches in New Hampshire, as he worked to earn passage money back to Germany after the war.

In October of 1933, the Official Board of the Park Street Methodist Episcopal Church considered changing the name of the church to either the Church of the Ascension or the Church of the Good Shepherd, in honor of one or the other of von Rieger’s murals. As Kenneth Andler reports in his 1973 Historical Sketch of the Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, Newport New Hampshire, the congregation was offered the choice and voted in November of 1933. On Sunday, 28 January 1934, Bishop Charles Wesley Burns officiated over the formal re-naming as The Church of the Good Shepherd-which it remains to this very day.

A goodly heritage, indeed