About us

Overview Top of Site

LOCATION We're located at the corner of South Main Street and Hazel Drive in Vestal, NY. Our mailing and street address is 709 S Main Street, Vestal NY 13850-3199. Vestal is in Broome County, right on the Pennsylvania border. Please see the map to help locate us.

CONTACTS Our telephone number is 607-748-0840. The church office is staffed most mornings; at other times, anyone at the church buildings will answer your call, or it will go on the answering machine. This is also our fax number, available anytime. You can send email to the webservant at GraceAdmin@GraceVestal.org or to the church office at GraceLC@GraceVestal.org. Neither one is monitored constantly. We try to respond promptly.

AFFILIATION Grace Lutheran Church is a member of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. We're in the Eastern District of the LC-MS, which includes the western half of NY, almost all of Pennsylvania, and a small part of Maryland..

FOCUS The Trinity -- God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit -- is our prime focus from which all others derive. We focus on worship, fellowship, education. We focus on God's love in every aspect of daily life. We focus on Him, from which all flows.

WORSHIP As a Lutheran church, Grace is liturgical. That means that we worship God in an established and mostly formal manner. And yet Grace has considerable variation in our worship, using several different service formats, many based on the seasons of the year. And within these formats, we very often have weekly differences. And, since every worship service is guided by the Holy Spirit, what we do is not always what we thought we were going to do. Changes happen based on circumstance and immediate need.

Our worship has grown more flexible than the straight hymnbook formula. And it will probably grow more varied as we grow in the freedom and joy of the Lord, as the Spirit works in and on us, as we become a more diverse family. God knows and directs.

We occasionally have an 'alternate' worship service; 'alternate' is different each service, but it will always be for our benefit and will give praise to God. Various people in the congregation have written these alternate worship services, with pastoral and elder oversight. They are generally liturgical in form, but almost never have the visible structure typical of older Lutheran worship services. Usually, clarity of word and understanding is important. All are intended to be in the language that today's people can easily understand, something the traditional liturgies don't have, especially for younger people.

Music is an important part of our worship. We use digital organ, electronic piano, acoustic and plugged guitars, brass, percussion and the human voice -- all in praise of God.
We have a CCLI subscription, and often use its more modern hymns and praise songs to supplement our two regular hymnbooks.

STYLE Informality within a formal structure. We are rigid about the fundamentals of Christianity, and are flexible in its practice, all to God's glory. We're more concerned with content than with style, substance than form. We're more concerned with people than with tight theological structures. Our style is to love, and to show love -- love that is the very essence of Jesus Christ. God is love. We are a family in worship of God.