Bethesda welcomes all walks of life
lished the lake’s shores as a favorite retreat, and Bethesda became integral to the lives of many.
By 1925, construction had begun on the ocean-side spot the church holds today.
It is modeled after the León Cathedral in Spain. Its cornerstone bears both the year of that groundbreaking and the year Ponce de León first landed on Florida’s Coast, 1513. The sun rises and sets though the story of Christianity depicted in dozens of its stained glass windows.
“It is one of the great religious institutions in South Florida, not only because it’s the earliest but it’s also one of the most beautiful,” boasts Harvey Oyer III, local attorney, historian and church member.
“It has spectacular gardens and specimen trees. It belongs to the community,” Oyer said. “I know I take out of town guests there when I want to show them something special. I think a lot of people do.”
Fellow parishioner Jim Beasley agrees, “Every time I go to Paris, I try to go to a service at Notre Dame. And I feel that way about Bethesda as well. The music is awesome. The organist. The congregation. ... It’s held up very, very well.”
(The Bethesda choir and orchestra of 50 members in all fill the rafters and the pews easily at the holidays. Arrive an hour and a half early for the Christmas Concert and Community Carol Sing, and you still won’t be the first in line or even the fifth.)
Be it the church’s elegance, its message or simply its geography in the palm-laden subtropics, Bethesda has attracted plenty of rich and famous people. Lilly Pulitzer and former Florida Gov. Claude Kirk were eulogized there.
For years, the church leadership reported that about half its members come from the island. The others hail from across the county. But in recent years that has changed and now leans slightly toward a majority commuting to service from homes outside the town limits.
And not all who walk through the doors are wealthy.
Indeed, the congregation’s work in the community is what helped it weather national trends in which church attendance fell and keep it vital, argues Oyer, whose family roots reach back to the church’s founding families.
“It doesn’t just operate for two services on Sunday. It’s busy all day, every day. Bible study groups, marriage and wedding planning. AA groups meet there,” said Oyer, who grew up in Boynton Beach and was drawn to Bethesda after law school, intrigued by his family connections and invited by friends who attended.
Bethesda’s Church Mouse, not quite a mile down the road, pays the bills for some of the church’s outreach. It’s a 4,500-square-foot secondhand store that peddles items with often gilded firsthand origins.
Still, as it approached its 125th anniversary, Bethesda was not shielded from the financial chaos that struck in 2008. The church was sent scrambling to cover a $1.25 million deficit, which it managed with staff cutbacks and asset sales, including the $1.3 million sale of a house willed to the church, according to The Post archives. Now, administrators report the church is on “firm financial footing” with a membership that has grown in recent years to about 1,000 active households.
Are the Trumps among those “active households”? The church isn’t really saying. He has certainly attended services, but Palm Beach has never been a full-time home.
The last interloping president in these parts was John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Catholic president, with a summer home on the island. When in town for the holidays, Kennedy alternated between St. Edward’s Church in Palm Beach — about half a mile north of Bethesda — and St. Ann’s in West Palm Beach.