Religion News /First Presbyterian Church
New pastor relishes all the history surrounding Falls’ oldest church
NIAGARA FALLS — Early church members attended services in a log schoolhouse on what’s now Prospect Street.
Yet the handful of Christians who met with the Rev. David Smith back then “not only peered through the forest primeval which surrounded them, but they looked far into the future,” said Jim Brunn, quoting church history.
These days, Brunn serves as historian for First Presbyterian Church of Niagara Falls — the city’s oldest church, having marked its 185th anniversary this year.
Today, there’s a new “Rev. David”— the Rev. David W. Crapnell, who has an appreciation for history, having studied at two of the country’s oldest seminaries.
First Presbyterian Church’s pastor, who arrived last month, received his initial seminary training at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. While there, he also followed the biblical admonition to visit the imprisoned, serving for two years as a prison chaplain.
He then went to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where he earned his Master of Divinity degree. During that time, he met his wife, Lisa. Their love, Crapnell says, apart from his faith, “is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”
Crapnell enjoys studying history, and there’s plenty of it at his “new” church, which formed the year before the opening of the Erie Canal.
The original First Presbyterian’s board of trustees, with some of Niagara Falls’ founders, included Augustus Porter and Samuel DeVeaux, both judges. Porter was the first permanent non-Indian settler of the area, and along with his brother Gen. Peter Porter, owned Goat Island, as well as other area acreage. The great Seneca orator Red Jacket and American Revolution Gen. Lafayette were frequent visitors to Augustus Porter’s household.
In 1831, a wooden church building was erected at First and Falls streets. This small structure had no steeple, with the bell displayed out front.
“That bell still rings in the current church bell tower,” Brunn said. The present church was built from native stone in 1849 at a cost of $8,000, including the cost of the lot.
The church was scheduled to be demolished in 1970 as part of the city’s urban renewal program—but survived a process that saw downtown transformed in a way many city residents still bemoan.
These days, at a conservative estimate, that church would cost well over a million dollars to replace.
“Fortunately, the congregation’s fight to save the building was successful and this magnificent facility still proudly stands as the symbol of Niagara’s oldest church,” Brunn said.
Today, Crapnell would like to go a step further in making the church a force to help reinvigorate the downtown community, and he has a broad background to make that happen.
“This church remains here despite numerous attempts to bulldoze it down,” Crapnell said. “It’s here because it’s a special place for the community, a place to receive hope. Niagara Falls has a strange cloud of despair hovering over it. Christ can break through that. I’ve seen the power of Christ to change lives.”
Crapnell said the sound of the nearby Falls from his First Street church is music to his ears.
Crapnell’s father worked as a construction engineer for U. S. Steel, and his mother was a surgical nurse. Because of his dad’s job, the family often moved while Crapnell was growing up. He earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from Humboldt State University in the coastal redwoods of Northern California. Crapnell, who also studied biology, first began his career as a “starving artist,” gaining some recognition as a muralist, painting large scenes in various public places.
He’s tried his hand at a number of different art forms, like bronze sculpture, and earned a living at one time as a graphic artist. Painting watercolors of North American birds is a hobby Crapnell still enjoys.
He received a call to ministry in a mysterious and sudden way.
“It started in a dream,” the paster said. In that dream, one night in 1995, he went among Jesus’ people — the dispossessed, and those “rough around the edges.”
“I was open to it,” he said. “The dream gave me a word that I didn’t recognize.” Later, through some research, he discovered the word was Hebrew, in the Bible for “the lord is our righteousness.”
He began serving as pastor in 2002 to the people in West Virginia towns high in the Appalachian Mountains.
However, he felt he was being prepared for more challenges in ministry. Before arriving in Niagara Falls, Crapnell, in 2005, answered a pastoral call to head the staff by Central Presbyterian Church in Dayton, Ohio.
Apart from teaching, preaching and pastoring a church, Crapnell enjoys a number of other activities including hiking, bird-watching, camping and fishing.
But being a fisher of men, he says, was what he was born to do. “It’s challenging,” he concedes, “but it’s rewarding. It really is a calling and an honor.”
Have an idea about for Religion News? Write to: Louise Continelli, The Buffalo News, P. O. Box 100, Buffalo, NY 14240 or e-mail her at lcontinelli@buffnews.com
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