October is a milestone month for First Presbyterian Church in Ocean City, New Jersey.
The church was founded in October 1896. Senior Pastor Luke Bert was ordained in October 2017, and in October 2024, the church officially transitioned from the Presbyterian Church (USA) to the PCA, a process decades in the making.
The historic stone building stands just blocks from the ocean in the picturesque beach town. In the summer the population can swell up to 150,000, and it recedes to around 11,000 in colder months.
Ocean City was founded as a Methodist camp, and its religious roots run deep. In recent years, however, First Presbyterian Church found itself and its conservative convictions at odds with both Ocean City’s local congregations and the PCUSA at large.
The denomination drifted further from theological conservatism, said ruling elder Gary Griffith, but “our congregation was very conservative.”
While the church officially left the PCUSA in 2024, the discussion about the church’s future in the denomination began nearly two decades earlier as Pastor John Sheldon and church leadership became concerned about the leftward drift in the denomination.
In the initial discussions in 2007, the session found itself weighing three options. Severing from the denomination meant risking the loss of their property. They could stay and ignore the concerns, operating independently within the denomination. Or, stay and actively seek to make a change from within.
“I have a longstanding admiration for those who remain strong within the denomination. I’ve talked to lots of people about that battle between whether you try to be light in the darkness or you just get somewhere healthy. That’s a tough call. It’ll be better for you if you leave, but if you have the strength to be a light in that, then that could be valuable too,” Bert said.
Bert says churches should ask whether the church is forced to compromise its convictions.
In the case of the First Presbyterian Church, the elders felt increasingly isolated and misaligned with the rest of the denomination. When Sheldon retired in May 2023 after 35 years of pastoring First Pres, the congregation worried about the theological commitments of any PCUSA pastor who might replace Sheldon. By August 2023, the elders submitted a severance proposal to the local presbytery, a proposal unanimously approved by those who attended the congregational meeting.
First Pres appointed Griffith, along with fellow ruling elder Richard Colvin, to negotiate the terms of the separation with three presbytery representatives.
“We went to many meetings to determine the terms of the severance, and it was a long process,” Griffith said.
Like many mainline denominations, the PCUSA has a trust clause, meaning the denomination holds a church’s assets in trust. Historically, the presbytery has asked each departing church to pay a fee to leave, based on the size of its assets. Based on First Pres’ portfolio of properties, valued around $7.5 million, the PCUSA established a fee of $750,000 in order for the church to leave.
Provision for this cost came unexpectedly in the midst of heartache. Two longtime members of First Pres passed away and bequeathed significant gifts to the church, one as cash and the other a home, which the church sold.
“It was due to the gracious gift of two people that we had sufficient proceeds to pay,” Griffith said.
So unified was the congregation throughout the process that by the time the church was formally dismissed in October 2024, the church had not lost one person or any of its properties.
The unity of the church’s decision held a lot of weight with the PCUSA, and the denomination did not try to fight the severance. Griffith said the denomination would have liked to keep the First Pres building, but they recognized that if they insisted on keeping the property, all of First Pres’ members would leave.
First Pres is now one of 10 churches in the PCA’s New Jersey Presbytery, along with two mission churches, and one Reformed University Fellowship ministry. New Jersey Presbytery encompasses southern and central New Jersey churches, while the northern New Jersey churches fall under Metropolitan New York or West Hudson presbyteries.
Despite the resolution to leave the PCUSA, First Pres still had to fill the position of senior pastor.
Meanwhile, First Pres’ story had reached Bert, who had recently moved with his wife and four children back to the U.S. from Quebec, where Bert had taught at Séminaire Baptiste Évangélique du Québec, helped to plant the first PCA church in Quebec, Grace Gatineau, and served as theology coach for church planters at the seminary.
The Berts returned to the U.S. in hopes of living closer to their Pennsylvania family. The couple had met at Harvey Cedars Bible Conference on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and Bert spent the summer 2024 on staff with the ministry.
The Berts quickly sensed a call to Ocean City, and Bert was installed as senior pastor in July 2025.
Since his installation took place in the summer, when church attendance averages around 150 people, members warned Bert that attendance might drop as low as 50 when summer ends. Instead the church has maintained off-season attendance near 100.
“I’m seeing incredible blessings,” Bert said. “These are summer numbers, having 100 people, on a Sunday in November when it’s 30 degrees and windy with the ocean breeze freezing everybody’s bones, and we’re still seeing people come in.”
The church is liturgical and combines traditional hymnody with contemporary praise songs. Bert collaborates with Director of Music and Family Ministries Mr. Kim Murphy in the planning of each service.
“[Kim] has done a wonderful job of helping me to craft our services to get to the heart. We talk every week about what the sermon is going to be. We’re organizing our call to worship and our confession of faith, and our worship to try to communicate a single message…” he said. “We had a lot of good comments that one thing people really appreciate is the worship aspect of the service. People really appreciate how the worship is very intentionally crafted. ”
In addition to being biblically grounded, the congregation is also relational. Though about half the congregation is over 60, a handful of church families have welcomed babies in the past few months, and the number of young families is growing.
“I like to say that we’ve got a lot of foundation and a lot of future,” Bert said. “The majority of the congregation is faithful people who have been members here for 30-plus years. That wealth of stability is one thing that attracted me to the church. There are multiple families that have three or four generations attending church together here, and that’s a beautiful thing. I’m really excited for the future that we have.”
The church is also adjusting to life in a new denomination, in ways big and small.
One group most affected by the denominational shift were the women who had been ordained as elders and deacons. Transitioning to the PCA meant relinquishing those positions.
“They said that they embrace this, and they’re all still here,” Bert said. “They’re wonderful ladies who are part of our church and have submitted themselves to what they believe is the biblical teaching.”
The loss of the women in these roles left the church briefly without deacons, as all the deacons were women at the time of the transition. There is now one deacon, and Bert has implemented deacon training to invest in a future diaconate.
He is also equipping the ruling elders to take more of a shepherding role in the congregation, an aspect of the office that is less emphasized in the PCUSA.
Bert sits on New Jersey Presbytery’s Mission to North America committee, and the committee has identified numerous towns that could be ripe for a church plant. He hopes that First Pres will see other PCA churches take root in the area.
“We want to have more help out here. There’s a lack of strong biblical, Reformed, Confessional churches…” he said. “There are incredible opportunities in New Jersey and many towns that have no Reformed churches. It’s a great opportunity for church planting.”
While beach towns can be intimidating because of the ebb and flow of attendance, the need for ministry remains constant.
“There are people who call this their home and need to hear the gospel. Don’t discount the vacationers. God can work through this,” Bert said.
In over a decade as a ruling elder, Griffith has learned to walk by faith when it comes to the cyclical nature of church attendance.
“Never question God. He makes provision for his people.” He said. “Not only in church buildings, but he gives you everything you need to do what he requires.”
This year, the church will celebrate 130 years, looking to the future after several years of transitions.
“If you are visiting or considering moving out to South Jersey and you want a church, we read the word of God, we sing the word of God, we pray the word of God, we preach the word of God,” Bert said. “We’re also a very relational church. The strength of this church is 130 years — generations of families. You come here, and you are part of a family.”