Christ the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

Death and resurrection is the story we live by at Christ the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. The life-giving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our savior, and also the echoes of this transformative process we continue to see all around us. Our congregation was born on January 1, 2021, from the deaths of two former Hamden congregations—the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd and Christ Lutheran Church. These two churches chose to merge, dying to themselves, so that a new thing, filled with God’s Holy Spirit of life and mercy, could be born anew.

The merger of these two congregations resulted from nearly two years of thoughtful discernment, prayer, planning and determined effort on the part of the two congregations. One step led to another—joint Congregational Council meetings, shared servant ministry projects, combined worship services and fellowship activities—until it was clear that this partnership was opening the way to a promising future in ministry together. Even the years of pandemic could not slow the progression toward the merger. Zoom proved to be a useful tool for meetings and worship alike. At the heart of it all was a conviction that the Holy Spirit was leading us into a new day.

One of our ministries which we are most excited about is our Lord’s Bounty Community Garden. After many months of discernment, community organizing and data-gathering, the garden was built and planted in the Spring of 2023 with the intention that all our produce would serve those who are food-insecure in the town of Hamden via the food pantry at The Keefe Community Center. In the Fall of 2023 our on-going collaboration with Grace & St. John’s Episcopal Church in Hamden, CT continued to deepen, and through their parish, we were the recipients of grant dollars from the Reimagining Church Program at Yale Divinity School to expand our garden in 2024 and to begin work planning a pollinator garden as well.

Although located in Hamden, the members of this congregation come from a number of communities in the greater New Haven area, and we have been blessed by God with a growingly diverse congregation. We are excited to participate in God’s work that has been made flesh in us: proclaiming in our worship God’s grace and forgiveness made known in Jesus Christ, and reaching out to serve the needs of the people of our many communities with our life-giving and grace-filled ministries.