During this era of optimism, St. John’s celebrated its Silver Jubilee from 1925 to 1927. Gifts, timed to that celebration, began with a gift of a renovated kitchen. A group gift in 1926 enabled the redecoration of the church. Many other individual gifts and memorials added meaning to the anniversary celebration, and a new $5,000 organ was installed in time for the Jubilee. Perhaps the best gift was a spiritual growth sufficient to make the 1925 member canvass the first one in which a large majority of members participated. The sum of $5,800 was raised.. A week‑long celebration, including special worship services, organ recitals, a congregational banquet at the Nelson House, and a jubilee community night, was held October 3 ‑ 10, 1926. An anniversary booklet with a brief history and many photographs was published.
This same attitude produced the first real effort to repay the ten‑year‑old overdue $4,000 borrowed from the Mission Extension Society. To our shame, we had neglected an obligation too long. But with Pastor Baum’s help, we faced the problem at last, despite the unpleasantness of such a confrontation. Despite problems, the Twenties were good to St. John’s. Money problems, at the root of so much of the trouble were drastically reduced. In July of 1928, we paid back the $4,000 borrowed from the Mission Extension Society, though we had to borrow $3,000 to do so. Black Friday came and went in 1929 with no visible effect on St. John’s, or so it seemed at first. Occupied with continuing problems of keeping an organist and repairing the leaky church gutters, life went on placidly. Thanksgiving services with First Lutheran Church continued as they had since the early 1920″s. The furnace was converted to oil in 1930, thus eliminating the coal bill problems and providing some badly needed space in the basement. As early as 1930, the Sunday School was running short of space and held overflow classes in the nave. The need for a larger church building was already evident in April of 1932, when St. John’s began to fully feel the effects of the Great Depression.
For completely non‑fiscal reasons, 1932 marked the end of the long‑standing church custom of holding Sunday evening services. Attendance had become sparse, and the last evening service on a very snowy evening was attended by the Pastor, the organist, and one parishioner. The next few years were years of retrenchment. By 1935, the church budget was a fourth less than it had been two years before. Benevolence giving nearly disappeared. Membership declined. Times had changed, and the old pattern of church suppers and socials was gone, leaving in its place a new custom, begun in 1934, of combining a congregational dinner with the annual congregational meeting. However, St. John’s was in too good a position to succumb to the Depression as did so many other churches. As the shock wore off and hope was restored throughout the nation, we became revitalized. The church was no longer closed in August. As communing membership began to rise again toward the two hundred mark, we entered the period of World War II.
Like most other churches during the war, St. John’s was very much concerned with its young people who were leaving to enter the armed forces and with what it could do as a church to assist in our national efforts. Beyond this, Pastor Baum tried to find new ways to meet the spiritual needs of the community. He kept St. John’s actively supporting the Week Day Religious School, of which he had been a cofounder nearly twenty years earlier. St. John’s also participated actively in the Laymen’s Missionary Movement in Dutchess County. 
Unfortunately, a shadow crept across the hearts of those in St. John’s when our beloved Pastor Baum became seriously ill. For nearly ten months, Dr. C. Franklin Koch conducted our services while the pastor was ill. Finally, the day came when Pastor Baum recognized that he would never again be able to keep pace with the demands placed on him by his chosen calling, and he asked to be relieved of his duties so that he might retire. On November 25, 1946, the congregation accepted his resignation. The good pastor stayed voluntarily until June 1947, when our fifth pastor, the Rev. Paul Swank, was called.
To provide a parsonage for Pastor Swank and his family, the house at 9 Innis Avenue was purchased and renovated. St. John’s had never owned a parsonage. If that purchase helped Pastor Swank’s work, it was a wise buy indeed. For while Pastor Swank was here, St. John’s exploded! Communing membership grew from 200 in 1946 to 500 in 1955. Baptized membership rose from 550 to nearly 900. Our church budget soared from $5,700 to over $20,000. Benevolence contributions jumped from just under $2,000 in 1946 to nearly $8,000 in 1955. Of course, much of the increase shown in these statistics was caused by the post war industrial boom. This brought an influx of new middle income families, many of whom were attracted naturally to St. John’s, but a large reason for growth was the evangelistic and outgoing spirit of Pastor Swank.
In the midst of doing new things and setting continually higher goals for our church, the past was not forgotten. When Pastor Baum was honored in 1949 by the synod for his fifty years of service in the ministry, St. John’s did not forget that we had had more than our share of his guidance. With Pastor Swank officiating, a special commemorative meeting was held for Pastor Baum, and he was presented with an inscribed silver tray as an inadequate token of love and respect.
Another example of Pastor Swank’s positive influence was the Flowering Cross at Easter which he conceived in the early 1950″s and which was carried out under the direction of Edna Tompkins, assisted by members of the Altar Guild. Christmas trees were stripped of their branches and bolted together to form a rugged cross which was in the nave beginning on Ash Wednesday for the Lenten Season. On the day before Easter, greens were used on the cross to form the background for twenty dozen carnations and Easter lilies which formed a cross within a cross. When the members of the congregation arrived for the Easter service, they were greeted with a cross that had burst forth with flowers in celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
The next major event in St. John’s history was the celebration of the Golden Jubilee in 1951. The theme was “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” An anniversary historical service was held on September 30th, an anniversary banquet at the Nelson House on October 3rd, a fellowship evening on October 5th, and an anniversary Communion service on October 7th. A commemorative history booklet was published.
Also in 1951, the church was rewired, and radio broadcasts of church services began. A proposed merger with First Lutheran Church was defeated by both congregations. That same year, St. John’s congregation voted to build an entirely new St. John’s on a new and more spacious site. Our vision then was to accomplish the task within five years, but our vision was greater than our fortune or fate. Two years later a suitable site at a suitable price had not been found. Perhaps, as a result of this, our building fund lagged.
Then one evening after a women’s meeting, Dottie Gemmel, chairperson of St. John’s Altar Guild, drove Helen Hansman to her home on Kingston Avenue. Dottie asked Helen who owned the property next to Hansman’s, and Helen told her it was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Wilhelm Sauter. For many years the Altar Guild had purchased flowers from the Sauter Greenhouses on Cedar Avenue. The Sauter property ran from Cedar Avenue to Wilbur Boulevard at the juncture of Kingston Avenue. Dottie telephoned Pastor Swank with this information, and Pastor Swank asked her to arrange a meeting with the Sauters. At this meeting, the Sauters insisted that they would sell only the entire property, which included all the greenhouses. This was more than the church needed and could afford. The following day Mrs. Sauter telephoned Dottie to say that they had reconsidered and would sell the desired property to St. John’s. There were also three small pieces of property on Kingston Avenue which the church needed to have a complete parcel. One was owned by the city and this proved to be no problem as the city was glad to sell it. The two other parcels of land were privately held, and, after negotiation, St. John’s finally had over seven acres of land on the corner of Wilbur Boulevard and Kingston Avenue at a cost of $24,000. In the fall of 1955, Pastor Swank accepted another call, and in September the search for our sixth pastor began. A call was issued to the Rev. William Fuhlbruck of Long Island, who accepted and arrived in April 1956.
St. John’s 1901 – 1923
St. John’s 1923 – 1956
St. John’s 1956 – 1984
St. John’s 1985 – 2000
St. Johns 2001 – Present