St. Paul's United Methodist Church has been at the downtown location across the street from San Jose State University since 1958, doing ministry on justice. This church stands at the crossroad of homelessness, mental health issues, and violence. For generations, it served to find solutions: advocating for justice and delivering kindness. 

The church suffered a two-alarm arson fire on June 8, 2022 and is working with its insurance to rebuild. In the meantime, we are continuing to serve through our ministries where we can. We ask for donations to go towards the following:

We have started a community vegetable garden on the church grounds to alleviate the shortage of fresh food in the community. We plan to use this fund for six garden beds, soil, seeds, and other supplies.

Our tenant partner, Front Door Communities, also lost all of its service items. The organization continues its service from the outdoor space. This funding will supplement their ability to continue serving the homeless and fragile community in downtown San Jose.

This funding will also allow us to be mobile for worship until we can clean up the asbestos contamination and restore power in the usable 20% of our building.

 Veggie Garden

Thanks to the GoFundMe efforts, we now have 10 beds of a variety of vegetables  and fruits.  They will be ready for harvest starting now until the first week of October.  We welcome folks to come enjoy the ripened harvest or help watering the beds around our campus.  There are also 5 fruit trees planted since the fire that will take about a year. We look forward to future years when fruits will be  available to the downtown food desert.
Food are ready for harvest. Please share.

Fire Recovery Update

Jan. 14, 2023
I am writing this on behalf of St. Paul’s Fire Team. The Fire Team is comprised of David and Karen Lowe, Helen Lund, Pastor Helen and myself, Connie Hunter.
We met with Case Swenson, the builder, last week. It was an interesting meeting during which we talked about our ideas and then heard his proposal. His proposal evolved as we responded to it and he learned more about the condition of the building. He will
provide a proposal to us in writing sometime this coming week,
We also had a meeting with our adjuster. He told us that his engineers and our insurance company’s engineers would meet again at St. Paul’s this coming week. The engineers do not yet agree on whether the sanctuary should be demolished or simply rebuilt.
In the meantime, we have been advised that we will receive one or more checks from the insurance company – partial payment for the loss of contents and building loss.
Should you want to join the ongoing conversation about what to build, please consider joining the Clearness committee that meets via zoom on the 1st Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. We welcome your questions and your ideas.
​Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87934906609?pwd=YUo3WVJoL293czRGdFJCRTdiVWlpQT09

Meeting ID: 879 3490 6609
Passcode: 728851
One tap mobile
+16699006833,,87934906609#,,,,*728851# US (San Jose)

Temporary Worship Location

The most beautiful classroom in Santa Clara County.  Join us at the Chapel of Norte Dame High School.  Parking lot:  
596 South 2nd Street, San Jose, 95112
Once parked, walk out on Reed and turn left on 3rd until you get to the open door need the corner of 3rd and William.