On North Bartlett Avenue in the Village of Shorewood, just north of Milwaukee, a brick Colonial-style church has been greeting neighbors for more than a century. North Shore Presbyterian Church, often shortened to NSPC, grew out of a 1922 mission project of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Milwaukee and has lived on the same block since 1952. In 2015 the congregation adopted a pineapple as its logo - the centuries-old symbol of hospitality - because the people of NSPC want everyone who walks through the door to feel that they have been received as a guest.
A Century on Bartlett Avenue
The first service of the newly organized Shorewood Presbyterian Society was held on June 16, 1923, in a storefront at Atwater (now Capitol Drive) and Stowell Avenue. The old Shorewood jail next to the village hall served as a Sunday school room for a time. In 1924 the young society built a wooden church at Kenmore and Oakland Avenues, and in 1929 it took the name Shorewood Presbyterian Church. By 1951, with membership and church school attendance growing enough to require two Sunday services, the congregation renamed itself North Shore Presbyterian Church to reflect the wider community it served.
A larger brick church in the Colonial style was built at Kenmore and Bartlett Avenues and dedicated on March 16, 1952; the educational wing and chapel were added in 1959. In the summer of 2002, a memorial patio in the same Colonial style was added in front of the building so the congregation could hold its early-morning outdoor worship comfortably. On Sunday, June 12, 2022, the church celebrated its 100th anniversary with a special worship service and afternoon festivities, and on the actual anniversary date of June 16 a 100-minute service of music, scripture, and memories was held.
Sunday Worship and the Pineapple of Hospitality
Worship is the heartbeat of NSPC. During the school year the congregation gathers in the sanctuary at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings. From June through Labor Day the schedule shifts to Gather at the Garden, a briefer 9:00 a.m. service held outdoors on the memorial patio. An online option on YouTube runs throughout the year so that members who are traveling, homebound, or otherwise unable to attend in person can still take part.
Communion is celebrated on the first Sunday of each month at an open table - anyone who trusts and follows Jesus is welcome to receive, and children are invited to join the congregation at the table. Baptism, including infant baptism, takes place during Sunday morning worship so that the entire community of faith can witness the commitment to help raise the child in the Christian tradition. Weddings and funerals are also prepared for and held through the life of the church, with marriage preparation designed to build a strong relationship rather than focus only on the ceremony.
The congregation's stated calling is to be a Covenant Family that embraces hope, transforms relationships, nurtures faith in Christ, and commits to service in Christ's name. Their mission page anchors this in four commitments: to worship the living God, to welcome and care for friends and strangers in Christian love, to promote growth in faith through educating themselves and others, and to share in ministry with others to advocate peace, justice, and the alleviation of suffering in the world. The guiding text that appears at the top of the church's pages is the prophet Micah's call: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
Nurturing Children, Youth, and Adults
Christian formation happens across every age at NSPC. The youngest children, ages two through five, gather in the Godly Play room on the second floor, where teachers supervise play and read stories. Children in first through fifth grade attend Sunday School, exploring Bible stories each month through art, service projects, and music; on the first Sunday of the month they sing in worship and then head to the library for story time. Each child is paired with a deacon buddy who walks alongside them through the year, and the children present a Christmas Pageant the Sunday before Christmas Eve and a Palm Sunday Pageant each spring.
Confirmation is offered jointly with other congregations of the Milwaukee Presbytery for youth in sixth through ninth grade. The class meets once a month for study and a shared meal, rotating among the participating churches so that youth get to know other pastors and ministries. Confirmation students take on leadership roles during Sunday worship, complete service projects, and in their second year design a mission-immersion project around a social justice topic, which they present to the congregation before being confirmed into the mission of the church.
Adults gather on Wednesday mornings at 10:30 for weekly Bible study, working through traditional Biblical texts alongside topics in church history and theology. During Advent and Lent the group uses devotionals and artwork from A Sanctified Art, and the study meets every other week through the summer months. The Congregational Life Committee plans social events such as the recurring Ladies Who Lunch gathering and prepares the worship spaces for each liturgical season, as well as hosting the long-running Interfaith Thanksgiving Service.
Compassion Camp and the Kindness World Explorers
Two programs make NSPC a hub for children from across the wider community during the week. Kindness World Explorers is an after-school program held on Wednesdays when school is in session, running from the end of the school day until 4:30 p.m. Geared to elementary students, it costs $20 a month and includes a snack. Each week the children explore acts of kindness and learn about different cultures and their spiritual practices through art projects and videos - honoring Dia de los Muertos during Latin American History month with memory boxes, or making quilt designs and playing Black History bingo during Black History Month.
In the summer, the church runs Compassion Camp, a day camp for children entering 4K through fifth grade. Led by Pastor Jeannine alongside education students from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and trained middle and high school counselors called Compassion Ambassadors, the camp focuses on kindness, community, and hands-on service. Daily guest speakers - the Compassion Heroes - share real-life stories of service to animals, nature, the arts, and more, and during the camp the children build and run their own Compassionhood, a mini community with features such as a food pantry, bookstore, or compost system. Optional Friday field trips for second graders and up add outings such as park days, beach trips, and community clean-ups. The camp is intentionally open to children of all (or no) faith backgrounds.
The Shared Kitchen and Food for the Journey
Food ministry has long been part of the church's identity, and a current capital project is taking it to a new scale. The Shared Kitchen is an upgrade of the church's existing kitchen into a commercial-grade space that will be rented out to local food entrepreneurs, used for after-school programs and intergenerational cooking classes, and host community meals and outreach events. Church leaders describe it as extending the communion table into the neighborhood, embodying the spirit of the loaves-and-fishes story by sharing the building's resources for the good of the wider community. The kitchen is being developed in partnership with local baker Jobea Murray, who manages what is called the Gather and Grow Kitchen and connects food entrepreneurs to NSPC.
Outside the building, NSPC participates in Food for the Journey, a collaborative of churches in Southeast Wisconsin that started in response to the Presbytery of Milwaukee becoming a Matthew 25 Presbytery. NSPC maintains six raised beds on its property, and all of the harvest is donated to the food pantry at Apostle Presbyterian Church to help reach neighborhoods identified as food deserts.
Being a Good Neighbor
The church's Neighboring Initiative, inspired by Fred Rogers's reminder to treat every neighbor as we would hope to be treated, organizes several annual events for the wider Shorewood community. Each year NSPC hosts an Easter Egg Hunt on the Saturday before Easter, with crafts, stories, and the egg hunt itself for kids of all ages. The Annual Block Party, typically held on the Saturday before the public school year begins, closes off the street and brings in a food truck, an ice cream truck, games, and a giant bounce house. The Shorewood Spring Clean Out, inspired by the freecycle movement and partnered with Shorewood Buy Nothing, turns the church into a community garage sale where everything is free - neighbors donate items from a published list and then come back to shop until the donations are gone.
Each summer the Good Neighbor Exchange turns the church into a free store for the community. Over three days, neighbors drop off gently used kitchenware, home goods, books, toys, art supplies, and small furniture on Thursday and Friday, then return on Saturday to take whatever they need. Clothing, shoes, large electronics, large furniture, and several other categories are deliberately excluded, and the event is a partnership with Catch the Wave Shorewood and the Shorewood Waters Project.
Music Across Generations
Music is woven through worship and into children's lives at NSPC. Sean DeBoth, the Director of Music since 2004, leads the chancel choir and also serves as a vocal and general music instructor and musical director at Lake Denoon Middle School; he holds a bachelor's degree from Carroll College and a master's in music education from UW-Milwaukee. Jeff Peterson, an accomplished organist and professor emeritus at UW-Milwaukee, has served churches in Madison and Milwaukee for more than 44 years. Becky Schupmann, the Children's Music Director, leads a children's choir that sings in worship at least once a month and presents an annual Christmas Pageant each December. Pastor Jeannine, who holds degrees from Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music, also brings a deep love of worship and music to her ministry.
Mission and Community Partners
NSPC's mission work is carried out in partnership with several organizations across the Milwaukee area. The church has hosted an Interfaith Thanksgiving worship with Congregation Shalom for more than 70 years, and the congregations' youth are now collaborating on shared service projects. Each December NSPC prepares and hosts a Christmas dinner for the guests and staff of Pathfinders, an organization that supports youth experiencing homelessness. The church also supports Divine Intervention, a winter overnight shelter hosted by Tippecanoe Presbyterian that provides a safe haven for twenty guests every evening from December 1 through March 31. Since the fall of 2025, Milwaukee Youth Theatre - a company that produces theater by and for children - has been preparing and performing its shows in the NSPC building.
In the broader civic life of the North Shore, NSPC is a member of the North Shore Chamber of Commerce, the Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce, and the Shorewood Business Improvement District, and partners with Kids Impact Community, an organization that empowers children to serve alongside their caregivers throughout the Milwaukee area. Leanne Hoeg keeps the office running, and weekday office hours run Monday through Thursday from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. - a fitting rhythm for a congregation whose pineapple stands for welcome and whose neighbors have known its doors for a hundred years.