Our Story

St. Paul's Collegiate Church at Storrs was launched officially in February 2005. A group of UCONN alumni and students started meeting together in September 2004 for prayer, worship and searching the scriptures at the home of a local family. The results of this time together was the vision for St. Paul's Collegiate Church at Storrs.

God planted the seeds of this vision even earlier. In 1995, Ben Dubow transferred to the University of Connecticut in Storrs as an undergraduate student. One of the first things he noticed in Storrs was a group of high school kids in a campus parking lot. They were fleeing on skateboards from a campus policeman.

God put a burden on Ben's heart that day, a burden to reach disinterested, unchurched local teenagers with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As an undergraduate he worked to start a Young Life ministry in Storrs and after graduation (1998, BA Philosophy) joined the Young Life staff. Eight years later Young Life is still reaching local, disinterested teenagers with the Gospel.

One of the many challenges during his time with Young Life was connecting teenagers and college students with local churches. Many were interested in Christ and the Christian faith but church left them cold so they stayed away. Moreover, Ben found that students who did not actively participate in churches during high school or college failed to continue in their faith journey.

And so Ben was led to start another new ministry: St. Paul's Collegiate Church. This would be a church for post-moderns, 20-somethings, professors and their families, as well as young families in the Storrs-Mansfield area--in other words, Generation X and their children as well as Generation Y.

This would be a church reaching out to a generation spiritually hungry and adrift. This would be a church for those who don't go to church, have never gone to church and have no discernable interest in Christ or the Christian faith. This would be a church where people would be introduced to Christ and nurtured in the faith to full maturity.

Dubow's vision to start St. Paul's Collegiate Church is a continuation of the work he started with Young Life, reaching lost young people with the gospel. "I am more convinced than ever that the local church is truly the hope of the world," lead pastor Dubow said. "Introducing people to Christ is not enough. We must invite people to join this redemptive community where people can find wholeness and healing. We need them to be incorporated into the body of Christ, the church," Dubow adds.

In 2007, as the church continued to grow, St. Paul's announced that they would launch a new site/campus of the church in Manchester, CT, becoming one church in multiple locations.