Before 1873, children in what is now the community of Lyndhurst had to walk to Rutherford to go to Sunday School, as there was no church in the area. That year, a group of young women started a Sunday School in a home on Meadow Road. Three years later, the Lackawanna Railroad gave them permission to hold classes in the upper room of the old Kingsland railroad station. They also held occasional worship services there whenever a preacher was available.

In 1890, Drew Theological School began sending student ministers to provide weekly worship on Sunday mornings. The first of these pastors was the Rev. W. M. Hughes. Within a year, he had organized the Kingsland Methodist Episcopal Church, and the congregation had built a small wooden sanctuary on the corner of Ridge Road and New Jersey Avenue.

Over the next twenty-three years, the congregation grew, and two women’s organizations were formed, the Ladies’ Aid and the Willing Workers. They raised money for the church by holding fairs and suppers in the firehouse on Stuyvesant Avenue. They also made gallons of clam chowder, which they sold to workers at the Kingsland railroad shops.