Groton — In 1961, Jim Schneider was a desperate pastor looking for an equally desperate congregation when he moved from St. Louis, Mo., to New London.

A relative assured him "surely God would not leave him there" for more than two and a half years. He had only 19 people to minister to in a YMCA.

Now, 54 years later, Schneider looks back on what became Pleasant Valley Community of Prayer and Praise and its ministries that reach across the region, and said it's hard to step away.

"I'm not sure I've coped with it yet," Schneider, 79, said. 

The former pastor who retired this summer and his wife, Louise, have put their Groton house on the market and are moving to Vermont.

The church, formerly Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, started Malta, a nonprofit organization that seeks out the homeless in Groton, New London and Norwich. 

Malta delivers food, blankets and clothing three times a week and owns a four-unit apartment building in Groton, which houses up to a dozen single men looking to get back on their feet.

"Many area churches are now involved in this, and I'm amazed, because I didn't really have anything to do with it," Schneider said. "It's just something God has done."

The Community of Hope, a ministry that grew from Malta, also bought the house at 120 Walker Hill Road, and turned it into apartments for women struggling with homelessness and addiction.

Pleasant Valley opened the Care and Share soup kitchen, which started in February 1990, and now serves 14,000 meals a year.

Volunteers from Westerly, R.I., to East Lyme staff it. Church members also started an outreach program to serve those recovering from addiction at Stonington Institute.

The church community started other churches. At least four congregations — Gallup Hill Baptist Church in Ledyard, Norwich Worship Center, Oakdale Baptist Church and Harvest Christian Fellowship in Niantic — and others sprang from Pleasant Valley.

Sixty parishioners from Pleasant Valley have gone into church-related ministry in 21 states.

It's now reaching across cultures. Pleasant Valley En Espanol holds services in Spanish at 2 p.m. on Sundays in the church on Grove Avenue. 

"Helping people, that's been characteristic of this church," Schneider said. "And it goes without saying this isn't something one man is going to get done." 

When he started in the days of segregation, Schneider wanted an integrated church.

"They used to say, jokingly, that the most segregated place on Sunday morning was a Southern Baptist Church," he said. He watched it at his own church in Missouri.

In 15 years, he saw only one black man enter the church, and he sat in the coal room to keep the furnace going and keep the white people warm, Schneider recalled.

Over time, the community changed around the church, but the church did not. And it died, he said.

So he wanted to reach across races, but also across classes and to groups in need.

In Pleasant Valley's early days, it started a ministry on Bank Street called "The Whale's Belly," a coffeehouse that offered free food and Christianity to alcoholics, addicts, prostitutes and street youth.

The storefront had black lights, florescent posters and tables made from barrels donated by Pfizer Inc.

Within months, the small church had outgrown its space in the New London YMCA. 

After searching, Schneider asked to use a space in Pleasant Valley Elementary School in Groton.

But the district said no, it didn't do that kind of thing, he said. Then he learned that a Presbyterian chaplain had been allowed to rent space in William Seely School, he said.

He wrote back to the public schools, "I see you've changed your mind." 

After renting at the school, the church bought a 2.5-acre parcel with apple trees and ledges on Grove Avenue and built the first church in March 1965. 

It started a second building in 1978 and a third in 1985. Through the years, Schneider estimates Pleasant Valley has had 6,000 parishioners.

In 2012, the church caught fire. It was contained to Schneider's office, but he lost 5,000 sermons, a collection of stuffed moose friends had given him and all of his office furniture.

"Pretty much my past went up in flames," he said. "It was almost like God was saying, 'This part of your life is over.'"

Schneider was getting older, his son had a church in Vermont, and he wanted to be near his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

He also realized the church he started would keep changing.

"I think, more than anything, this church from where we were to where we are, has gone through some drastic changes. And I was thinking, that would not stop. And I was sensing that I was still clinging to the old way of doing things and that's a real hindrance. And as you would imagine, God brought in a man who was an associate pastor," Schneider said.

And he knew it was time to leave.

On the day of Jim and Louise Schneider's last Sunday service, their son traveled with his entire church from Vermont to welcome them to their new church community.

Jim Schneider will work some and give sermons there, and Louise Schneider will offer counseling as she did for decades at Pleasant Valley.

"It was so moving," she said of the visit by her son's church. "And you know, it helped so much."

Jim Schneider has a favorite scripture: It's about overcoming obstacles, but not only overcoming them, finding overwhelming victory.

"We are more than conquerors through him that loved us." -Romans 8:37

d.straszheim@theday.com

Twitter: @DStraszheim