Died February 6, 1998
 

               NEW YORK -- The Rev. John Garcia Gensel, who forged a remarkable relationship with New
               York's jazz musicians and their families as pastor and head of the "jazz ministry" at St. Peter's
          Lutheran Church in midtown, died Feb. 6. He was 80.

          He was recuperating from a fall that occurred Dec. 19 and died at the Muncy Valley Nursing Home
          in Muncy, Pa., said Dale Lind, the Pastor to the Jazz Community at St. Peter's.

          For nearly three decades, Gensel carried out his singular calling at St. Peter's, which since 1977 has
          been in the Citicorp building at Lexington Avenue and 54th Street. He conducted a 5 p.m. night jazz
          vespers there each Sunday, officiated at weddings, funerals and memorial services of jazz musicians
          and their families, baptized their children, counseled them through crises and visited them when they
          were ill.

          "He has been our spiritual guru, our psychiatrist and the greatest booster of American music," the
          drummer Max Roach has said.

          Born Juan Garcia Velez in Puerto Rico, Gensel was sent by his parents to live with his aunt in the
          wooded hills of Catawissa, Pa. He adopted his aunt's name, Gensel, and although baptized Roman
          Catholic, he began attending the local Lutheran church. He graduated from Susquehanna University
          in 1940 and later attended Gettysburg Seminary; during his second year at seminary, Gensel interned
          at Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, where he met his wife, Audrey. He was a chaplain
          in World War II and served two Ohio congregations.

          Gensel came to New York City's Advent Lutheran Church in 1956. He took a jazz history course at
          the New School for Social Research taught by the writer Marshall Stearns and began frequenting
          Greenwich Village and Harlem nightclubs. He made friends quickly; as word got around about the
          hip minister, more and more musicians would come to him with personal and spiritual problems. The
          Lutheran Board of American Missions let Gensel devote half his time ministering to the jazz
          community and the other half attending to church duties.

          It wasn't enough; increasingly, Gensel found himself attending to his parishioners between sets at jazz
          clubs. At one point, after going out to hear Charles Mingus 14 nights in a row, he decided that the
          battle between Saturday night and Sunday morning was spreading him too thin. In 1965 he sought
          and received special designation as Pastor to the Jazz Community in New York City.

          Along the way, he developed theories about the connection between jazz and religious love that went
          beyond his own musical predilections. "I think jazz is probably the best music for worship," he once
          said, "because it speaks to the existential situation of a human being. It is the personal expression of
          the person playing it."

          He announced his retirement from the pulpit on New Year's Eve 1993, and returned to his childhood
          hometown of Catawissa; he was named Pastor Emeritus of Saint Peter's.

          In addition to his wife of 55 years, he is survived by his daughter, Carol of Tel Aviv; his two sons,
          John of New Vineyard, Maine, and James, of Palisades Park, N.Y., and nine grandchildren.

          Duke Ellington was a close friend and confidant; in 1968, he dedicated a piece to Gensel, "The
          Shepherd (Who Watches Over the Night Flock)," part of his "Second Sacred Concert."

          Billy Strayhorn, the composer and arranger, willed to Gensel a Steinway piano, which he kept near
          his pulpit. Gensel's funeral and memorial services have become the proper mode of respect toward
          jazz royalty in New York; he officiated services for Ellington, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane,
          Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Erroll Garner, among many others. The services
          were (and continue to be) unique events of spirited performances, reminiscence and spontaneous jam
          sessions.

          In 1970, Gensel began a popular annual marathon concert called All-Nite Soul, 12 hours of jazz big
          bands, solos, quintets and gospel choirs.

          Once asked if he was worried about jazz attracting a wayward, nightclub element to his services,
          Gensel replied, "That's the kind we want in church. The good ones can stay home. A church is a
          congregation of sinners, not an assembly of saints."
 

                     Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company