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It's not hard to find good music any night of the week in Brooklyn. What's less common is a packed-out crowd of hip twenty-somethings alternately stomping, clapping, and whistling while the band onstage sings from Malachi 4:2:

But for you who fear my name
The Son of Righteousness will rise
With healing in his wings

And you shall go forth again
Skip about like calves
Coming from their stalls at last …

It's a Thursday night at Southpaw, a cavernous venue in an old dollar-store space, plastered with concert photos and lined by a long bar. And the band onstage is The Welcome Wagon, fronted by Vito and Monique Aiuto, a Presbyterian pastor and his wife.

Whoever said New York is a godless town should probably drop by.

Despite their audience and appearance—Vito is in a tweed suit and brimmed knit cap, and Monique wears a demure pencil skirt and tights with her vintagesque vest—the Aiutos aren't trying to be ironic or cool. They cheerily hand out a Polish poppy seed strudel from the stage as a "welcome wagon" gift. Their church, Resurrection Presbyterian (PCA), which Vito pastors, meets in Williamsburg, the epicenter of postmodern hipsterdom, and their congregation is top-heavy with zeitgeisty artists and musicians.

The Aiutos recently released their first album, Welcome to the Welcome Wagon, on the Asthmatic Kitty label, with album art by Monique. Produced by their longtime friend and indie poster boy, Sufjan Stevens, the music has Stevens' unmistakable fingerprints all over it—so much so that one might be tempted to assume that this is really his music, and that the Aiutos are an alter ego for the musician who has worked hard to distance himself from the Christian mainstream.

But it's just not true; all insist that this is really the Aiutos' music, and what Stevens mostly contributed was orchestration and arrangement—and a theologically perceptive liner-note commentary on the Asthmatic Kitty website.

The Aiutos' met Stevens at a quirky event called "Christ-a-Go-Go," a kind of Christian arts extravaganza that Stevens helped organize. Monique helped curate and Vito made the food. "We didn't even know [Stevens] played music at the time," says Vito.

Sufjan later asked Vito to play in some early iterations of his band. "It was really ridiculous," says Vito, "because I don't know how to play the guitar. I still don't know how to play that well." Still, a friendship was born.

Surrounding the G train stop in Greenpoint, the northernmost neighborhood in Brooklyn, is a community that embodies today's Brooklyn: ethnic areas with deep-set roots; young, middle-class residents, attracted by low rent; boutiques and health food stores nestled between traditional butchers and bakeries. To your left, the East River sparkles in the late-afternoon winter sunshine.

Three days before the Southpaw show, I'd ridden the nine subway stops here to meet with Vito and Monique. They live with their two-year-old, Isaiah, on the third floor of a brownstone; their Polish landlord lives downstairs and sends up traditional baked goods.

Anywhere else in the country, this would be considered a tiny apartment, but by New York standards it's roomy for a young family of three. Through a door I glimpse bookshelves in a tiny office. Isaiah's toy trains sit in a little heap near the couch; he plays hide-and-seek from the kitchen, and loves the giant construction cranes you can see from the window. A table with chairs and a couch and coffee table take up most of the living room. It's a lived-in home, inviting and laid back.

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