..
..
..
..
..
..........history of the grace community
traditional worship | progressive teaching | interfaith community
short version
Our landmark building was constructed in 1914
by North Congregational Church, a flourishing North Berkeley parish
founded in 1892. During the 1980's church membership declined,
and by 1992 North Congregational had reached a critical point
and held its last service in June of that year. Most of the surviving
members of the church began immediately to worship with the Grace
Institute for Religious Learning, who had been guests in the sanctuary
since 1989. In 1995 the combined congregation, along with others
who had joined in the meanwhile, reincorporated as Grace North
Church. In ethos they integrated the best elements in the traditions
of its various members. At the same time they identified themselves
as a renewal of the old North Congregational Church. As such they
were readmitted to the National Association of Christian Congregational
Churches. The Grace Institute still continues as the institutional
arm of our educational outreach to the wider community.
long version
From an account prepared by Laura White, former Moderator
of North Congregational Church and the Rev. Richard Mapplebeckpalmer, founding director and pastor of The Grace Institute for Religious Learning.
The
Grace Institute was originally made up of some one hundred devout
Episcopalians who had separated from their home
parish after what
they perceived as the unjust removal from office of their rector.
In conjunction with its educational activities,
the Institute
began to hold regular Sunday morning services in the August of
1989. Looking for a permanent parish home, the
Institute eventually
was offered hospitality by North Church. On Columbus weekend,
Sunday, October 8, 1989 the
congregation of the Institute celebrated
its first service in our building. This took place at 9.30 a.m.
before the regular 11 a.m.
parish service. That was the beginning
of an increasingly close and happy relationship.
The North Forum, a weekly educational, ecumenical meeting before
the 11 a.m. service began became the primary way in
which North
Church welcomed the members of Grace into its fellowship. The
Institute had distinguished military and academic
members who
provided excellent speakers to the Forum. Since the Institute's
weekly coffee hour in the Babcock room of the
Church Hall was
under way when the North Forum ended in the Library, the Forum
members often stopped by for coffee
before attending their own
service at 11.
Quietly the two congregations overlapped for the next three
years. The church, however, continued to suffer the attrition
of its
elderly members until, at a Parish Meeting in June, 1992,
on the centenary of its covenanting as a Church, it passed a resolution
to dissolve itself as a legal corporation and to deed its building
to the ownership of the National Association of Christian Congregational
Churches, whose offices are in Wisconsin (NACCC).
In the preceding weeks Fr. Richard had visited many of the parishioners to invite them to continue worshipping in their parish church by attending the services of the Grace Institute. Accordingly, at the same time that they announced the last service of North Congregational Church to be held June 28, Royal Thompson, the Moderator, and Laura White, the Vice-Moderator, invited those members who wanted to continue faithful to their parish covenant to attend a combined Congregational and Anglican service at 10 a.m. beginning on the following Sunday, July 5. This hour was a compromise between 9.30 a.m. and 11 a.m.
The following Sunday, the Forum (which had decided to continue even after North Church disincorporated) moved its hour of meeting to 9 a.m. to accommodate those who wished to accept the Institute's invitation. Fr. Richard was the speaker that morning. He pointed out that the essence of the Congregational Way was the centrality of the covenant to the making of a congregation. Legal incorporation with the state was not necessary. So by continuing its worship, the congregation continued faithful to its calling.
So it happened that in the summer of 1992, without joining the Institute in any formal way, 20 or so regular parishioners continued regular Sunday worship with the members of the Grace Institute. It also happened that the current Institute program of summer sermons for the next 3 years was a study of Moses and the long trek from Egypt to the Promised Land. Thus began the informal, ecumenical congregation that from the start began to refer to itself as the Grace Community.
At their monthly Board Meeting on July 20, 1992, the Directors of the Institute unanimously co-opted Royal and Laura as Board Members. Their experience of the parish went back, in Laura's case, as far as 1950; and their fervent friendship cemented us all into one congregation.
From the perspective of the remaining parishioners, their regular church services continued in their old home; albeit in a changed format; at an earlier hour; with a new minister; but above all without a break in the covenant of their church estate. In this way the parish welcomed new blood into their fellowship while, for their part, the Grace Institute members were careful to remind their new fellow worshipers that the church was still theirchurch, and that they, the members of the Grace community, regarded themselves as guests of a parish that had been here for 100 years.
This blending of the North Church folk with the Grace Institute members came about easily and peacefully. After a year or so the parishioners, along with some of the Grace Institute members and others who had subsequently started to worship with the congregation (such as Pat Crossman, Phyllis Schafer and Robert DeVelbiss) expressed a desire to become church members and not just members of an educational institute. Finally, by a vote of the whole community, the parish reincorporated in August 1995, choosing to call itself Grace North Church; so honoring its roots in both the Grace Institute and in the covenant of the parish.
On the Tuesday evening, October 10, 1995, following Columbus Day, at a Parish Meeting in the Sanctuary, the congregation ratified the revision of its bylaws and renewed its 1892 covenant to which it had always remained true:
We are united in striving to know the will of God
and our purpose is to walk in the ways of the Lord,
laboring for the progress of knowledge and justice,
the reign of peace, and universal friendship,
trusting as did our ancestors in the continual guidance
of the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. Amen
another account of the history of the community
from our treasurer, Phyllis Schafer:
Unlike Laura I was not a member of North Church, nor was I one of the founding members of the Grace Institute who had separated themselves from the local Episcopal diocese. Until I found the Institute I had attended church maybe four times in forty years. I started attending the Institute's services in 1991. I came to recognize only much later that what had started to make religion palatable to me again was the congregational (with a small c) nature of the Institute. Each person was responsible for his or her own morality, ethical decisions, and practices no one could dictate the behavior or beliefs of any other; although it was recognized that anyone who came to our services was either a Christian or seeking to find out what being a Christian meant.
I recognized much of the service from my childhood Anglican experience, but much of what I saw was new to me. Rather than abide by a set of externally imposed rules, the congregation met to agree on future paths and policies, thrashing out problems until a consensus had been achieved. No one was turned away from membership or from the communion table. The members strove to be truly ecumenical and to continue to study the roots of religious practice in all its manifestations.
This small-c congregational mindset stood us all in good stead when North Church disincorporated and the two congregations started to worship together and to attract new members. Even before the legal incorporation of Grace North Church, the Grace Community, as it had now come to call itself, observed strictly this principle of seeking consensus. It was on the occasion of one of our quarterly Institute meetings that the Revd. John Mabry dropped in on our morning service; stayed for the meeting, and was so impressed that he has remained with us ever since, eventually becoming the second of our much loved pastors.
The formation of Grace North Church did not come abruptly. The former members of North Church proposed the formation of a renewed Congregational Church many months before the Grace Community as a whole reached a consensus on the matter. Once the idea was out there, the members of the Institute decided they had to know more about Congregationalism. The Revd. Larry Prast, a distinguished scholar of church history, was invited to give a course in the origins of Congregationalism and its subsequent history, particularly in the United States.
About a dozen Grace Institute members attended the course. Larry also presented a capsule version of his course as a quarter-hour "sermon" at a Sunday morning service, leading some of the former North Church members to admit that they now had a much clearer idea of the history of their own tradition.
The final decision to form Grace North Church also had to wait until we had worked out a way to accommodate those who, for various reasons, did not feel comfortable with the idea of joining a formally constituted church. We did not want such members of the Community to feel like second-class citizens, or rejected from the Institute they had come to regard as their spiritual home.
So it was decided to continue the existence of the Institute as the educational arm of the Church. Several of the members of the community chose to retain their connection to the congregation through membership in the Institute alone. Such members have full voting rights in all matters concerning the congregation. To be honest, the sense of community in our group is so strong that I would be hard pressed to name the members who chose this route. Thus the Grace Institute continues, offering courses as well as an occasional evening lecture series.
Once the decision to form the church had been reached, I was appointed Interim Moderator to take care of the masses of official paper work. The task of writing our by-laws was carried on by others, a committee appointed by the community, with the close cooperation of the members of the Institute seminar on philosophy. At the outset it was not even inevitable that our church would end up by being a congregational church in any formal sense. We could have remained a congregational church in fact without making any statement of congregational identity.
But it was soon clear to the revisers of the bylaws that there was only one path to follow. So they took the bylaws of North Church and worked from that basis to form a document that would accurately represent the shape and intention of the church it wanted to be. Sometimes this was a difficult task. Vocabulary had to be studied carefully. We knew that the lay leader of our church would be our moderator, but the words "board of directors" already referred to the administrative body of the Institute (which was going to continue). We opted for the term "trustees" to refer to the board of the parish itself, rather than the Anglican term "vestry," in order to avoid confusion. This kind of compromise went on throughout the formation period.
By August of 1995, the bylaws had been approved; all the necessary documents assembled and filed with the State of California, and a covenant, based on North Church's covenant, drawn up. A group of "founding fathers and mothers" met in the sanctuary in October 1995 to recite the covenant together and to celebrate the resurrection of the church. We formalized our congregational identity by applying for membership in the National Association of Christian Congregational Churches, and were accepted. Our clergy have since attended regularly the annual meetings of the NACCC, and we contribute regularly to their operations.
The church building stands as witness to the continuity of our church, and we all treasure it. All of us have dirtied our hands in caring for the building. Once we were officially members of the NACCC, a contract was drawn up leasing the church buildings to our resurrected parish. After three years of operating under a triple net lease the Executive of the NACCC in 2002 recognized Grace North Church as the true continuation of North Congregational Church and made over to us the title to the building.
On March 25, 2002, we celebrated at our Sunday Service the "Return of the Title," with the NACCC being represented by its Assistant Executive Secretary, the Revd Phil Jackson. In doing so, the National Association remained true to its mission to serve local autonomous churches without 'control'. A denominational association, on the other hand, once in receipt of a parish property, would have sold it to further its own organizational ends.
Congregational polity is not our only heritage from traditional, non-denominational (i.e. pre-United Church of Christ) Congregationalism. We have adopted an openness in our services that recognizes that "when two or three are gathered together in My name....etc." Over the years, many lay members of the congregation have presented sermons at Sunday morning services. Laymen and laywomen have helped with the administration of the Lord's Supper. And when Fathers Richard and John have to be away at the same time, we plan our own services rather than miss our Sunday mornings together. We also welcome members of other faiths, and those with no faith, accepting them as inquirers after spiritual understanding and fully sharing our services with them. Children are welcomed at our services, and we even have a couple of dogs who attend regularly.
Yes, it is true that our senior pastor is an ordained Anglican minister (as was Robert Browne, the founder of our Congregational polity). Our junior pastor's first licence to the ministry was in the Baptist Church, and much of our morning service doesfollow an Anglican pattern. But it is also true that we have drawn our hymns largely from the Congregational hymnal. There have been un-Episcopal modifications in our service, and our polity continues to be strictly congregational.
We are proud to be able to say that in the six years of our loose association (since 1989) and the nine years of our existence as a conjoined church (since 1995), there has never been any internal dispute or schism. Any differences of opinion have been studied until consensus has been reached. Thus we can greet each other with an open heart and complete sense of community, despite the differences in our ages, origins, and backgrounds.