Grace Place EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF CHICAGO A Home for Your Spirit in Chicago s South Loop gracechicago.org
The Glory of God is a Human Being Fully Alive
Who Is Grace Episcopal Church? Grace is an urban Chicago congregation that emphasizes community, learning, and service. Our membership is diverse; all are welcome regardless of race, background, economics, or sexual orientation. It is a community where we aim to engage both the heart and mind. We pride ourselves on offering a religious space where it is safe to be curious. Where people can wrestle, define, and redefine what it means to live out one s faith in a changing world. This inclusive environment translates to an accessible liturgy. We are intellectually curious, theologically open-minded, and committed to social justice. Grace has a 166-year history in which we ve demonstrated openness to new ideas, innovative responses to circumstances, and an authentic commitment to service. We are a small but mighty congregation of about 100, with an average Sunday attendance of 60. We offer our time, diverse talents, and financial resources to support the broad range of ministries that take place within and outside our walls. As we prayerfully move forward during this search, we believe that God can and will do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine in the next phase of this historic congregation and in the lives of its members.
Creating Community Through Worship As members of Grace, we are grounded in our faith. We listen to Scripture, personalize its role in our lives, and seek to engage and apply its lessons in the world. Liturgy is at the heart of our community. We use the ritual of Sunday service as an oasis in a complex world. At Grace we slow down, quiet ourselves, and reconnect to the Good News in Christian tradition. We like to experiment with liturgy as a way of gaining different perspectives, experience, and new learning. The core liturgy is the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), Rite II. We extend and change aspects of the liturgy to explore societal issues (e.g. gendered language), delve into more contemplative prayer spaces, and embrace sermons offered by trained laity. We also have explored other BCP Rites and other Anglican practices (e.g., New Zealand BCP). Grace attracts people from different Christian denominations and other faith traditions as well as cradle Episcopalians. We engage college students in the surrounding South Loop area, families with young children, as well as single and partnered adults of all ages and backgrounds. We are a fluid and relaxed congregation. We warmly welcome visitors and new members and actively create strong bonds among them. We also are a transient congregation that successfully launches our members on new spiritual journeys when work or other obligations prompt their departure. Many who live in different Chicago communities and even in other cities and countries consider Grace their South Loop church home whenever they re able to worship with us. Grace continues its rich history of service in the Chicago community. Whether responding to the needs of Civil War soldiers in the mid- 1800s, offering weekday worship opportunities for downtown business people, or offering holy hospitality to our precariously housed neighbors each Saturday through our Community Breakfast, Grace has always stepped up to meet the spiritual and physical needs of those around us. We have a clear sense of mission and we come together to fuel it. Our ministries are lay-led. Leaders within the congregation take ownership and responsibility for these ministries, while engaging other Grace members to manage and participate in them as the Spirit leads.
Our Worship, Parish Life, Formation Ministries n Sunday services begin with an 8 am Contemplative Eucharist that is followed by a 10 am Eucharist with music. n Our 10 am worship service is followed by coffee hour. We then host adult formation discussions led by the rector, members, or guests of Grace on thought-provoking, faith-encouraging topics. Recent topics include a series celebrating the saints as exemplars and companions, using the arts as instruments of faith, and a four-part course on the essentials of Episcopal identity and practice. n Children are invited to Grace s Sunday experience crafted for them: Godly Play. This experiential, sensorial, and quiet Christian teaching method is designed to awaken in each child the sense of wonder, awe and natural spirituality inherent in all human beings. The process of this awakening is deeply rooted in Christ, the Church, the Scriptures, and Communion. Godly Play is taught by trained volunteers and helpers in a private room created solely for this purpose. It meets during the school year from 9:30 am until 10:50 am. The children join the wider community in the sanctuary for Communion. n Each Wednesday evening a small, dedicated community offers Centering Prayer. n Two key ministries include providing food and spiritual sustenance to people in need: The Night Ministry and the Community Breakfast. n The Night Ministry has responded to the needs of people in Chicago s neighborhoods without judgment. Participants from Grace assist neighbors in Back of the Yards neighborhood by serving 150 sandwiches and cups of soup on the second Thursday of each month. n For 51 Saturdays each year the Chicago Temple/The First United Methodist Church sponsors a Community Breakfast in Grace Place for 200 souls from 8:30 10:30 am. This heroic ministry relies on the commitments of scores of volunteers from The Temple, Grace, the neighborhood as well as surrounding colleges and universities. n We have established lay-led groups that explore faith as women and men. The Women s Group meets monthly in member s homes with discussion topics generated by the group. The Men s Group meets 3 4 times a year in the parish hall for fellowship and lively discussion. n Graceful Gatherings is a monthly dining group where members take turns hosting each other for an evening of food and conversation.
Our Building Grace Place, our home for more than 30 years, consists of both the church and its community center. We are located at 637 S. Dearborn, in the heart of the South Loop neighborhood. Our non-traditional worship space is an architectural award-winning, second floor loft-sanctuary. The remainder of our 3-story building functions as a community center. We host neighborhood groups, civic elections, and non-profit organizations and meetings on a regular basis. Grace Place hosts the following church congregations and organizations: n American Friends Service Committee n Chicago Onnuri Community Church n Holy Trinity Lutheran Church n South Loop Episcopal-Lutheran Campus Ministry (which we launched) Our Finances The annual operation budget is more than $330,000. Our revenue comes equally from members, named trusts, and our Grace Place tenants. Given our size, Grace members are generous givers. Our Staff Grace employs a full-time sexton (40 hours/ week), a part-time sexton (20 hours/week), a part-time Parish Administrator (15 hours/week), a bookkeeper and a music coordinator.
Moving Forward with New Leadership The next rector of Grace will need to bring lived experience, a strong academic background, excellent communication/relationship skills and bold intellectual curiosity. n n n n n S/he must have a rich prayer life and spiritual depth. /he must be a creative liturgist committed to leading S worship and the Eucharist from different perspectives and incorporating music as a critical element of worship. /he must be a strong preacher with the ability to offer S an interpretation of the Gospel that rings true within today s ever-changing world, while drawing on personal experience and fostering new ways of thinking. We like sermons that challenge thinking, articulate spiritual concepts and encourage contemplation. /he must have strong pastoral skills with the ability S to create deep, interpersonal engagement, establish personal bonds with members and provide counsel when they encounter difficulties and challenges. he next rector will be the face of Grace and Grace T Place to our staff and tenants, therefore strong personnel leadership and business management skills are required.
Our Challenges Characteristics that make Grace unique also are potential barriers to our success. n As we transition from a long-time rector to a new permanent spiritual leader, some members have expressed, through surveys and small-group discussions, that Grace has become too complacent. We are highly adaptable and open to a new vision. n That vision should include prayerful consideration of member and financial growth; stewardship for children s and adult formation; enhanced liturgy with a strong music ministry; a review of our current ministries; maintenance of a strong and visible presence in the South Loop neighborhood as well as within the Diocese. n Historically, members seem of two minds about growth. For many years, Grace has maintained a small core membership of less than 100. Although we are a welcoming congregation open to visitors and new members members do not directly evangelize about Grace. Grace is a community where new people are welcomed but not overwhelmed. While our sanctuary has a capacity of 200, the members are uncertain that we can maintain our trademark interpersonal intimacy and growth simultaneously. n Members live both in the neighborhood and travel a considerable distance to attend Grace. Some members live at such distance that makes regular Sunday attendance a challenge. Their attendance is a testament to the community of Grace. We believe there is an opportunity to grow the membership through neighborhood outreach as well as through web and social media. n Among the challenges facing an urban church include a transitory membership and busy, dynamic members. Historically attendance at Grace has fluctuated due to the porous nature of serving a dynamic urban population. Grace may not be the center of members lives from a geographic, financial, or service perspective. Sunday may be a day of doing business for our timestrapped members. It can be difficult to establish a critical mass of members for church activities on any other day. n Planned and unplanned building costs are a financial challenge for Grace and Grace Place. Additionally we have an outstanding, non-interest bearing loan balance that paid for the renovation of our 3rd floor. The building is a substantial investment that we steward. Growing our three revenue sources is a critical element of that stewardship.
n Grace has a small number of younger children who use the Godly Play framework to build a strong Christian foundation in a way that engages their curiosity. While a small core group of members are actively engaged in this experiential ministry, we lack a congregational commitment to ensure its long-term success. n There is a desire for more Bible study-based curriculum, especially during our post-worship adult formation sessions. n Our Music ministry is an ongoing challenge. While we have been blessed with talented and dedicated Ministers of Music, we have struggled to field and sustain a choir. All research in the search process reinforces the importance of music to our liturgical and congregational life. We have a strong appreciation for music cultural arts, but members are not confident singers. n Lacking the steeple, stained glass windows, and other physical markings of a church, the exterior of Grace doesn t look like a traditional church. We are located in a former printing plant next door to a popular neighborhood tavern. Increased visibility as a church will be important in the future. We are more often thought of as our community center than as a place of worship. n Grace is an active participant in the Diocese and has had relationships with interfaith and social justice organizations. These relationships have resulted in the creation of ministries such as the Community Breakfast and the South Loop Campus ministry. For decades, we have hosted Makom Shalom, a Jewish Renewal congregation, for the High Holiday services. n The beauty of lay-led ministries is the shared responsibility. Our size both limits the number of ministries and to some extent, the amount of congregational engagement in those ministries. Limited human resources have led to burnout. We are open to evaluating the number and type of ministries we will support.
A Look Back as We Look Ahead Grace was established in 1851 by members of Trinity Church. Our congregation represents the second oldest church in Chicago, and is now housed at its sixth location in the South Loop neighborhood. The first Grace Church was located at the corner of Dearborn and Madison Streets. In Grace Church s second location the Golden Era of Grace began in 1859. This period of social, theological and civic excellence lasted until 1915, when a fire destroyed both the church and chapel of the third Grace Church. In 1966, the fifth Grace Church location was dedicated to serve the city s businesspeople, and began an era of ministry to the Loop community. The present-day Grace and Grace Place community center opened at its current location in December 1985. Thanks to plans designed by the architectural firm of Booth Hansen, the building was converted into a unique, award-winning loft-sanctuary, with the large open street-level hall used for church and community activities. The fourth Grace Church location was formally consecrated in 1929. Its work was dedicated to the benefit of St. Luke s Hospital (which lives on today as part of the Rush University Medical Center on the city s Near West Side). A considerable number of businessmen and women in Chicago s Loop district were involved in both Grace and the work of the hospital. Grace choir circa 1886
Our Diocese The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago is led by Bishop Jeffrey Lee and has 123 member congregations, spreading from Lake Michigan on the east, to the Wisconsin border on the north and the Iowa border on the west. It is located at 65 E. Huron Street, just east of St. James Cathedral and near the Magnificent Mile of shopping establishments on Michigan Avenue. The Diocese is known for its leadership initiatives designed to support congregational vitality. To this end, the Diocese focuses its energies on four key programs: the College for Congregational Development, Fierce Conversations, Project Resource, and Living Compass. The Nicholas Center, located on the fifth floor of the Diocese s office building, provides classroom space and accommodations for these programs as well as other leadership events. As we prayerfully move forward during this search, we believe that God can and will do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine in the next phase of this historic congregation and in the lives of its members.
Grace Place EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF CHICAGO 637 S Dearborn St, Chicago, IL 60605 (312) 922-1426 gracechicago.org