Historical September–October 2004 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Grace & Peace Fellowship (Presbyterian Church of America), whose first members lived mostly in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood, is celebrating its 35th Anniversary as a church this fall.
Now housed one block east of DeBaliviere at the intersection of Delmar and Clara, the church began in the summer of 1969 with its first worship services in the living room of Ted and Gladys Smith’s home, just blocks west of Skinker on Washington.
In the Constitution they drafted early on, the eager, mostly twenty-something congregants set church goals related to loving and improving their St. Louis City neighborhood as well as sharing and attempting to live out the Christian gospel.
They purposed to live as involved members of the Central West End neighborhoods.
The church’s first physical ‘home’ was the storefront at 6003 Kingsbury, across the street from Four Corners. Brenda Frazier, one of Grace & Peace’s many practicing fine artists and a Skinker-DeBaliviere Neighbor since the early 1970s, remembers, “I designed the planters for the front of our new building.
We got the concrete cracked up [to make space for them] by challenging the men to try to break the sidewalk with a sledgehammer.” From the 1970s to the present, the church has contributed to the community particularly by helping the poor and the children among their neighbors.
In the 1970s and 1980s, a tutoring program for neighborhood children was housed in what is now the yoga center at Pershing and DesPeres.
The Manthano program, also for Youth, included both fun activities and Christian instruction at the church building and helped many children grow up safely. For several years, a church-run Food Coop helped families stretch their cash.
From its current Delmar home, the church provides food to 15-20 households per week, and shelters homeless women in its winter emergency Shelter. Peter Vaughn, an early Grace & Peacer who now lives in an apartment building renovated by other church members many years earlier, remembers: “As graduate students …at 56xx Waterman in the summer of 1969, [my wife] Linda and I were enthused to learn of Grace & Peace Fellowship in the neighborhood.
We left after seven years, but upon our return from France last year, we were so impressed with the changes both at the church and in the neighborhood that we moved back to this community.” Grace & Peace’s founding pastor, the Rev. Egon Middelmann, was one of many church members who made their homes in Skinker-DeBaliviere.
He lived in 60xx McPherson until his death in 1994.
The church’s current pastor, Reverend Kurt Lutjens, rehabbed a burned-out home on McPherson near Des Peres after moving to St. Louis for seminary in the late 1970s.
He returned from Pittsburgh to pastor Grace & Peace in 1995 and has lived with his family in three different homes on McPherson. Reverend Lutjens warmly invites everyone to participate in Anniversary events or visit the church: “After…fourteen years in Skinker-DeBaliviere, it is not hard for me to see Godís great interest in the people of this neighborhood.
We welcome anyone eager to learn with us of his generous kindness to the broken of heart.” The Anniversary Celebration is planned for Sunday, October 24 with the theme ‘Be Thou My Vision.’ The Anniversary Worship Service will be from 10:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m. and will include display of a new worship banner being designed by the Liturgical Arts group of Grace & Peace. Evening events begin at 4 p.m. with an extensive art exhibit entitled ‘Thou Our Vision’ featuring art and fine craft from within the congregation.
From 6-8 p.m. the Grace & Peace choir and other musical artists will present a lively concert.
All events will take place at 5574 Delmar Blvd. and are open to the public. For more information, please call 367- 8959.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September–October 2004.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2004_09.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
