Dear Skinker DeBaliviere Neighbors,
Grace United Methodist Church (the big stone building on the corner of Skinker and Waterman) is a busy place – and not just on Sundays! Along with worship services, Sunday School classes, children’s activities and small group studies, we offer a variety of opportunities for service, activism and education that are open to community members of all religious identities.
In addition to the Grace UMC Food Pantry, which serves around 100 neighbors per week on Tuesday mornings from 9:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m., our building and volunteers provide support for the work of our partner organizations. On Tuesday nights when the temperature drops below 25 degrees, we partner with Winter Outreach to offer a warming shelter with beds, showers and meals. On the third Saturday of each month, Health Protection and Education Services (HPES) provides free health screening services and health education to underserved and uninsured St. Louisans of various races, ethnicities and backgrounds.
We host regular dinners with the Fork in the Road Foundation, which provides employment to immigrant and refugee women as well as meaningful cross-cultural exchange for attendees. After the May 2025 tornado, Grace UMC opened our doors to the Red Cross and served as an emergency shelter for nearly 80 people – an experience that helped us to develop policies and tools that will allow us to activate again if and when future emergencies arise.
Our Missions Team also organizes annual one-off work days with organizations like Sustainable Housing and Equitable Development (SHED), the St. Louis Area Foodbank, LifeWise STL, Sleep in Heavenly Peace and Midwest Mission, all of which are open to community members.
As a multi-ethnic, LGBTQIA+ affirming ministry that embraces all beloved identities, Grace UMC is dedicated to social justice and interfaith collaboration. We have an annual presence at Tower Grove Pride and we frequently bring in speakers from other faith traditions. In April 2026, we partnered with Shaare Emeth to host Professor Rachel Mikva, the Herman E. Schaalman Professor of Jewish Studies from the Chicago Theological Seminary, for a discussion of the intersection between Jewish and Christian relations.
Each week, our Social Justice Team shares information on pressing political and legislative issues and ways to take action through their Lift Every Voice newsletter. This email list is separate from the church’s main list, so if you sign up, you’ll only receive these updates and not our regular Good News newsletter. A registration form and archive of these emails is available at www.graceumc-stl.org/lift-every-voice.
If you’re a music fan, Community Concerts at Grace hosts a range of free concerts in our acoustically excellent sanctuary, including performances from the Ariel Concert Series, the Arianna Chamber Music Festival and the American Guild of Organists. If you prefer something more casual, we also participate in Skinker DeBaliviere’s PorchFest, so stop by this September!
In short, regardless of whether you ever attend a service at Grace, we welcome you as part of our community and invite you to serve, learn and celebrate with us. Thank you for being our neighbor.
With love,
Pastor Katie Nix
