Community UCC marking 150 years of service to the community

Adapted from the article by Lynda Zimmer in The News Gazette Friday October 31 2003

Community United Church of Christ, 805 South Sixth Street in Champaign began marking 150 years of service to the community on Sunday November 2 with an anniversary service in the morning and a old-fashioned potluck dinner in the evening.

Community UCC encompasses a lot of local history

Today's church is the result of a merger in the late 1960s of three congregations: First Congregational Church of Champaign and First UCC and St. Andrew's UCC, both of Urbana.

During the early 1850s, Urbana had a little more than 75 buildings grouped around a courthouse. Methodists and Baptists already were established, and Presbyterians were getting organized. A congregational missionary named W. W. Blandchard from New England and John F. Rankin of Ripley Ohio, are recognized by historians as area congregational fathers. They and 6 other people met on Nov. 1, 1853, at the Urbana home of Moses P. Snelling. The organization was more of a society opposed to slavery than a true church. When A. O. Howell of Ohio and Marcus A. Barnes of New York joined the group the following year, their beliefs influenced the others. Labels attached to the congregants for 30 years included abolitionisits (opposed to slavery), prohibitionists (opposed to liquor) and anti-Mason (opposed to all secret societies). Their articles of faith were adopted in November 1854. Church meetings were held at the Courthouse.

The Goose Pond Church

When the new train depot was built 2 miles west of the village, the Congregationalists and others followed to "the depot neighborhood" which was to become downtown Champaign. The Illinois Central Railwahy drained and filled in a pond used by geese, then donated the land to the church. The structure built in 1855 was affectionately called the Goose Pond Church. The site was on the northwest corner of First Street and University Avenue, where the Champaign Police Department now stands.

Goose Pond Church is shown in the upper left of a painting by Lisle Wiseman-Casper entitle West Urbana IL - 1858. Continuing clockwise from the church are the Doane House, Cattle Bank and West Urbana's first schoolhouse.

Rough planks formed the pews and a large dry goods box served as the pulpit in the $1,000 structure. Nevertheless, area Baptists and Methodists without buildings were eager to use the building. The church also became a center for literary clubs, the temperance society, school meetings and political conventions. Church records show that Abraham Lincoln, an attorney made his speech in support of the first Republican candidate for U.S. President, John C., Fremont, at the Goose Pond Church on June 17, 1856. "While Lincoln was coming into notice as a circuit lawyer and an Illinois politician .. he ofen spoke in the Goose Pond Church," according to "A standard History of Champaign County, Illinois" by J. R. Stewart.

After the Civil War, the Goose Pond building felt too small. The congregation sold the structure in 1866. It was moved to a different location and becamse St. John's German Catholic Church. The congregationalists built a new church on Park street, west of Neil Street. In september 1866, when it was dedicated, it was the largest church in the city. By 1867, the church had 138 members. In the 1870s, some members decided church rules were too rigid, but the views never carried the required two-thirds vote of the membership until 1888. The Rev. William Gifford Pierce, who was pastor of the church from 1872 to 1887 before the change in the rules, "gave his church a definite trend in the direction of a more liberal faith and policy," according to a 75-year church history compiled in 1928.

But Pierce also had to deal with an 1873 fire that destroyed the Park street sanctuary. The rebuilding took place in the southeast corner of State and Church streets, where Robeson Hall now stands. The site remained the church home for 44 years. When the congregation sought to extend its faith into north Champaign in 1903, it started a Sunday school known as the Sunshine school, which grew into an organization known as the Plymouth Branch. The branch at Fifth and Grove streets was another Congregational church for 12 years, but then became independent from the denomination.

The move to U. Illinois campus

In the early 1900s, the congregation also maintained dormitories for men and women students at the University of Illinois. By 1908, the UI student and faculty membership in the home church had grown so much that members talked of building another branch church closer to campus. Without enough money for the second building, the whole congregation voted to sell the downtown Champaign church and move to campus.

During construction at Sixth and Daniel streets, the congregation met in the Rialto Theater and Morrow Hall at the UI. Moving to campus brought Sunday attendance up to 400 to 500 people in the early 1920s. The church has always had close ties wiht the UI. The pastor of the original church in 1860 helped build the seminary that later became the original building for Illinois Industrial University; that school became the UI in 1885. So many UI professors were Congregationalists that by 1953, more than half of the UI buildings named for men carried the names of church members: Adams, Noyes, Talbot, Babcock, Davenport, Hopkins, Taft, and Townsend. In 1980, it was W. A. Noyes, professor of chemistry, and Eugene Davenport, Dean of the College of Agriculture, who led the movement to build the current church near the university. The yellow brick building at 805 S. Sixth St., Champaign was completed in 1919.

The merger into the Cooperative Ministry

The church's 1960s merger with two other churches resulted in a name change to the Cooperative Ministry. Members adopted the CUCC name in 1969.

The two other churches that joined in the merger were:

• First United Church of Christ

First United, which started in 1865 as a Christian church with 14 members, changed to First Congregational Christian in 1932 and then changed its name again, in 1957, to First United Church of Christ.

Located in the 400 block of West Main Street in Urbana, the first building lasted from 1889 to 1910 and then was replaced by another.

This church is now the Canaan Missionary Baptist Church.

• St. Andrew's United Church of Christ

St. Andrew's United Church of Christ started in 1959 as a mission church in southeast Urbana.

Members met in this house at Mumford Drive and Anderson Street.

The building is now used by the Disciples of Christ Community Church.

More recent history

More recent history of Community United Church of Christ includes:

• Welcoming refugee families in the 1970s and 1980s.
• Hosting the first Martin Luther King Community Celebration in 1984.
• Adding a major addition to the church in 1987.
• Adopting an "open and affirming" resolution in 1995.
• Dedicating a Habitat for Humanity House named for Frieda Wascher in 2000.

Church library holds copies of Good book

Rev. Mike Mulberry leads church into 151st year