Dying Beacon Hill church to be reborn

For 94 years, they've come to pray at the little church on Beacon Hill.

Beacon Avenue United Church of Christ (UCC) started as a Sunday-school tent raised by a group of women in the summer of 1906. Three years later, the tent had turned into a small, wooden building, dedicated to the belief that questioning one's faith isn't heresy, that a church should embrace people from different denominations and that major issues should be resolved through consensus.

At its peak, from the mid-1950s to the mid-'60s, 175 parishioners worshipped at the church, which from 1909 to 1950 was called Olivet Congregational Church.

Today, the number of congregants has dwindled to 30. The members' average age is about 75. There hasn't been a full-time minister in two years. The building's yellow paint is chipping, and the couches outside the sanctuary need to be reupholstered.

The little church on the corner of Beacon Avenue and Graham Street is dying.

But, just as the New Testament promises its believers, there will soon be another life for the church.

The Plymouth Congregational Church, one of Seattle's largest congregations, is helping Beacon Avenue United find a new minister, renovate its building and publicize its services.

The result will be nothing less than a rebirth, say members of the 10-person board that will govern the church.

"It's ending one chapter of its life and beginning another," said Anthony Robinson, the senior minister at the 1,100-member Plymouth.

The first of many expected changes will be a new name: Bethany United Church of Christ, after the place where Jesus resurrected Lazarus from the dead.

Dorothy Bell, who has belonged to the Beacon Avenue UCC since 1952 and who thumbed through a Bible concordance searching for a new name, thought her choice was appropriate. The church, she said. ". . . wasn't in the grave yet, but it was on its way."

Board members, who include representatives from Plymouth, the Beacon Avenue church and the Congregationalists' Northwest Conference, say they hope to place a minister there by August.

Plymouth is also starting a "Plymouth/Bethany Action Group" and some of its members will help renovate Bethany next week.

Financially, board members say the larger church is expected to provide about 50 percent of Bethany's funding for the first five years. This year, it will give about $15,000. Next year, Robinson said he expects his church will give Bethany $45,000, and a similar amount for four years after that.

If by 2011, the Bethany congregation is "well established," the new church will assume all responsibility, Robinson said.

"We're not trying to start Plymouth II," he said. "We really want the congregation there to have its own life and its own responsibility and integrity."

Members of the Beacon Avenue church say they have tried everything over the years to keep the membership up. They asked to borrow members from other congregations; they asked congregants to bring friends; they built a food bank to draw attention.

Nothing worked.

"We were not drawing (members)," said John Cannon, 77, who has been a congregant since 1963.

Beacon Hill has changed dramatically over the years. And there aren't many Congregationalists in the neighborhood anymore, Bell said.

Many of Beacon Hill's black residents, who now make up about 30 percent of the area, go to Baptist churches. Asian Americans, who comprise about 40 percent of the area's population, are predominantly attracted to evangelical congregations, Buddhist temples or other Protestant churches. Meanwhile, church membership in general is down nationwide.

Few new people walk through the church's wooden doors. And if they do, they rarely stay.

"Maybe we look like a bunch of old fogies to them," Bell joked.

By helping build a new church of the same denomination, Plymouth is reviving a similar tradition that has been dormant at the church since the 1920s, Robinson said. According to Robinson, from 1900 to 1920 Plymouth helped found and build 14 churches.

"Plymouth had been instrumental in founding most of the (Congregationalist) congregations of the area," Robinson said.

Now, with the exception of the Seventh Day Adventists, new congregations are usually founded with the aid of churches' central organizations.

Robinson, who has been at Plymouth 10 years, said he became aware last fall that another area Congregationalist church was about to close its doors.

"We said, `Wait a minute. We're not ready to really lose a UCC presence and witness in that part of town,' " he said.

In January 1999, in a sermon, Robinson told his parishoners about the Beacon Avenue church and asked them: "Is there a way to help put our congregation down here?"

"There was a lot of interest, a lot of enthusiasm," he said.

Board members hope Bethany will draw people of all backgrounds, just as Plymouth does, with possibily a minister of color. And they hope the reincarnated Beacon Avenue church will be just as vibrant as in years before.

"We really believe that with the help of God, we can offer a living, breathing community of faith," Robinson said.