Historic Church Serves Big City

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church Provides Sanctuary in the City

Phyllis Kester

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781725260290
  9781725260276
• eBook ISBN:
  9781725260283
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Historic Church Serves Big City explores what a small congregation can do with the blend of developmental leadership and societal needs within their own backyard. Each chapter traces specific historical needs in Denver that were addressed with educational or healthcare solutions. The book also reveals the interweaving of the church's internal spiritual nurturing melded with the external vocation of the church at work in the world.

1

Kaleidoscope of Visions

Nineteenth-Century Vision for Colorado Episcopal Church

As the United States embarked on western expansion in the nineteenth century, so did churches. While the U.S. government initiated exploratory expeditions, the Episcopal Church sent missionary bishops to explore western territories. Some half-dozen Episcopal missionary bishops took turns surveying western regions and establishing little churches in the Colorado territory and adjacent lands.

In February 1874, the last of the Episcopal missionary bishops arrived in Denver and began an aggressive purchase of real estate. The Rt. Rev. John Franklin Spalding used his land purchases to begin planting seeds of his vision for Episcopal churches, schools, and hospitals.

The Rt. Rev. John Franklin Spalding served as missionary bishop of Colorado and Wyoming, 1874–1887. He then served as first diocesan bishop, 1887–1902.

One such land purchase was the 2000 block of Glenarm Place, which was then known as Lincoln Street. By the 1880s, this seminal land purchase was home to the first Episcopal cathedral in Colorado along with an Episcopal school for boys and an Episcopal seminary. In the 1890s, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital School of Nursing also occupied space on the Cathedral Close—the name given to this virgin block on Glenarm Place.

Seminal land purchase by Bishop Spalding became the home of the Cathedral Close in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1908, Trinity Memorial Church was built on the northern edge of the Cathedral Close.

Nineteenth-Century Vision for New Denver Parish

Even before Bishop Spalding established the Cathedral Close property with its Episcopal institutions, he oversaw the establishment of a brand-new parish on the growing eastern edge of Denver, Colorado. In March 1874, the bishop presided at the laying of the cornerstone. In June 1874, Bishop Spalding formally opened Trinity Memorial Chapel. It was the second Episcopal church in Denver, following St. John’s Church in the Wilderness founded in 1860. The newly formed mission church, Trinity Memorial Chapel, provided the office for Bishop Spalding for the next several years.

The brand-new parish was named in honor of a previous missionary bishop by the name of George Maxwell Randall. Bishop Randall served for seven years, from 1866 to 1873, as missionary bishop of Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. He was consecrated as bishop in January 1866 in Boston’s Trinity Episcopal Church before arriving at his new post in Denver. The Boston church name influenced the naming of the new little mission church in Denver. Bishop Spalding was offered a gift of $1,000 from Miss Abby Loring of Boston to build a church as a memorial to Bishop Randall. She specifically requested that the church be named Trinity.

Toward the end of his tenure as missionary bishop, the Rt. Rev. Randall observed the rapid growth of Denver on its eastern edge of town. He envisioned a new Episcopal parish on that growing edge of the city. However, he died September 28, 1873 before realizing his vision.

Following the death of Bishop Randall, his successor, the Rt. Rev. John Franklin Spalding, picked up where the previous bishop left off. Bishop Spalding quickly affirmed the initiative of the one-and-only Episcopal church ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Kaleidoscope of Visions
• Chapter 2: The Rev. Neil Edmund Stanley
• Chapter 3: The Rev. Jon Marr Stark
• Chapter 4: Transitional Chapter of Repurposing and Restoring Church Buildings
• Chapter 5: The Rev. Kenneth Near
• Chapter 6: The Rev. Connie Delzell
• Epilogue
• Bibliography