History

The ministry or Highland Park Christian Church goes back to 1893 when Rev. Charles H. Stearns met with 17 people in an upper room near second and Euclid.  They started Highland Park Church of Christ.  One year later the congregation numbered 133 and they moved to a room over the blacksmith shop at Sixth and Clinton.  They walked down dirt roads or arrived in horse drawn wagons, used a box for a pulpit, and took communion from water glasses.  In 1895 they built a new church on the same site and used a bucket brigade to carry water from a well to fill the baptistery.

They built an addition in 1926 and included room at the corner for a pharmacy and a doctors’ offices.  The rent money and the money from their dining hall at the Iowa State Fair helped pay the mortgage.  In their first 34 years, from 1893 through 1927, they had 15 ministers.

Rev. William Knight was the minister from 1928 to 1960.  He led the church through the Depression years (often stoking the coal furnace himself), WWII and the launching of the first U.S. satellite.  In 1949  the church was renamed Highland Park Christian Church.  Sunday School attendance soon averaged 430 and they added an educational wing.

Rev. Donald Gill served from 1961 to 1974, an era of assassinations, civil rights, Vietnam and Watergate.  He was a serious, scholarly man who was given a mandate to build a new church.   That structure, built in 1970 at the corner of Sixth and Aurora, is where we worship today.

From 1974 to 1996, the Rev. James Robertson’s years, the church sponsored refugees from Vietnam and Bosnia, a Des Moines Public School preschool and congregate meals for seniors.  In the 1980’s they had the first Live Nativity with live camels in the city, established large scholarships and women were allowed to be board moderators, trustees and deacons.

Our minister, Dr. John B. Holcombe, Jr., joined us in 1997.  With his guidance we became even more active in the community, began a Head Start preschool, came into the computer age, expanded Christmas and Lenten services and added a large west wing to the building.

The 1893 church that began with such vision is again looking to the future.