History

A Short History of Grace Presbyterian

The history of Grace Presbyterian really started well before Grace Presbyterian was organized as a Church.

In the early 1970's yoked Churches of First Presbyterian (USA) in Pardeeville and the rural Church of Rosedale Presbyterian (USA), held a lay witness missions weekend and as a result several people committed or recommitted their lives to Jesus Christ. As a result people became more involved not only in the local Church, but also in Presbytery and General Assembly affairs.

As time went on through the 1980's it became evident that two small Churchs were not having much influence in trying to make our voices heard in a denomination in which we had such different views on such issues as abortion, sexuality, inclusiveness, social justice and the lack of standing on the Bible as God's truth.

Finally after much time spent in prayer the Elders claimed the verse in Amos 3:3 "Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?" (NIV) and asked the congregations to vote on leaving the PCUSA and affiliating with a conservative reformed Presbyterian denomination.

Even after the vote by the Churches to leave the PCUSA, the presbytery charged us with being Churches in schism, threatening to remove the Pastor and Elders and that those remaining with the PCUSA would be the true Christian Church. Much time was again spent in prayer by the elders as we again sought the Lord's leading before attending the presbytery meeting at which they were to vote on dismissing our Churches. The Elders were in agreement that we could not agree to anything other than being dismissed as a true Christian Church or we would have to take our case into the Church courts. After a time of discussion a motion was made and adopted to dismiss us as a true Christian Church. That date was September 21, 1991. We were then free. We left all properties behind but were free to make plans for the future and a short time later, October 27, 1991, we affiliated with the PCA.

We met for a period of time in a school gymnasium but soon had plans in place for building our own facilities which were started in 1992.

The Lord has blessed us more than we could have imagined.