Like so many pastors around the United States, the Rev. Amanda Olson has kept one eye on the Bible and another on the evolving religious landscape.
She knew change was coming to the church in America.
Yet she hoped her congregation might be spared the worst of it.
“Everyone thinks that churches are going to close,” said Olson, the longtime pastor of Grace Evangelical Covenant Church on Chicago’s North Side. “But nobody thinks it is going to be their church.”
For more than a century, the small congregation at Monticello and Berteau avenues in Chicago had proved resilient, ready to adapt to the many changes that came their way. In the early 1900s, the church switched from Swedish and began worshipping in English, in order to make a younger generation feel more welcome. When the church building burned down on the morning of Jan. 28, 1940, members met the next day in the parsonage across the street and made the decision to rebuild.
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