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 Long-standing Holy Communion parishioner Charles Crump is the Chancellor of the Diocese of West Tennessee and has served as a deputy to every General Convention of The Episcopal Church in the United States of America since 1958.
He was Superintendent of the Sunday School when Holy Communion was merely a chapel at the corner of Poplar and Perkins, a mission of Calvary Church downtown. As a founding member, he knows the Holy Communion history as well as anyone.
The first service was held in the new chapel on Jan. 1, 1939. By 1947, Crump says att endance had grown to the extent that the Rev. Dr. Theodore N. Barth, who became Calvary’s Rector in 1940, suggested the building of a church and parish house.
“Some Sundays we had 150 people in that chapel,” Crump said. “We were meeting in station wagons and what have you.”
When the money raised among Calvary members didn’t quite cover the cost of both the church and the building that would become Blaisdell, Barth made a decision that went against the custom of the day.
“The question was, what do we build first,” Crump said.
Instead of building an education wing fi rst, which Crump said was typical of church expansion plans at the time, Barth insisted on building the church first, even ruling against the idea of reducing the height of the planned steeple, which represented about a fourth of the $205,000 proposed cost.
“He said ‘No, we’re going to build that steeple,’” Crump said. “That ended the discussion.”
Ground was broken for the new building on Oct. 24, 1948 and Evening Prayer was held for the fi rst time in the new house of worship on Jan.1, 1950. Church of the Holy Communion was admitt ed to Parish status in the Diocese of Tennessee on Jan. 24, 1951.
Today, Holy Communion is among the largest and strongest parishes in the Diocese of West Tennessee. And the parish’s focus on worship – from Sunday Eucharist to daily Morning Prayer to Celtic and Taize worship to the “Open For Prayer” banner displayed on Sept. 11 – can be viewed as part of a tradition started more than 50 years ago.
“It made a statement on that corner,” Crump said of the insistence on building a church building fi rst. “The church and the steeple made a statement – and they still do.”
OUR RECTORS
- The Rev. Eric Sutcliff e Greenwood 1950-1971
- The Rev. Harold Elliott Barrett 1971 – 1980
- The Rev. Reynolds S. Cheney II 1981 – 2001
- The Rev. Gary D. Jones 2001 - 2005
- The Rev. Dr. Ronald N. DelBene (interim) 2005-2006
- The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg (interim) 2006
- The Rev. C. Mark Rutenbar 2006-
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