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• 1 media/St John the Evangelist exterior, 27 Sep 2015.jpg 2019-07-13T13:26:49-07:00 St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, Elkhart 88 image_header 2020-10-26T13:54:38-07:00 The Episcopal Church in the town of Elkhart can trace its roots to the 1840s when three couples - Dr. Joseph Chamberlain and wife Caroline, Eliel Farr and wife Jane, and Chester Gore and wife Rheuanna - began holding prayer services using the Book of Common Prayer in their homes. They never formed a congregation, but in 1849, Bishop George Upfold visited Elkhart and held services in the Presbyterian Church. "At this public service," wrote the Rev. William Galpin, "very few knew how to make the responses, and to make the worship more hearty, the Bishop, before beginning, explained the service and then placed the prayer books he carried about with him on his missionary visits, in the hands of certain persons, and stationed them in various parts of the church, while all who could gathered about these persons and looked on with them. Thus the chants and prayers of the church were heard for the first time by any considerable number in this place."
  
  During the 1850s, Upfold continued to make regular visits, as did several local clergy, including the Rev. Albert Bingham of Lima, the Rev. Henry M. Thompson of Bristol, and the Rev. Joseph Adderly, also of Bristol. However, no church was officially organized. Clearly interested in the town as a potential site for a church, Upfold remarked in his 1858 convention address that he had again visited Elkhart and that it had been occasionally visited by Bingham throughout the year.
  
  Following the Civil War three local women, Ellen Augusta Mead, Ellen Mary Mabley, and Eliza Cornish, began making a trip every Sunday to visit either Bristol or Mishawaka for church services. Bishop Joseph Talbot took notice and in 1867 urged the ailing Bishop Upfold to appoint the Rev. Martin Van Buren Averill to establish a church in town. A register of baptisms was first kept in June of that year, and Averill conducted services at various sites, including Conley's Hall on Main Street. He organized a ladies' society, later known as St. John's Ladies Guild, to help raise money for a church.
  
  Averill led the organization of St. John's Episcopal Church on 1 May 1868, with Benjamin Turnock and John Bostwick elected as the first wardens. The name had been chosen by secret ballot at a parish supper. Men and women brought sealed envelopes with their choices of names, and St. John's proved the overwhelming favorite. In 1869, the congregation under Averill's leadership arranged for the purchase of a lot at Third and Lexington streets. Two parishioners, Judge Oliver H. Main and Benjamin Turlock, gave their personal notes for the purchase and borrowed the money from Judge Howe of Lima. With the occasional help of the congregation, the men paid the notes back with interest, with Howe agreeing to donate $100 toward the lot.
  
  Even before an edifice could be built, the  congregation purchased an organ for its worship services in Conley's Hall, replacing a melodeon that was previously in use. Instead of securing a reed organ, they purchased a pipe organ to be used in the church whenever it was built. It was the first such organ in Elkhart and attracted much interest in the community. However, the effort to build a church languished. Averill left in 1870 and his successor, the Rev. Richard Totten, failed to generate enough interest.
  
  Then in 1873, after the election of the Rev. Addis E. Bishop as rector, the congregation broke ground for a new building and completed it the same year. Bishop "soon aroused the people to the need of erecting a new church," and the parish regained the initiative begun under Averill's tenure. The rector worked side by side members of the congregation, carrying lumber and brick in order to complete the building. He donated one of the stained three glass windows out of his personal funds. This small rectangular wood-frame chapel served the parish for the next twelve years, during which time thirteen priests served as rector. Although the rapid turnover did little to promote stability, it improved when the Rev. Franklin Adams arrived in 1887. He stayed four years and completed construction of a rectory.
  
  Realizing that a better church was needed, the vestry developed new construction plans immediately after the arrival of the Rev. William Galpin of Michigan in 1894. Galpin appointed a building committee to begin raising the necessary funds. In 1895, construction began on the present edifice in an elaborate Gothic Revival style under a design by local architect A. H. Elwood. Nicknamed "the Tower," the church became identified regionally as one of the most ornate and outstanding examples of that style. The first service was held on 5 July 1896, even while construction was still underway. The nave was completed in August. Bishop John Hazen White consecrated the building on 11 June 1902, once it was out of debt.
  
  The twentieth century brought many changes to the parish. Under the rectorship of William Wesley Daup in 1918, St. John's constructed a new rectory. The Rev. Walter Lockton arrived in 1920 and served 17 years, taking an active role in the diocese. The Rev. Leslie Skerry Olsen, a native of Colorado and a graduate of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, took charge in 1943 and had another long rectorate of 14 years. During this time the parish grew to more than 1,000 communicants. In 1953-54, the parish constructed an addition with classrooms, offices, and a common room.
  
  Olsen was succeeded by the Rev. Carl H. Richardson in 1957. An army reserve officer, Richardson served 17 years, during which time the parish established St. David's as a mission in 1964. Richardson died suddenly in 1974 and was succeeded by the Rev. John Thomas, a popular rector who served until 1981. Tall and imposing in stature, Thomas and his wife established a popular vacation Bible school and hosted a diocesan convention. His successor, the Rev. Howard Keyse, led a renovation of the chancel and the installation of a new Casavant organ in 1983. He left in 1986 to become rector of St. Ann Church in Woodstock, Illinois.
  
  St. John's has worked with choral interns from the University of Notre Dame's Sacred Music Program to provide outstanding liturgies for the congregation. Keyse's successor, the Rev. Richard Kallenberg, arrived in 1987 and oversaw other renovations. Kallenberg was an unsuccessful candidate for bishop in 2000, when Bishop Gray retired. The parish was later served by the Rev. Daniel Repp and most recently, the Rev. Terri Peterson, who was originally trained and ordained as a Lutheran pastor.
  
  Clergy:
  
  Martin Van Buren Averill, 1867-1870
  Richard Totten, 1870-1871
  Addis Emmett Bishop, 1873-1875
  Gustav Arnold Carstensen, 1876-1877
  Erasmus Jurian Hopman Van Deerlin, 1877-1878
  Moses Clement Stanley, 1879-1880
  Gustav Edmond Purucker, 1882
  Erasmus Jurian Hopman Van Deerlin, 1883-1884
  Augustine Prentiss, 1884
  Samuel Franklin Myers, 1885-1886
  Franklin White Adams, 1887-1891
  Stephen Elliott Prentiss, 1891-1892
  John Frederick Milbank, 1893
  William Freeman Galpin, 1894-1903
  Richard Rathbone Graham, 1903-1906
  Charles Silas Champlin, 1906-1910
  Llewellyn Burton Hastings, 1910-1913
  William Wesley Daup, 1913-1919
  Walter Jay Lockton, 1920-1937
  Virgil Pierce Stewart, 1937-1942
  Reginald Williams, 1942-1943
  Leslie Skerry Olsen, 1943-1957
  Carl Hazard Richardson, 1957-1974
  John W. Thomas, 1974-1981
  Howard Richard Keyse, 1981-1986
  Richard A. Kallenberg, 1987-2008
  Daniel S. Repp, 2009-2016
  Terri L. Peterson, 2017-
  
  Bibliography:
  
  John A. Cawley and Robert Meacham, Centuries of Witness: One Hundred & Fifty Years of Christian Witness in Elkhart (Elkhart: Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1995).
  
  
  Parish Register 1, 1868-1893
  
  Parish Register 2, 1893-1902
  
  Parish Register 3, 1902-1918
  
  Parish Register 4, 1914-1931
  
  Parish Register 5, 1931-1943
  
  Parish Register 6, 1943-1953
  
  Parish Register 7, 1953-1978, Communicants
  
  Burial Register, 1955-1982
  
  Confirmation Register, 1952-1973
  
  Baptismal Register, 1953-1964
  
  Marriage Register, 1940-1968
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 1 media/Francis Campbell Gray portrait color unvested.jpg 2019-07-29T18:49:28-07:00 Francis Campbell Gray, Sixth Bishop 60 plain 2024-09-13T07:55:39-07:00 Francis Campbell Gray, Jr., the sixth bishop of the diocese, was the grandson of the second bishop, Campbell Gray. He was born in a Japanese prison camp in Manilla, the Philippines, to missionary parents, the Rev. Francis Campbell Gray and wife Jane. Growing up in the Midwest, he spent his teen years in Florida, graduating from Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, and serving a three-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps. He attended Nashotah House in Wisconsin, where he received his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1969. Ten years later he also received his Master's degree from there. Gray was ordained a deacon by Bishop Henry Louttit on 20 June 1969, and a priest by Bishop William Hargrave on 20 December 1969. On 19 February 1965, he had married Karen Brumbaugh of Orlando, and the couple had three children, Katherine, Elizabeth, and Timothy.
   
  After becoming a priest, Gray served several parishes in Florida, including assistant at St. Wilfred's in Sarasota from 1969 to 1970; chaplain of Manatee Junior College in Bradenton from 1970 to 1974; rector of St. John's Church, Melbourne, from 1974 to 1979; and rector of Emmanuel Church, Orlando, from 1979 to 1986. He was elected Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Northern Indiana on the fourteenth ballot on 10 May 1986. The choice of more progressive delegates, Gray had signaled his willingness to accept women priests. The Rev. Richard Martin of Washington, D.C., the choice of conservatives, had said emphatically that he would never ordain a woman. The proceedings seemed deadlocked, and for a time a group of clergy came to the Rev. Corydon Randall of Trinity, Fort Wayne, as a potential compromise candidate, but he declined the offer without having the laity's clear support. Gray's victory by the progressives was a transformative moment in the history of the diocese and showed that the majority of the laity supported at least the prospect of change in Northern Indiana's liturgical and theological outlook.
  
  Gray was consecrated in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame on 31 October 1986, with the Presiding Bishop, Edmund Browning, as chief consecrator. Browning's presence marked the first time a presiding bishop had ever consecrated a bishop in the diocese, and it opened a period of greater interest and cooperation with the national church in which Northern Indiana emerged from decades of isolation. When Bishop Sheridan retired on 10 January 1987, Gray officially became the new diocesan. He wrote in the diocesan newspaper, "As I approach consecration, I am consciously and constantly aware that the Bishop is to guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church. The gathering of the assembled Bishops, Clergy, and Lay People are visible signs to me that this responsibility is never to be carried out alone. I thank God for calling me to this ministry."
  
  From the inception of his episcopate Gray sought to kindle a new sense of piety throughout the diocese. He suggested that vestries open their meetings with short Bible study and prayer. He also urged vestries and rectors to have clean slates, analyzing strengths, defining expectations, and developing strong pastoral relationships. To that end, when vacancies occurred, he sought to improve the way vestries called priests to their parishes and how they were nourished once there. He insisted that parishes undertake a formal search process in preparation for calling a new rector, and he believed strongly in the use of interim rectors. Congregations should have search committees that carefully studied their members and prepare written profiles as part of a formal rector search. Once a new rector was installed, the bishop insisted that he or she be given opportunities for education and sabbatical for their continuing spiritual nourishment. Vestries and rectors should also take regular spiritual retreats together.
  
  Evangelism and stewardship remained perennial issues and became the centerpieces of Gray's early ministry. The diocese had suffered a loss of 50 percent of its membership over the previous 22 years from when Gray was consecrated. Part of that decline had fallen on the Baby Boom generation that had grown up in the church in the 1950s and 1960s, but who had not sought to retain that affiliation after reaching adulthood. As the national church declared the so-called Decade of Evangelism in 1990, Gray asked the diocese some pointed questions directed at the appeal of the Episcopal Church. "Is our faith the kind that attracts converts? Is the vitality of belief and practice what makes undecided people want to identify with us? Are we stewards of the mysteries of Christ, or are we custodians of buildings and guardians of the status quo?"
  
  With the decline in membership, stewardship had also fallen off, and many parishes continued to suffer shortages of both money and talent. "Evangelism," he wrote, "is the response of stewardship toward the world in which we live... [Both] are inextricably tied together ...Unless we are stewards of grace, who live and exhibit the Christian life ... we have nothing to evangelize. When we show forth Christian community, our lives become evangelistic by their very essence."  
  
  To help counter the decline, the new bishop instituted a series of preaching and teaching evenings in parishes across the diocese to help renew energy and spirit. He attracted a number of new, younger clergy to the diocese to join in the building up of parishes, Dabney Smith and Shelby Scott among them. He also brought to life diocesan youth camp programs, was often personally present at the camps, and hired Brian Grantz, a full-time diocesan ministries youth coordinator. Grantz would go on to become an ordained priest. In addition, the bishop established summer service projects in urban areas of the diocese.
  
  During Gray's episcopate, three capital campaigns were launched. The Wawasee Episcopal Center Fund raised money to rebuild the lakeside conference and retreat center at Lake Wawasee in Kosciusko County. The All Saints Syracuse Fund led to the replacement of the original chapel at the lake built by Bishop White. The third, the Forward in Faith campaign, raised money for diocesan missions and for the diocesan endowment. Three new missions were begun in 1994: Church of the Resurrection in Wabash, Christ Church in South Bend, and St. Mary's Fellowship in Monticello. Ultimately, all three would fail, but Christ Church's membership was folded into St. Paul's in Mishawaka. The experience of mission-planting enriched the diocese and gave its leadership many insights into the challenges of missionary growth.
  
  Gray also took a strong interest in the world mission of the church. In 1969, the diocese under Bishop Klein had entered into a companion relationship with the Diocese of Costa Rica. Under Bishop Sheridan, that relationship ended and another begun with the Diocese of Enugu in Nigeria. Gray breathed new life into that relationship. Several articles in the diocesan newspaper, The Beacon, featured the missionary activities in Enugu and its continuing needs, and Gray and his wife Karen later made a visit there. Later in 1998, the diocese would enter into another companion relationship with the Diocese of Honduras and invited its bishop, Leo Frade, to address a diocesan convention. Several parishes became actively involved with missionary work there. St. John of the Cross in Bristol sent a team with building materials to construct  a waterfront church in a ghetto community. Other congregations contributed to two schools, Nuestra Pequenas Rosas for girls and El Hogar for boys. A delegation from St. Thomas, Plymouth, visited Honduras for the dedication of two churches. In September 1998, after Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras and devastated many of its churches, Gray and a group of concerned parishioners organized a massive relief project with medical supplies, food, clothing, and building materials. 
  
  At home, Northern Indiana remained deeply divided over the ordination of women, exacerbated by years of sustained opposition from Bishop Sheridan. Many of the old Anglo-Catholic guard agreed with the ban in the diocese, but an increasing number of younger members, mostly from the Baby Boom generation, began quietly advocating for change. In 1989, Gray had opposed the consecration of Barbara Harris as Bishop of Massachusetts, but he did so not because of her gender but because she lacked the necessary education and training. Even so, the new bishop was determined to bring Northern Indiana into the fold of the national church by embracing the priesthood of women, though he did so quietly without much fanfare.
  
  On 27 July 1989, Gray sent a letter to all priests, deacons, and senior wardens. In it, he said that his original mandate to only ordain a woman who was raised up in the diocese would place too great a burden on her. Several vestries had wanted to call a woman, but he had denied their requests in violation of their rights under canon law. He added: "My own thinking on this matter has changed. When I was elected, I knew only one woman priest. I was willing to follow the canons, but I was not overly enthusiastic about women priests. Since that time I have met several women who are very effective priests. I have spoken with numerous bishops who attest to the vitality of ministry in areas where both men and women serve as priests. After thirteen years, I think it is time for our own diocese to be brought into conformity with our national canon law." While conceding that his decision would bring pain to some people and joy to others, he hoped that "Christian charity will continue to prevail in our diocese as this change takes place." He would not push candidates of either gender onto vestries, but the goal of the deployment process was to bring the best priests for each congregation.
  
  The first female deacon to serve a parish in the diocese was the Rev. Sarah Tracy, who had held the post when Sheridan was still bishop. Sheridan had made a distinction between women in the priesthood versus those in the diaconate, having no problem with women in the latter. Tracy had come to the diocese from Idaho in the spring of 1985 to work at the Cathedral and at St. Peter's, Rensselaer. Though she had received an anonymous death threat, she was formally installed deacon in August 1986, just as Gray was about to be consecrated. As the new diocesan archdeacon, she became the prime mover for the establishment of St. Margaret's House, a daytime shelter for women that opened in a building adjoining the Cathedral in June 1990.
  
  Gray ordained two other women to the perpetual diaconate soon after his consecration: Gloria Taylor at St. Paul's, Munster, on 12 June 1989, and Mary Finster at St. Andrew's, Kokomo, on 8 May 1990. The perpetual diaconate did not entail eventual ordination to the priesthood. It was a stand-alone, non-stipendiary ministry of pastoral care that those ordained to this office could offer a larger parish as a means of assisting the rector. Gray encouraged this ministry but would not allow deacons to celebrate a Deacon's Mass with pre-consecrated host. He also remained cautious initially in support of women priests, stating that he would accept one if she were raised up in the diocese.
  
  After sending out a letter announcing his intention to accept the ministry of ordained women priests, Gray received from the Diocese of Western Michigan the Rev. Teunisje "Tina" Velthuizen, on 12 September 1991. Her approval came after the bishop had modified his initial position of only approving a woman priest if she rose up from a congregation in the diocese. The parishioners of Holy Trinity, South Bend, had specifically petitioned the bishop to approve Velthuizen, and she proved herself a trail-blazer, enjoying the warm backing of her parish. The following year Gray ordained to the priesthood the Rev. Susan Jo Blubaugh at St. Peter's Rensselaer on 8 July 1992. More ordinations followed on 9 October 1991 at the Cathedral of St. James, when Gray ordained to the perpetual diaconate Roberta Ring and Leslie Richardson, both of Fort Wayne. In February 1992, the Rev. Robin Thomas arrived from Maine to serve as curate of Trinity, Fort Wayne.
  
  In all, the diocese weathered these changes well. Consternation and hurt feelings existed in some parishes, and a few members left over the changes. The Episcopal Synod of America, a conservative organization opposed to women priests, made some inroads, mostly among older Anglo-Catholic parishioners, but the movement would sputter out by the late 1990s. In some parishes, more traditional-minded laity refused to receive communion from women or even stand for the Gospel when read by a woman, but these protests were remote and widely scattered. Priests who had opposed women's ordination, such as the Rev. Richard Alford of La Porte, quietly left the diocese. A greater loss occurred when the congregation of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Peru, rent by internal divisions, seceded from the diocese in 1990 and joined the Anglican Church of America, a new Anglican province created to preserve the 1928 prayerbook and oppose the ordination of women.
  
  While many in the diocese regarded him as a progressive (when compared with Sheridan), Bishop Gray saw himself as a conservative on many issues of the time, especially on matters of sexuality. When Bishop John Shelby Spong of Newark ordained a gay priest who subsequently announced that monogamy was only an option, Gray wrote a public letter that was critical of the ordination. The New York Times quoted Gray as saying, "Jack, I am angry, not just for what you have done, but for the manner in which you have proceeded. One wonders where is Christ in all of this? How is the Gospel proclaimed?" In later years his position became more moderate and accepting of homosexuality.
  
  Bishop Gray had a close circle of eight other priests in the diocese with whom he shared a weekly lunch. The group included the dean of the cathedral, Fred Mann, as well as Michael Basden, Derek Harbin, Stephen Gerth, Shelby Scott, Martin Lavengood, and several others. They became his close friends and supporters, though other priests were noticeably left out of the group and felt they could never be part of the bishop's close personal network. Unlike the Mallett episcopate, however, there was always cordiality among the bishop and his priests.
  
  After eleven years of being diocesan bishop, Gray decided to take a new assignment. He accepted a call to become the Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Virginia in 1998, assuming his new duties on 1 January 1999. At the time he was touted in Virginia as having wide experience in the world mission of the church. He retired in 2005 and became Commissary to the Episcopal Church in Sudan. He returned to South Bend with his wife Karen and has spent his retirement there, supporting both Bishop Little and Bishop Sparks.
  
  Gray's episcopate is best remembered for "tremendous enthusiasm and initiative." His episcopate saw a profound philosophical turn in the early 1990s that rejected both far-left liberalism and far-right conservatism but embraced the more moderate, mainstream theology of the national Church. Said a promotional brochure of the late 1990s, "the diocese was becoming aware of its mission, both catholic and evangelical." Quite consciously Gray moved the diocese away from the extreme Anglo-Catholicism that had isolated it for much of its history. The old generation was passing away and a new generation of younger priests and laity, more liturgically diversified and either moderate- or liberal-minded, joined the bishop in changing the diocese from within. Many believe that in doing so, the bishop, clergy, and laity, working together, saved Northern Indiana for the Episcopal Church.
  
  Consecration of Bishop Francis Campbell Gray, 31 October 1986, Part 1
  
  Consecration of Bishop Francis Campbell Gray, 31 October 1986, Part 2
  
  Consecration of Bishop Francis Campbell Gray, 31 October 1986, Part 3
  
  Consecration of Bishop Francis Campbell Gray, 31 October 1986, Part 4
  
  Order of Service for the Ordination and Consecration of the Rev. Francis Campbell Gray ... 31 October 1986
  
  Interview with Bishop Francis C. Gray by Rev. Robert C. Center, 28 January 1988