FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
WINTER PARK, FLORIDA
                                                                                                         

 
Here's the latest regarding our Capital Campaign (data taken from the "Capital Campaign Infromation Sheet distributed at the Annual Meeting of the church on January 30, 2008. 

1. What role did Ergood’s Dry Store, located at the intersection of Park Avenue and Morse Boulevard, play in the founding of the church?
2. What became of the reading circle organized in 1885 by Elizabeth Robbins Hooker, wife of founding minister Dr. Edward Hooker?
3. Why is it unlikely anyone dozed off during sermons when the congregation moved into its first sanctuary in the winter of 1885?
4. Church members have worshipped under four different names since 1884. What are the names?
5. Church founders started what other significant Winter Park institution?
6. Beyond the founding 12 church members, the first person to join the congregation arrived in 1884 but was excommunicated in 1886 in the only known instance of such severe church discipline. What happened?
7. What prompted the Ku Klux Klan to burn a cross on the parsonage lawn in 1955?
8. What was the church’s first slogan?
9. Why did the FBI investigate a meeting held at the church in 1981?
10. A unique educational institution was established by the church from 1966 to 1973 in Fellowship Hall and copied nationwide. What was this school?
11. What happened to the original 1885 sanctuary and 1907 Sunday school addition when the current Fellowship Hall was built in 1940?
12. Was the church in 1934 for or against the opening of saloons in Winter Park following the repeal of Prohibition?
13. What happened to the 1100-pound bell that pealed from the old church belfry in 1885 to announce the decision of the Florida UCC conference to found a college in Winter Park and, through 1940, to call worshippers to Sunday services and herald important occasions throughout the city?
14. What is the architectural significance of the Fellowship Hall building constructed in 1940, the church office building (1958) and the Sunday school building and arcade (1963)?
15. The pulpit is constructed of Honduran mahogany and lined with Dutch cedar. How did the church acquire it?
16. Church membership reached an historic peak in 1966, with how many people on the church rolls?
17. A Chrismon tree was crafted in 1971 by five dedicated church members (Mmes. Lau, Graves Jr., Challis, Mueller and Sowers). What is it?  

ANSWERS

1. The meeting space above Ergood’s store was the scene of nondenominational worship services lead by visiting preachers for early Winter Park settlers. One preacher, Dr. Edward Payson Hooker from Massachusetts, quickly inspired the Congregationalists, of whom there were many, to build the town’s first church.
2. The reading circle, which circulated books out of the parsonage, evolved into the Winter Park Public Library.
3. Notwithstanding the quality of Dr. Hooker’s sermons, said to be of such rich scholarship as to be intellectual feasts, the congregation was kept alert due to the fact the seats were mere planks set on nail kegs and the building was unheated.
4. Union Church (early 1880s), Winter Park Congregational Church (1884), Congregational-Christian Church of Winter Park (1937), First Congregational Church of Winter Park (1961).
5. Rollins College was founded in 1884 by the Florida Congregational Association in partnership with the Winter Park church, and created in the image of Harvard and Yale universities which were founded by New England Congregationalists.
6. The man, remembered only as a Methodist from Georgia, embarrassed the church by what was described as some “unconventional conduct,” and then skipped town.
7. The Klan burned a cross at the home of Pastor Louis Schulz after he delivered a sermon titled The Case for Desegregation.
8. Under the direction of then-associate pastor and current member, Dr. Walter E. Barker, the first slogan proclaimed: “Rooted in Tradition – Growing in Love.”
9. The church reportedly was the only place in 1981 where blacks and whites could meet together to protest a plan by a state legislator to reorganize the Democratic Party into a private social club to exclude blacks. The FBI investigated reports that a Communist from Miami took part.
10. The Interdenominational Theological School, also known as the School for Black Ministers, offered a three year curriculum taught by Rollins College professors and church ministers. The school trained 75 ministers and graduated 25.
11. The education hall, called Hooker Memorial House, was donated to the Colored Women’s Club and moved to 120 Pennsylvania Avenue where it burned down 50 years later. The sanctuary proved too big to move and was demolished.
12. Against.
13. Stored for a decade in the church yard hidden by overgrown shrubbery and weeds, the bell was donated to Rollins College where in 1956 it was hoisted 120 feet into the tower of the Knowles Memorial Chapel, beginning a tradition of ringing the bell during Founder’s Week ceremonies.
14. The first two buildings were designed by noted architect James Gamble Roger II, one of Florida’s premier architects whose design aesthetic significantly shaped the character of Winter Park, and the Sunday school building by James Gamble Rogers III .
15. The pulpit was designed and donated in 1962 by Mr. Rodman Lehman, then chairman of the church board of trustees. It was built by students at the Orange County Vocational School as an instructional project under the supervision of woodworking and cabinet-making teacher B. L. Staddard.
16. The church membership reached a peak of 1,017 at the end of 1966, compared with 702 at the end of 2006.
17. The Chrismon tree, which still stands at the front of the sanctuary next to the pulpit during the Christmas season, is decorated in white and gold symbols from the early Christian church. The word Chrismon derives from the words Christ and monogram.