Beginnings

Grace Fellowship was birthed at a retreat in New Hampshire with seven people, including Ron and Marybeth Malionek, in November 1984. Bill Randall was the pastor. These seven met as a weekly small group until they held their first public worship service on Easter Sunday in April 1985. We were officially chartered with the Christian & Missionary Alliance (C&MA) in May 1986 (which is considered the official start of the church) with 22 members, and we were incorporated in March 1993.

The original vision for the church had five primary elements:

• We would operate in a contemporary, casual and relational style intended to connect well with younger generations.
• The character of the church would reflect the name, "Grace Fellowship." We would be a body of people in whom and through whom Christ would minister His love, compassion, acceptance and empowerment.
• Vibrant Christian community would be lived out primarily in small groups that would multiply continually until other churches could be planted.
• We would emphasize genuine relationship with Christ and others, moving beyond empty religion and surface relationships, and learning to take off our "masks" and be real with God and each other.
• The ministry would be built upon three areas of ministry: worshiping God, building the body (the church), and evangelizing the lost.

Dynamics

We experienced a long "honeymoon" period into the early 1990s. Morale was high, vision was strong, and the church family grew. The church was led by Pastor Bill Randall through 1988, by a team of elders in 1989, and by Pastor Bob Atherton from 1989 through 2011. We established a part-time Church Administrator position in 1991.

We entered a difficult period in the mid-1990s. Some of the major factors were rifts in relationships and not dealing with conflict well, lack of wisdom in handling controversy and spiritual warfare, and young leadership that didn't have the experience to handle it all well. Truly, the grace of God held us together when it seemed like we would fall apart.

The late 1990s were years of restoration, when we spent a lot of time rebuilding our ministry on the foundation of Christ and His love. Many found restoration in their relationships with God and each other. This led to a deeper level of caring for each other's needs and the inner resources to restore strength to the ministries of the church.

2001 and beyond has been an important time of gaining strength and vision. In 2001, we went through a church evaluation that identified our primary problem as "agenda disharmony": we just weren't on the same page. We worked together to write a fresh mission statement, and then we went through the process of getting ourselves and our ministries aligned with it.

In 2009 we began moving towards greater clarity and simplicity in our church life. We're strengthening our commitment to small group ministry, now known as "Life Groups," and aligning everyone, from the nursery to the nursing home, with a common discipleship process. This work is currently ongoing.

Pastor Bob was called to begin a new ministry venture in 2011, and we are pleased and excited to have Rev. Richard Bush step in as our Interim Pastor.

Facilities

The church started as a small group meeting at the Malioneks’ home in Danvers in 1984. Public worship services started in 1985 at the Danvers Masonic Temple. That didn’t work well, so we went back to the Malioneks’. Later in 1985, the church began meeting in a conference room at a Howard Johnson’s Hotel in Danvers.

When we outgrew that space, we moved in 1987 to the Knights of Columbus Hall, which was on Elm Street in Danvers. The room we used for services was great; but the downstairs reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke after Saturday night parties. Our nursery was in the bar, and the kids’ classes were held in the game room. (God gave the parents lots of grace!)

After outgrowing that space, we moved to the Danvers YMCA in 1988, where we enjoyed a long and happy relationship with the staff at the Y. In 2007, however, we began to feel limited by the fact that we couldn't offer any programs during the week; at the same time, the Y's board of directors wanted to offer some new programs on Sundays. It seemed like God Himself was orchestrating a mutually agreeable parting of the ways. After a careful search, Grace Fellowship's facility team found a church in Danvers (First Church) that wanted to share their building at 41 Centre Street with another church. We moved in on July 1, 2007.

The church has had an office in Danvers since 1987. The office started in the Holten-Richmond building (now the Middle School) on Conant Street (1987-1990), moved to a space above the Crane River Laundromat on Water Street (1990-2002), to an office building at 26 Locust Street (2002-2007), and to the church building at 41 Centre Street.