Church Of The Savior history

The consecration 0f the Church of the Saviour was done in August 1907.

On Sunday, October 5, 1946, Gordon and Mary Cosby, met with seven others to begin Church of the Saviour (CoS) as "a local expression of the universal church." A year later, on the third Sunday of October, that group made their first commitment statement together to form the new church officially.

Gordon Cosby was a former paratrooper chaplain, who had founded the Church of the Saviour in the year 1947.

Dreams for a retreat center took shape in 1952, when three young women from the church began scouting for a place of respite and renewal in the country.

Then, as O'Connor described it in her book, Servant Leaders, Servant Structures, call came through a "chance encounter" that Gordon and Mary had while on a church visit in 1959.

When the Potter's House—a coffee house and bookstore on Columbia Road—finally opened in 1960, each night was staffed by a separate mission group.

Through the summer of 1965, Sunday afternoon meetings were held to inform and encourage the effort to contact nearly 1,300 congregations in the city and to find prospective homes for the children in Junior Village.

Following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968, riots in Washington, D.C., catalyzed a new sense of mission for those at Church of the Saviour.

Never afraid to sharpen conflict for the purpose of clarifying intentions, Gordon risked a mass exodus from membership at Church of the Saviour by suspending the annual recommitment service on the third Sunday of October in 1969.

By the end of the year, the D.C. City Council voted to phase Junior Village out by the end of 1973—largely due to the catalytic role FLOC had in providing a workable model that cost less while providing better foster care for children.

In July, 1974, Gordon shocked the entire community at Church of the Saviour when he shared his own changing sense of call with the Council.

As 1975 drew to a close, Mary Hitchcock shared her interest in doing more pastoring at the Potter's House, and it seemed that a community would form there.

Click here to watch a 1997 video about Church of the Savior created by PBS.(link is external)