The Historic Charles Street AME Church Eliminates $1.2 Million Mortgage in Twelve Months and Receives $495,500 Preservation Grant
In January 2018, The Historic Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston, Massachusetts, began a year-long celebration of the congregation’s two hundred years of existence. In entering their third century of ministry in Boston, the Charles Street Church members, led by their pastor, the Reverend Dr. Gregory G. Groover, Sr., adopted as their new motto, “ONE Church, with a SECOND Wind for a THIRD Century.”
Pastor Groover and the Charles Street Church family underwent their “second wind” during the bicentennial year by restructuring their debts, including the $1.2 million mortgage on their 138-year-old church building. The refinancing entailed a new twenty-year loan with a payment of nearly $100,000 annually until its maturation in 2038.
A clear vision emerged among the pastor, church officers, members, and friends of Charles Street to embark on a twelve-month effort to liquidate the church building’s mortgage. After much discernment, prayer, preparation, and generous support from two dear friends of Charles Street and its partner church, Wellesley Congregational Church, the church launched on February 23, 2023, a 365-day drive to raise the needed $1.2 million. Funds were consistently collected from pledges and sacrificial gifts (above weekly tithes and offerings) by Charles Street members and friends, including the Reverend Jocelyn K. Hart Lovelace, Presiding Elder of the Boston-Hartford District. In February 2024 (one year later), the campaign ended with a total amount raised of $1.3 million.
On Sunday, April 21, 2024, Pastor Groover and the members welcomed Bishop Julius Harrison McAllister, Sr., and Mother Joan Marla McAllister, Presiding Prelate and Episcopal Supervisor of the First Episcopal District. During that glorious worship service, Bishop McAllister burned the $1.2 million mortgage (fourteen years ahead of the final scheduled payment) and preached an extraordinarily powerful word from the Lord.
In addition to Charles Street Church, as a 206-year-old congregation, eliminating its church building mortgage, it was recently awarded a $495,499 historic preservation grant to bring much of the exterior structure up to code and current standards. The City of Boston Community Preservation Committee provided the funding.
These recent victories remind the people of Charles Street of God’s never-ending faithfulness to their ministry and witness over the many generations. Through its numerous years of serving as a spiritual home for Blacks living on Boston’s Beacon Hill in the early nineteenth century, a center of the anti-slavery movement in Boston, regularly welcoming abolitionists Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and David Walker and it becoming one of the oldest and largest Black congregations in New England, Charles Street is well poised, by the grace of God, to humbly reflect on its past, serve the present age, and continue the work of Jesus in its third century.
In this spirit, with joyful praise to the Lord, we still sing the familiar yet inspiring words of hymnist Isaac Watts, “O God, our help in ages past. Our hope for years to come. Our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home!”
To God be the Glory 🙏
To God be the Glory for the great thing He has done!!
Well done!