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Broadview UCC closes after 96 years of ministry

At the closing service for Broadview Community United Church of Christ on May 4, the focus was on ending and beginning. Members were encouraged to continue their faith journeys and to seek relationships with new faith communities to nurture it.

Top - Nearly 100 former pastors, PNC leaders and Broadview members joined the closing worship service for Broadview UCC in May. Photo courtesy of Broadview UCC Below - Joanie Henjum, a member, and Dan Stern, a former pastor, shared reflections on the church.

The neighborhood church, which recently had an average of 12 of its 30 members attending in a large older building, voted by a majority to close. They sold the building quickly for $1.8 million to a network working with Ukrainian immigrants.

The funds and endowments will be distributed to nonprofits and the conference, said Dan Stern, who was pastor from 2000 to 2014 when there were 100 members with 40 attending. Dan gave the sermon for the closing worship.

Among nearly 100 attending the closing worship were 10 former pastors, interim pastors and conference ministers.

At the service and a potluck dinner the evening before, members and clergy who served the church shared memories of the church’s impact in the community, conference and world.

Broadview’s ministries included refugee family sponsorships, new citizenship advocacy, opposing racist housing policies of redlining, defending a neighborhood drug treatment center, advocating for low-income housing, offering an extravagant welcome to persons with physical and mental disabilities, protesting war, offering non-military service options to high school youth, becoming one of the first  Open and Affirming (ONA) congregations, and more than 30 years of LGBT pastoral leadership.

The congregation also supported the Church Council of Greater Seattle, Washington Association of Churches, the Church of Mary Magdalene, the Multi-faith AIDS Project, Gay Pride, New Horizons Ministry, 1st Ave Service Center, Phinney House and the UCC 5 for 5 special offerings.

Speaking on behalf of the Helping Hands Team, which purchased the building, Serg Lobodzinskiy said they will “continue using this building as a place of blessing, service and purpose for the local community,” using it to enhance the value of the property and improve lives of people whose lives they touch.

The Helping Hands Team works with immigrant families and low-income communities, “particularly newcomers from Ukraine, providing them with the guidance and support to become homeowners and build stable lives in the United States,” he said. 

They invited donations to help them keep the building a safe, welcoming, and functional space.

Broadview UCC was first organized in 1928 as a Sunday School for 50 children, as a mission of St. Paul’s UCC in Ballard.

It was incorporated as a congregation in 1929, and its first pastor was E. Horstman. Over the years, the two churches collaborated. Both were among the few Evangelical and Reformed background churches in the Pacific NW.

St. Paul’s received mission church funding from the national UCC until 1945, and Broadview until 1951.   

Broadview and St Paul’s co-sponsored refugees from Vietnam in the 1970’s and recently from Afghanistan.   

From 1976 to 1992, more than 200 joined Broadview. Since then there was attrition from people moving away, disagreeing with ONA, aging and dying.

Basing his sermon for the closing service on Luke 13:6-9 and Isaiah 55:10-13, scriptures about trees that get cut down, Dan remembered working all day with his father to cut down an acre of old apple trees on his family’s orchard near Wenatchee for firewood and to make space to plant young organic trees.

Reminding that “all living things one day die,” regardless of how fruitful they are, he affirmed that the faith story is centered on Easter—not one spring day of flowers and singing but a continuing everyday reality, Dan said.

After the devastation of the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980, even though microbes in the soil perished, surviving birds flew over, dropping lupine seeds that grew into flowers.

“The whole foundation of our faith is the hope and on the physical reality that life goes on,” he said, citing Martin Luther King Jr’s quote that “the arc of the universe bends toward justice,” and adding it also bends toward resurrection and “abundant reflowering.

“Coming to the final worship for a relatively small but mightily long-lasting congregation, we remember that they weathered a Great Depression, a second World War, devastating epidemics, ruined roofs, squirrels popping out of pianos, opposition to its early open, affirming, peacemaking, justice-seeking, diverse, equal and inclusive ways,” Dan pointed out. 

“Does all that good just die?” he asked. “Or do we believe Jesus who once told his disciples that where two or three continue to be gathered, there forever Christ will be in our midst?” 

Dan, now a member at Richmond Beach UCC in Shoreline, invited those in the closing congregation “who have always taken a broad view of things” to go forth and discover where best to continue to gather—in homes, a neighboring congregation, such as Luther Memorial, Richmond Beach or St. Paul’s UCC or becoming part of thriving congregations farther away.

“Don’t for a minute think that this time of dying is the last or the final part of the story,” Dan affirmed.

Gail Crouch, a former interim pastor and one-time head of the PNC Committee on Ministry, helped plan and lead the final service, including a liturgy that gave thanks for more than 100 years of ministry in a neighborhood and invited people to let go of the church.

A member since moving to Seattle in 1993, Joanie Henjum was inspired by the church to work with the conference and eventually to study for and be ordained a UCC minister. She said it was moving that the closing litany included encouragement for each person to continue their faith journey and seek a relationship with a new faith community.

Joanie served at Mary’s Place and did interim ministries at Guemes Island UCC and University Christian but always attended Broadview one Sunday a month.

“In our last year together, I valued our anti-racism work, including a four-week course with Andrew Conley-Holcom, and reflecting on films and books,” said Joanie. “The church gave a lot to the world, the community and the conference over its 96 years.”

Other clergy at the service included Gary Southerton, who served the church from 2016 to 2024. He had left his ministry as a Catholic priest in Seattle to work at the nonprofit, Multifaith Works, with people with HIV/AIDS.

Then, while working with Plymouth Healing Communities to help unhoused with mental health issues, he connected with the UCC and transferred his ordination to do a four-way call with Plymouth Healing Communities and as three-fourths time pastor at Broadview.

“The church was a tight knit worshiping community that took care of each other. The building served as the conference office, rented to two other churches and AA groups until COVID dried up the rental income,” Gary said.

With meeting rooms upstairs, it was a challenge for older people, he noted, adding that the community was on a growth path before COVID but declined after COVID.

The Broadview board will continue to wrap up issues of closing, said Gary, who now serves as the PNC representative on the board of Horizon House and does pulpit supply.

Other PNC pastors attending the closing service included Jim Halfaker, who was there from 1966 to 1971, Courtney Stange Tregear, Jan Van Pelt, Tim Devine, Jane Sorenson and Vincent Lachina.

In the last nine months, Sara Funkhouser, pastor from the neighboring Luther Memorial Lutheran Church, did the preaching.

Moderator Marc Hoffman, who has been with the church seven years, said, “It’s sad and is hard on everyone. Churches are families. There is grief for a small congregation that worked closely together. As a congregation, we tried to do the best we could for the world.”

For information, call Marc at 206-240-4500 or email danstern2051@gmail.com.

 

Pacific Northwest Conference United Church of Christ News © Summer 2025

 

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