History

Our History

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Fort Collins was founded by an evangelist, Elder J.D. Pegg, who held a tent effort during the summer of 1886. He wrote to the conference that he had baptized ten persons and that a Sabbath of school of thirty had been organized.

In February 5, 1887, twelve charter members signed the following covenant: “We the undersigned hereby associate ourselves together as a church, taking the name Seventh-day Adventists and covenanting to keep the commandments of God and the Faith of Jesus”.

The early organized church had no meeting place, so Mr. W.H. Workman opened his home at 317 E. Mulberry Street for church services, and Mrs. Minda Sickman Keck, her home at 605 S. College Avenue for Sabbath School.

In the early days money was scarce, but after several months a small church was erected on the corner of Olive and Whedbee streets. The congregation soon outgrew its modest little church home and looked for more spacious quarters. Fortunately, the neighboring Methodist congregation was in need of a larger building, so they sold their church located on east Mountain Avenue to the Adventists. This building served as our congregational home from 1901 to 1955.

The church at Fort Collins, with a membership of 60 in 1906, was one of several churches in a district which had only one pastor for a wide area. The church at this time was very much a layman’s organization – pastors not seen for several weeks, or months.

By 1950 the Lord’s house that had served the Adventist church in Fort Collins was overcrowded and extensive remodeling was deemed necessary to make the basement adequate for the children’s Sabbath school. As far back as 1945 a few members had begun laying aside annually, funds for a new church building. An ideal lot was purchased on the N.E. corner of Pitkin and Whedbee in a beautiful section of the city.

Construction of the new church started with ground breaking ceremonies on October 31, 1954. Earlier in the year, in August, two acres of land, part of a small cherry orchard, were purchased on West Lake Street. This property would eventually accommodate the Beebe Christian School, our local Adventist school.