GILROY
– With a new pair of white gloves, former Gilroy United
Methodist Church pastor and current historian Charles Krahenbuhl
opened up an old book.
GILROY – With a new pair of white gloves, former Gilroy United Methodist Church pastor and current historian Charles Krahenbuhl opened up an old book.
The white gloves already were showing stains from the old leather covers that keep the original transcriptions proclaiming Gilroy’s first Methodist church 150 years ago.
“These never had proper care,” he said of the books. “They were thrown in a box.”
Krahenbuhl carefully had pulled out several tables-full of old newspaper clippings, pictures and other nostalgia from the church’s storied history in Gilroy.
“This is just a fraction of it,” he said. “It’s all over my dining room table.”
The pastor from 1968 to 1970 who also taught school in Gilroy and was the city’s first licensed marriage and family therapist, keeps an extensive collection of the church’s history, including an old Gilroy Dispatch front page from the 1938 fire that burned down the Methodist Church and cost the life of a local volunteer firefighter.
But the church, located at its original site at 7600 Church St., was able to rebuild from that tragedy and 65 years later will celebrate its 150th anniversary this Sunday.
And those historic artifacts, along with several storyboards documenting the church’s history and some of its members, will be on display Sunday during the celebration.
Starting at 9 a.m., visitors are invited to a free continental breakfast in Wesley hall, games for kids, worship service in the sanctuary at 10 a.m. and a potluck barbecue afterward.
Riding in on horseback to open the celebration will be the church’s pastor Alison Berry, who is starting her third year in Gilroy after working as assistant pastor in San Leandro.
“They’re great,” Berry said of the 140 members that make up the city’s only Methodist church. “(They are) a lot of really loving, caring people.”
Although a small congregation, Krahenbuhl describes the group as very active.
“This is a small congregation with a lot of activity,” he said. “That’s what Methodism is all about. … We’ve had some really interesting people.”
While the celebration is important for the church, it hasn’t invited a large number of dignitaries. It would rather make it a local event.
“This is going to be kind of a hometown celebration,” Krahenbuhl said.
For more information about the Gilroy Methodist Church’s 150th anniversary celebration, call 842-6114.
