Inwardly Growing, Outwardy Serving

Grace Downtown is an inwardly growing, outwardly serving church community that meets and worships in the heart of Washington, DC. Our ambition is to be a cross-cultural community that both experiences the unmerited kindness of God and then extends it to our workplaces, neighborhoods, city and world. We understand our faith to be relevant to every area of life–relationships, personal transformation, vocations, volunteering, and even urban renewal.

Since we first began meeting over in 2003, our church’s life and activities have been largely led by our members and regular attenders. So while our pastors, elders, and diaconate take an active leadership role in the ministry of the church, they do so for the purpose of equipping and empowering our members to care for one another and our neighbors.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to join us for our Sunday services or for any of our events. Whether you consider yourself a follower, seeker, skeptic, or the like, we welcome you!

Showing the Grace of God

We’ve striven together to be the kinds of neighbors that make our city healthier. This is rooted in what the Bible says about the life of Jesus Christ—that he cared about issues that affected all of humanity, and was also equally dedicated to showing the grace of God in real ways to specific people in the place that he lived. He fed the poor, healed the sick, forgave the guilty and befriended the outcast. His global concern never compromised his local concern.

We believe that a church that follows Christ should do no less. We don’t want to simply take up space in the city or live in a spiritual ghetto. If the grace of God is truly transforming us, the city around us should know and experience the fruit of that transformation. The members and leaders of Grace Downtown want our church community to be an engine of flourishing and renewal for all of our neighbors.

Grace DC’s History

Although Grace Downtown was officially formed in the summer of 2005, our church was only made possible by decades of prayer. Those prayers became action when Virginia’s McLean Presbyterian Church and New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church joined in the search for a pastor who could lead a group of people living in the District who were dedicated to starting a new church. In the summer of 2003 Glenn and Meg Hoburg, along with their two girls, moved to DC from the Boston/Cambridge area. The size of the community grew quickly to 350 members and 500 weekly attendees—a diverse community of men, women and children dedicated to living out the grace of God in Washington, DC.

From the start, the Grace Downtown community dreamed of a network of churches in the city. That dream became reality in 2010 when we launched the Grace DC church network and our first sister congregation, Grace Meridian Hill, serving the Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Mount Pleasant and Petworth neighborhoods and pastored by Rev. Duke Kwon. In 2013, our network grew again when Rev. Russ Whitfield and a core group of members from the Grace DC churches were sent to plant Grace Mosaic in upper northeast DC. At that time, Grace Downtown also welcomed in Rev. Mike Park to our pastoral team.

To this day, we continue being committed to our value of being “in & for the city” of Washington, DC as an inwardly growing, outwardly serving church community.

Our Faith

The Christian faith centers around the “good news” (gospel) of Jesus Christ and is the celebration of his life, work, death and resurrection. We understand this good news to teach that God is so personal and loving that he sent His unique Son to become human–living amidst our need, suffering in our place, fulfilling the law of love on our behalf, and granting to us new life thru His resurrection–all of this out of sheer grace. Our namesake (“Grace” Downtown) stems from the firm conviction that God’s grace is the most transforming and powerful force ourselves, city, and world can know.

We hold to the historic Christian faith and creeds, yet strive to apply them to our daily lives and modern world, for both follower and seeker.  As a member of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), in addition to the Old and New Testament Scriptures, our particular beliefs can be found in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the New City Catechism

Our Neighbors

We aren’t just committed to our city in general—we also care about our specific neighbors and their hopes and struggles. We want to help our neighbors experience healing, comfort and flourishing.

The Bible calls churches and Christian communities “the body of Christ,” his hands and feet working in the world. Wherever he went, Jesus healed the sick, comforted the hurting and empowered his followers to share this new hope with the world around them. Because we are called to be his body in the world around us, Grace Downtown’s members don’t believe our church exists for our own comfort, but rather for the renewal and restoration of our neighbors and our broader community.

Through our day-to-day lives together, we try to equip one another toward lives of hospitality and service; through the organization of our church, we facilitate opportunities to better know one another and welcome our neighbors into our lives.