Wisconsin Features Inner-City Church Joining CCCC

by Pastor Keith Hunholz, Area Representative for Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Fellowship of the CCCC has been growing this past year, in part through the involvement of five of our churches in Church Development, helping each church strengthen their ministries and become more effective in reaching their communities for Christ. We are also growing, however, as we welcome Pilgrim Congregational Church, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, into the CCCC at this year’s Annual Family Conference. Valuing their city and celebrating their diversity, the church describes itself as a small congregation of believers bound together by sharing in a big God.

Pilgrim Church has become an inner-city church located in the Uptown Neighborhood of Milwaukee. This community has transitioned over the past 30 years from white middle class to 60% black. While a number of congregations in the central city have fled to the suburbs, the leaders of Pilgrim voted in the 1990s to stay put. Since Pastors Chris and Bery Bryan came in 2001, the church has also transitioned to become more reflective of the neighborhood. They are a church of about 100 people seeking to understand and meld cultural diversities. Their worship style is a blend of traditional Congregational hymns and liturgies with a strong contemporary flavor, attracting about three visitors a week. The core of long-time members is strong and faithful, and there are signs of emerging new black leaders.

The church houses a K–8 choice school of about 150 students, and many are also participants in the life of the church, which includes a children’s and youth (predominantly black) ministry. They are also experimenting with a small-group-oriented ministry as well. They also support missionaries from Myanmar, Laos, and India who have been with them recently, keeping them looking outward. The fellowship has been praying about the glass ceiling of 120 that they haven’t been able to break through, but are one of the churches presently involved in Church Development, and are hopeful that the Lifeflow process will help them continue to grow.

Pastor Chris has become involved in our pastors’ gatherings, and we look forward to working and sharing together in ministry in the coming years.