HISTORY
The Parish
1954: Land was donated from Girl’s Friendly Society camp. Miss Frances Sibley suggested the diocese form a mission in the area.
November 1955: Pine Lake School at Middlebelt and West Long Lake Roads was rented as a temporary meeting place and furnished with borrowed and improvised supplies.
December 4, 1955: The first service was held on the second Sunday of Advent. The mission took the name of The Episcopal Church of the Advent in honor of the season.
1955-1956: Improvements were made by volunteers using more donated materials. Christ Church Cranbrook took a special interest, and Advent became a parochial mission of that church. The first full-time minister, The Rev. John W. Wigle, began his service on July 1, 1956.
1958: Ground was broken at the current site in May. Frances Sibley passed away and left a portion of her estate to Advent.
1959: The first church building was completed in February. The first service was held in what is now Sibley Hall.
1961: On January 1 the first vestry was elected and the Articles of Incorporation were accepted. The mission became a parish.
1961-1965: With a need to expand, plans were made for a larger building. The “link” was built and dedicated in December, 1962. The new sanctuary was completed in June, 1965 with a seating capacity of 300 to encourage a closely knit congregation. A large cross suspended over the altar is a focal point. Wood beams and cathedral glass are other features.
1969-1976: The Rev. John J. Lohmann was rector and the church grew to 225 families. During this time Advent began its outreach program by starting the first day care center in Pontiac and by supporting Mariner’s Inn for homeless men in Detroit. In 1975 a prayer center was added to the sanctuary.
1977-1981: The Rev. Jeffrey Meadowcroft was called to Advent in August, 1977. In early 1979 the Worship Commission formed plans to beautify the church. During this time the cathedral glass windows in their present designs were installed in the east and west windows.
1982-1987: The Rev. Gregory Simms accepted the call to Advent in 1982 and served for the next five years, taking a special interest in the training of acolytes. Work began on the rectory in 1987.
1988-1993: The Rev. Ken Davis was called as rector in 1988 and was the first pastor to reside in the newly completed rectory behind the church. Fr. Davis was a true evangelist who brought a heightened sense of the Holy Spirit into the lives of many parishioners before retiring in 1993.
1994-2005: The Rev. Kevin Warner accepted the call to Advent. Under Fr. Warner’s leadership, many new programs were formed, including the Wednesday Night program which introduced Alpha to the congregation. The Rev. Geoffrey Piper arrived as assistant rector in 1998, bringing a multitude of talents such as Christian formation, music, mission, and youth group. Fr. Piper’s Mother’s Day program was very popular. Under the leadership of Fr. Warner and Fr. Piper, the church experienced an increase in membership. In 2001 a capital campaign began in order to finance the expansion of our church building. After several months of holding worship services in Sibley Hall, the first service was held in the renovated building in the summer of 2004. This was a large financial undertaking that is ongoing.
2006-Present: Fr. Piper was called to another church in 2006. Brian McNeal and his future bride Holly arrived to take charge of the youth group that same year. The Rev. Steve Bancroft came on board in 2007 as our “theologian in residence” and served the parish wherever needed. With changing economic times and concerns over finances, membership at Advent began to take a downturn. In August of 2009, Fr. Warner took a new position in California. Fr. Bancroft graciously filled in as our priest until The Rev. Ray Babin was called as our interim in May, 2010.
Brief History of the Diocese of Michigan
The Episcopal Diocese of Michigan was organized in 1832 by Episcopal parishes in the territory of Michigan which included present day Wisconsin. From the beginning, St. Paul’s Church in Detroit, which is now the Cathedral, served as the seat of the diocese, and the early bishops served as rectors of St. Paul’s.
When Michigan became a state, the boundaries of the diocese were fixed as the boundaries of the state. As the church grew, separate dioceses were formed in western, northern, and eastern Michigan. As a result, the current Diocese of Michigan includes Detroit metropolitan area and adjacent regions as far west as Lansing, Jackson, and Hillsdale.
In the nineteenth century, the diocese worked to carry the gospel to a region that was rapidly changing from frontier to statehood. As early as the 1840s, the church began to develop urban missions such as Mariner’s Church in Detroit which was geared towards laborers.The rise of the automobile industry in the early twentieth century helped the Diocese to become one of the largest and most influential in the Episcopal Church during the 1910s and 1920s. The suburbanization of the 1940s and 1950s led to a great emphasis on building and expansion, while the decline of urban Detroit that began in the 1970s has seen the cutting back of expenses and the closing of parishes.
The current Bishop of the Diocese is The Rt. Rev. Wendell N. Gibbs, Jr. who was consecrated on February 5, 2000, as the tenth bishop of Michigan.