It started with a desire to do something different, to do something perfectly suited to their individual community. The result was something that members of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Steubenville, Ohio, could never have imagined. Steubenville is small steel community of around 20,000 in the Ohio Valley. "For years, it was this feeling of 'us and them,'" said Jim Higgins, chairman of the lecture committee at First Church. "The membership was larger before my time. But because the area is a steel town, and steel's depressed, many people have moved on to bigger cities, and the children have moved away, too."
With fewer than twenty people available to keep the church running, members were forced to consider the future of their church. "In the last couple of years we thought, 'If we're going to continue—which, of course, we dearly want to—we have got to change our thinking and open these doors wide,'" Jim explained.
The opening was both literal and figurative. Church members began praying about ways to make the message of Christian Science, contained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, more accessible to spiritual seekers in their community. They also considered how they could open the doors of their church through lectures and projects of a similar nature. "We wanted to do everything we could to respond to the community," said Jim. This fresh perspective was a new beginning for the church and its activities, and members found themselves embracing the opportunity to meet the demand for spiritual answers.
