Meet your Neighbors.

11am Sundays
Holy Eucharist
All are welcome!

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Currently:

Community All Hallows Shrine -
Thursday, 31 October 4-8pm, outside
Stop by amid trick-or-treating and write a name or draw a picture to remember someone who has died.

All Saints Sunday - 3 November - two services:
-9:30am young children and families, 30 minutes, simple and joyful; wear your costume if you like!
-11am Holy Eucharist for the feast of All Saints

Open Church Quiet Time
for Contemplation in a Tense Week
-Monday 4 Nov - 7:30-8:30pm
-Tuesday 5 Nov - 7:30-8:30pm
-Wednesday 6 Nov - 6pm-8:30
(and any other time you find the doors open…)
Drop in and sit with the neighbors in peace; light a candle; use the silence as you like; note: there will be Christian prayer Monday 7:30-8pm and Wednesday 7:15-7:30 (per below); all are welcome.

Regular weekly liturgy/prayer:

  • We meet Sundays at 11am for the Holy Eucharist, and all are welcome.

  • We pray contemplative prayer (meditation in the Christian tradition) Monday evenings at 7:30pm. A half hour of silence, and other simple practice. Beginners are very welcome.

  • We pray the brief, ancient monastic service called Compline Wednesday evenings at 7:15pm, to close the day in peace. 10-15 minutes in length. Candles! Deep breaths! Bring a friend.

  • Masks are optional but welcome.

 

326 Clinton St.
Brooklyn, NY 11231

Clinton & Kane
Take the F/G to Bergen St.
Enter the parish hall by the Clinton Street driveway gate.

 
 
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Christ Church Cobble Hill is a progressive, accessible & uplifting Brooklyn community space for spiritual seekers who believe all things can be made holy.


We seek creative, simple, transformative community, following in the way of Love.


We are spiritual seekers, agnostics and atheists, long-term Christians, neighbors and friends.


We are seeking to build and reveal the beloved community of justice, hope, and beauty here, for the life of the neighborhood and the world.

 
 

Our Values

 
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Our Spiritual Call

 

Jesus tells his followers, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)


What is life-giving religious practice and community building in a post-religious age?


What is ‘good urbanism’ in the early 21st century?


Our tradition phrases this by asking, “What does the beloved community made in God’s image look like when it has sidewalks?”


Come, listen and speak, and build together with us a meeting place for the neighborhood’s many communities and questions, a progressive school for love and justice-building, a community of reconciliation and creativity, a place of joy.


Most Recent Reflections

 
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Fr. Mark Genszler loves bicycling, poetry, gardens, and good urbanism.

Spending his adult years in the Pacific Northwest, the Peace Corps, and southern Vermont, Mark attended the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan, and is happy to be trying to follow Jesus in the way of peace here in northwest Brooklyn.

Mark and his husband Christo enjoy building family and community in such a friendly neighborhood.

“My great-grandparents were all Brooklyn people, and it is a deep rooting to return.”

Meet him for a chat -- whether in need, collaboration, or simple neighborliness.


 Quick History

 

Christ Church was founded on the wave of affluence and confident urban expansion following the opening of the Erie Canal, an economic transformation wrought in both New York City and Brooklyn in the 1830s. The parish organized in 1835, and the church building was completed in 1841-42. The building is one of the older ones in continuing use in this part of Brooklyn.

The building’s prominence is also due to it being an early commission completed by Richard Upjohn - father of the Gothic Revival movement in the United States - designed at the same time Upjohn was working on Trinity Church, Wall Street. Christ Church was Upjohn’s own parish church; he served on the vestry (governing body) and built a house for his family just a few blocks north on Clinton Street.

Christ Church Cobble Hill Tower
 
Window Detail
Mosaic Detail

The church building was equally known for a Tiffany Studios renovation (1916), some of which survived a subsequent fire (1939) -- particularly a simple mosaic/marble chancel and several nave windows.

In recent years, the church has been difficult to maintain, and additionally suffered lightning strikes. The tower began to collapse in 2012, tragically killing a passer-by. The height of the tower was greatly reduced, a large amount of scaffolding was erected, all by order of the NYC Department of Buildings who also ordered that the nave be vacated.

Christ Church and the Trustees of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island are in the midst of tower/roof repair and initial parapet restoration on the northeast corner of the building. While this is a small step, it is an important one as we look to a future where this historic building may once again serve the needs of the neighborhood.

We gather to pray and worship God in our parish hall, and that part of our building is well used by a variety of community partners (see below for some). Our path as a community these days seeks to live the question: what sort of life-giving community is refounded and expanded, perhaps even amid seeming ruins, as we seek to discern the will and useful work of God for the 21st century?


What does healing and reconciliation for the neighborhood, the earth, and human relationships look like here and now?

 

Volunteers for BloomAgain Brooklyn sort upcycled flowers and make bouquets for delivery to residents at senior centers and hospitals, residences for former domestic violence and homeless victims, and other at risk populations.

Our Neighbors

A short list of our Good Neighbors


Cobble Hill CSA

Christ Church is happy to be a partner with Cobble Hill Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), one of the oldest and longest-running CSAs in Brooklyn.

Visit their website, and join up: fresh, organic vegetables in your neighborhood from Green Thumb Farm. Help heal the earth, and meet your neighbors!

The Episcopal Church

Christ Church is a community within this Christian communion, with roots in the ancient Christian Church, historically through the Church of England (the Anglican Communion). Our local jurisdiction, the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, is an active community pursuing justice and seeking the reconciliation of all things as we proclaim the ‘good news’ of what Jesus embodies and points toward: the reality of God’s life for the world, where all things are being brought to their fullness of being.

Similar to Roman Catholicism in much of our way of praying and in the forms of our services (the liturgy, the Mass), the Episcopal Church nonetheless locates itself in what could be called a progressive position on many issues of the day, from women’s rights to full inclusion of and welcome for LGBTQ+ people.

GreenFaith

Intentionally interfaith and interreligious, GreenFaith engages in environmental and climate justice, from energy audits for houses of worship to international advocacy around environmental racism and ratification of the Paris Climate Accords. Christ Church, and the Episcopal Church in general, see anthropogenic climate warming as a moral and theological issue for our age, and a call to action.

 

Freebird Books

Freebird Books is a few blocks away on Brooklyn’s Columbia Street/Waterfront. Not just a regular community-minded spot, Freebird has long offered space to Books through Bars, a non-profit that collects and ships free books to incarcerated people

Red Hook Farm

Otherwise known as the Red Hook Farm, this organization is such a good neighbor in our world, and on the Red Hook peninsula in general -- healing the earth, teaching agricultural and organic gardening skills, and making lots of compost through their partnership with the Brooklyn Botanical Garden’s Compost Project located at Red Hook farms.

Join in the cycle of life, dying, composting, regenerating. As the Christian tradition has it: all things are being made new.

The Friends of Christ Church Cobble Hill

The Friends of Christ Church Cobble Hill is an emerging collection of those near and far, members and friends, who wish to help Christ Church remain a community space, encouraging vibrant life in the neighborhood

 

BloomAgain Brooklyn

Begun by a neighbor up the street, these volunteers rescue flowers from grocery stores, event venues and other vendors who might otherwise discard this no-longer-sellable beauty, and then make hundreds of lovely bouquets to bring to those who might otherwise never see a flower: residents of nursing homes and hospitals, shelters, and many others. They’re here two days a week, but the chapel retains their wonderful aroma long after they’re gone -- truly a beautiful work.

West Brooklyn Waterfront Mutual Aid

Part of the wider mutual aid network that arose during the coronavirus pandemic, these volunteers and organizers bring diapers, food, air conditioners… and all sorts of aid to neighbors, giving and receiving in measure. Christ Church Cobble Hill is very happy to offer space and joyful collaboration in this work, which came in part from our friendship with the local Buy Nothing movement. Behold: the kingdom of God is within and among you!

Now regularly sitting zazen at Christ Church on Saturdays, the Zen Center shares many values with the Anglican/Episcopal tradition within Christianity. We look to live in to a future of shared work in this corner of the world — Episcopal practitioners, Zen practitioners, neighbors and friends — in the embodied practice of learning to be the peace we seek and receive. It is a gift to be in community for the life of the world.