Then and Now: Central Christian Church

In early Spokane, mainline Christian churches downtown often had the word “central” in their names to distinguish them from the growing number of churches in outlying areas. Central Christian Church stood at Third Avenue and Stevens Street across the street from the Central United Methodist Church at Third and Howard. Central Lutheran Church is a few blocks away at 5th and Bernard.

The Central Christian Church was affiliated with the Disciples of Christ denomination, which has a strong ecumenical outlook. As an ecumenical leader in the city, Central Christian was part of the founding of MidCity Concerns, a center which serves senior and disabled people in the city’s core.

Central Christian Church was founded in 1886 and held its first services in a Congregationalist church, at the YMCA and the Women’s Temperance Union hall.

The church’s first building was a one-room chapel at Third and Post. That building was moved to Third and Stevens in 1900, and a new brick church would rise there in 1901. It would stand for almost 70 years.

The interstate highway system, planned in the 1950s, would bring a freeway through Spokane’s downtown area over Fourth Avenue. Many buildings were moved or demolished to clear the way. The highway took away Central Christian’s large parking lot behind the church.

In 1969, the church sold the building to the Union Oil Company for a service station. The church parted out their historic Moller-Tubal pipe organ and began building a modern church at the corner of 57th Avenue and the Palouse Highway.

As the church celebrated their centennial anniversary in 1986, church members voted to change the name to Covenant Christian Church, reflecting their suburban location. In 2006, the church sold their building on the Palouse Highway to developer Harlan Douglass, who had hoped to sell it to the Walmart corporation for a new store. That project never materialized.

The congregation moved to a new building at 5115 S. Freya Street. In 2014, the church was renamed Origin Church.

And in 2019, the group gave the building, and three acres surrounding it, to the Spokane FāVS organization, which puts out an online publication of local religion news.

It will be used as an interfaith center for worship services, classes, retreats, and celebrations.

Photo captions:

1952: Peak-hour traffic, moving east toward Washington Street, fills Third Avenue. The street carried an average of 1,500 automobiles, trucks and trailers per hour at peak traffic the year after becoming a couplet with Second Avenue. Third was an important part of the east-west route through downtown Spokane. Interstate 90 didn’t relieve the congestion until it was completed two decades later.

Present day: Looking west down Spokane’s Third Avenue shows few buildings remain from the 1952 photo except the New Community Church, which meets at the former Central Methodist Church at far right. A Jack In the Box restaurant sits at the location of the former Central Christian Church. Later, a Union 76 gas station stood at the corner of Third Avenue and Stevens Street from 1971 until about 1990. The church moved out of the downtown area because its parking lot, which faced Fourth Avenue, was displaced by the new Interstate 90 freeway.