Our Story

The History of Lyndale UCC

Mission Statement

Lyndale United Church of Christ is a growing faith community:

Deepening our questions and spirituality,
Embodying God’s healing and love,
Building a more just world here and now.

We may be over a hundred years old, but our thinking is not. We are proudly a Just Peace and Open and Affirming congregation for LGBTQ folks. In 2006 we became the first congregation in Minnesota to vote for Marriage Equality for all couples and discontinue legal wedding ceremonies until all couples could be married in Minnesota in August 2013. Our legacy of justice and healing work continues through our Center for Sustainable Justice, where our ministry most recently focuses on #BlackLivesMatter.

Years Lyndale UCC has been around

Lyndale started out in 1884, a small wooden chapel on the corner of Lake and Lyndale in Minneapolis, MN.  Since then, we’ve moved several times, but all within just a few blocks of our birthplace. Most recently, we made the decision to become more environmentally and financially sustainable and we became one of the three congregations that make up The SpringHouse Ministry Center, along with Salem Lutheran Church and First Christian Church.

With three raw sanctuary spaces in SpringHouse, all three congregations are able to worship at 10:30am separately. Yet we’re intentional about our life together, sharing a strong Sunday School, youth ministry, some justice activities, a few staff, our coffee hours, and occasional combined worship.  The three churches each bring rich history and identity, and commitment to this shared, sustainable facility and ecumenical life.

Back in the day, a spring house was a small house or shed built over the place where a spring emerged from the ground. The spring’s natural cooling offered a cool place to store perishables and a safe place from which to draw water before the water flowed out over the land. A theme in the building and design process has been water—healing water, baptismal water. SpringHouse Ministry Center is a place from which healing waters flow forth into the neighborhood and beyond.