For years Pastor Clay Peck dreamed of planting a new, gospel-centered, creative and contemporary congregation which would especially reach out to people who were disconnected from God or from church.  In August of 1995 he wrote a document on his computer entitled, “What If?” where he outlined steps to take in starting a new congregation if the opportunity ever presented itself.  Clay, having grown up in Colorado, even wrote down a dream location – “a bedroom community north of Denver, Colorado.” Clay and his wife Selene, decided to put it before the Lord in prayer.

In December of that year a small group of Christian friends met together in Fort Collins, Colorado to discuss the possibility of starting a new church that would be fresh, relevant and outreach-oriented.  Through what now seems like a series of miracles, they came across Clay’s name and asked him to come do a weekend presentation.  Clay talked about the importance of keeping the gospel of grace the main thing.  Relationships were developed that led to a decision to team up together to launch a new congregation.

Clay and his family moved to Colorado in June of 1996.  Throughout that summer the expanding core group met in mountain parks for informal worship, fellowship, and vision-casting.  We studied biblical principles for how a healthy church should be planted and participated in the first membership class.  Grace Place began officially with our first public worship service the second weekend of September, 1996 at the Berthoud High School.

From the start, Grace Place was a regional congregation with participants coming from cities surrounding Berthoud.  For the first four years the church met in rented facilities.  Due to schedule conflicts we bounced around to different locations including the Metrolux Theaters in Loveland, Longmont High School, a couple different churches in Longmont (where we shared the facility), and Turner Middle School in Berthoud.

The congregation numbered just over 200 when we remodeled and moved into our own building at 250 Mountain Ave.  Since then we have grown to more than 1000 with multiple weekend services.  Grace Place has become a seven-day-a-week ministry, building bridges to the community through creative endeavors such as The Lighthouse Café and Five Stones Student Center.  Stay tuned—the best is yet to come!