Our Mission
Mt. Tabor Presbyterian Church, as a people called by God,
experiences God’s unconditional love through Jesus.
We know that the Holy Spirit is at work in our world ahead of us.
We worship together, and follow Jesus by:
opening our doors,
sharing sacred space,
listening, serving,
creating, and learning.
All this we do in the hope that God’s shalom will be made real and tangible
for the healing of our neighborhoods and the nations.
~
Our Story
Mt. Tabor Presbyterian Church organized as a church in 1892 and built a wood structure on the corner of 55th and Belmont. That building was moved down to the corner of 55th and Stark in 1910 to make room for the stone structure which now stands in its place, and on its original foundation. In 1929, the building was expanded and the Parish House was added to give the Sunday School program its new home. The Russell Wing was added for classrooms (downstairs) and offices (upstairs) in 1965. From the first, the buildings here were funded by community and congregation and were intended to be used as worship and community space.
Over the life of this congregation, its fortunes have ebbed and flowed, as have all communities. After 100 years of a vibrant and bustling congregational life, things began to change. Parts of the building lay empty much of the time, most of the doors remained locked except for Sunday morning. The building itself fell into disrepair, which led the congregation to become re-energized around a re-building program at the turn of the millennium. The restored structure continued to look for the new life which would make its home here, while the congregation continued to change. The warm, stained-glass-lit space on the southeast corner had become an elegant storage room, which smelled of dust. But from the dust, seeds of a new vision began to emerge. This could be a space for gathering again, as it was intended in the beginning.
As a step on the journey toward this new life, we opened our doors to the community again on June 23, 2009 with the grand re-opening of the Bell Tower entrance on the corner, long boarded up, to a newly renovated coffeehouse and community space: Taborspace. Months later, the Taborspace Partners – small businesses and non-profit groups – began to take up residence. These were folks who needed space in order to do their work of healing, creating, teaching, serving, and caring for the earth. Their purposes found a home in this space created to do exactly these things. So now we are three streams in one river – Congregation, Taborspace, Taborspace Partners – together in the task of making shalom real and tangible on the corner of 55th and Belmont in SE Portland, Oregon.
5441 SE Belmont St., Portland, OR 97215 (503) 234-6493
Mt. Tabor Presbyterian Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
