History of the Church

The Sunday School program was the liveliest dimension of the church's program during the 19th century with an enrollment sometimes of up to 40 children.  For the first 50 years of the 20th century, the church was relatively small with a population of working class people, many of whom worked on the massive estates that were constructed in the early 20th century in Chestnut Hill.

During the 1950s, the church experienced a growth spurt, and some of the members moved to the suburbs. A long period of decline began in the 1960s and continued through the 1980s. Despite this decline, and with a generous donation, the current Anders Hall wing of the church was built in the late 1960s. Beginning in the early 1990s, the congregation began to grow again.

In December 2009, the congregation voted to retain its ties to the United Methodist Church while also entering into covenant and affiliating with the United Church of Christ, recognizing that both traditions and denominations offer important gifts and identities for an expanding sense of what it means to be church in and for our time.  On March 31, 2010 in a move to express its new and united identity, the church voted to change its name from Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church to Chestnut Hill United Church.