One of downtown Elgin’s biggest and oldest church buildings — known in recent decades as the Eagle’s Nest — is for sale after the congregation that owns it, Family Life Church, decided to disband.
The three-story, 24,000-square-foot building was erected in 1871 — six years after the Civil War ended — at the northwest corner of Chicago and Geneva streets. For 99 years it held the First Baptist Church of Elgin. Sharing a city block with the First Congregational and First Evangelical (later Faith United Methodists) churches, it and nearby First United Methodist, Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, St. Joseph Catholic, St John’s Lutheran and St. Paul’s United Church of Christ churches inspired old-time Elginites to refer to the area as Holy Hill.
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Signs on doors at the Eagle’s Nest building now say only that “Family Life Church has closed its doors after 17 wonderful years. Blessings to you and yours!”
Contacted Monday at his South Elgin home, Pastor Robert Whitt said the congregation decided to disband and has put the building up for sale.
“We just came to a place where we decided God thought it was time to close,” Whitt said. “There were no issues. Nobody was upset at each other.”
Whitt said about 100 people had been attending the church’s services. He said the congregation was independent, not part of any denomination.
Family Life also has been renting out space in the Eagle’s Nest to the ecumenical group Light and Life Ministries. That group has operated a project called House of Prayer, which used a room in the building for hour-long prayer sessions several days a week dedicated to specific topics such as wisdom for church pastors, ending slavery, etc. The group also has done training in the arts.
Whitt said the future of Light and Life Ministries will depend on who buys the building and what the new owner plans to do with it.
Whitt said he and his wife Stacy, who has been the church’s bookkeeper, are looking into “other paths of ministry.” Longtime leaders in various ecumenical missions in the downtown area, he said that “we will continue to work with Mayor (David) Kaptain and (Police Chief) Jeff Swoboda on projects involving racial unity.”
He said that includes continuing to work with the Love Elgin Day project, which the Whitts helped found four years ago. Twice a year, in April and September, Love Elgin Day mobilizes scores of volunteers from various churches, city agencies and nonprofit groups to offer free medical checkups, dental exams, legal advice, food, clothing and other services to anyone who needs them. Those offering the services set up in several of the downtown church buildings.
The next Love Elgin Day is scheduled for Sept. 24.
First Baptist occupied what is now the Eagle’s Nest from 1871 until 1970, when that congregation moved to a location on Elgin’s far West Side that had more parking. Disaster struck on March 28, 1920, when the “Palm Sunday Tornado” slashed through the downtown area minutes after church services had adjourned. One person was killed inside First Baptist and three in the adjoining First Congregational building.
From 1979 until 2007 what is now the Eagle’s Nest was home to the bilingual Templo Calvario, a church associated with the Assemblies of God denomination. Renamed Discovery Church, that congregation now meets in part of the former Prairie Rock Brewery building in downtown Elgin.