Church wasn’t just a place you went to on Sunday, remembers Janet Willett Kennedy. The church was the center of the community where people came together throughout the week.

For a while Saturday, Hillsgrove United Methodist Church – now merged with Washington Park United Methodist under the name Open Table of Christ – was that place for the community to gather.

Members of the youth fellowship, choir, Sunday school, and United Methodist Women were there, as were other groups including the Boy Scouts of Hillsgrove Troop 2.

Kennedy, who now lives in Alabama, suggested a Hillsgrove reunion almost a year ago. Dates were suggested and nothing seemed to work. Finally, says Clarice Gothberg – who loved the idea and soon rallied Helen Gage, Joan White, Clayton Howard, and the Rev. Richard Garland to be on the committee – the group just picked the weekend of Oct. 1.

The roots of the church go back to 1879, when The Elizabeth Mill owned by Thomas Jefferson Hill was the center of a small village, Hills Grove. The mill workers lived in 16 tenement homes and life centered on the mill, a school with a single teacher, and a store that also served as the post office. As Janice Place tells in a book she published about the church history for its 110th anniversary in 1994, Phoebe Westcott started a Sunday school with the help of the East Greenwich Methodist Episcopal Church. The school that met in the schoolhouse included Bible classes for “little boys and little girls” as well as young men and young ladies and adult Bible classes. It wasn’t long before the membership decided they wanted their own church, and in 1884 the Methodist Episcopal Church at Hills Grove was formed. Thomas Hill donated the land and $3,000 for the church, which was dedicated in 1888.

Much of that history was on display Saturday as those with connections to the church gathered in the church basement hall. Among the items were church ledgers recording Sunday collections and individual donations of 10 cents. There were also more current photographs from church events.

Gothberg compiled an extensive list of church programs and activities throughout the decades. In addition to social activities such as a youth sock hop, chicken suppers, and camping trips, the list includes the creation of the Ladies Helping Hand Society in the 1920s, which assisted with meals during the depression years; the creation of a Committee on World Peace in the 1950s that met to “pray, study and act for World Peace”; and how in the 1960s Hillsgrove was the first Methodist church in the country to adopt a Declaration of Conscience protesting segregation within the church.

As the former Hillsgrove congregation renewed acquaintances, parishioners from Zion Korean United Methodist Church, to whom the property was deeded last year, worked the kitchen. Even as the food was spread on tables, the stories continued. Jody King, who had retrieved his Boy Scout jacket with all its badges and photographs from troop events, joined arms with Don Gothberg, who was the scoutmaster at the time, and former fellow scouts Steve and Bill McDonald.

Kennedy told how her grandparents met at the church. Place, who was a member of St. Francis Church on the other side of the railroad tracks from Hillsgrove, recalled how she married in Hillsgrove in an ecumenical service.

With lunch waiting, Clarice Gothberg summoned everyone’s attention. Garland, who later would lead worship in the church sanctuary, gave grace, thanking the Lord “for the gift of this place.”

Gothberg was delighted with the way things were coming together, and she thought with dreary weather forecast for Sunday, Saturday’s events would be the highlight of the reunion. On Sunday, the group gathered for a picnic and sporting events at Camp Aldergate.

“One thing you can count on with Methodists,” said Gothberg, “they will eat and at some point of the day they will sing.”

She wasn’t disappointed.