Creating a world living in love...one
heart and thought at a time
Purpose
The Golden Gate Center for Spiritual Living
is a welcoming, inviting and nurturing community of individuals
and families. We practice and teach practical spiritual
tools for people based on Science of Mind principles. We
believe everything and everyone is an expression of God.
We commit to doing everything with excellence and joy. We
experience love, joy, beauty, wholeness and prosperity.
What
We Offer
We accomplish our purpose through our
Sunday service celebrations, classes, workshops and small
groups, practitioner services, prayer, meditation and visioning,
community service and outreach.
Values
Love • Abundance •
Integrity • Living in Principle • Joy •
Excellence •Transformation
With conscious openness and ease, we accept
for our Golden Gate Center community a vision of expansion
that is inclusive, inviting, spacious, welcoming, comfortable
and nurturing...allowing for greater variety, beauty, diversity,
abundance, clarity and limitless joy within the ongoing,
loving evolution of the Divine as us.
It is my desire, my vision, and my prayer
for this community to have a home of its own—
...a plot of land, a
building, walls and door threshholds, closets and a kitchen,
teaching and healing spaces of our very own.
...a physical place where
roots can go down and art can go up, where our people may
be blessed as babies, married as adults, and memorialized
as ancestors with their names on permanent plaques in spaces
that grow hallowed because of the eyes that look upon them
for years and years.
...a sanctuary, in the
truest sense of the word, in which hearts and minds are
shifted by the beauty and holiness that lives there, all
the time.
...a site with our energy in it
and our name on it, so that people who are drawn to our
teachings and vision may easily find us, come in, and belong.
...a space for our children
and young people where their expression decorates it and
their presences blesses it, constantly and consistently.
...a place of empowerment
where lessons in the Science of Mind philosophy, sacred
leadership, and interpersonal skills can be facilitated,
with all materials and plans easily accessible at all times.
...a space of business
and sales where books and products that reflect our philosophy
may be made available to the buying public during regular
business hours throughout the week.
...a holy place where
worship, celebration, gathering, learning, praying, and
playing can happen any time we want.
...a beautiful environment
that emanates sacredness, inclusivity, invitation, wisdom,
oneness, and the special and unique essence that is the
Golden Gate Center for Spiritual Living, now and ongoing
into the future.
As a member of the Golden Gate Center
for Spiritual Living, you find your spiritual home in our
community and are dedicated to its well-being and growth,
as we are to yours. Ideally, as a member you are active,
loyal, and supporting, and passionate about being a stakeholder
in this spiritual community. A stakeholder is someone who
has accepted membership, pledges or gives in a consistent
and conscious manner, gives sacred service, and attends
Sunday Service regularly. As a stakeholder, your voice is
welcomed and listened to.
To find out more about the Golden Gate
Center and membership, attend a new member orientation,
which consists of an orientation meeting and a reception.
If, after attending the meeting and reception, you decide
to accept membership in our community, complete the Membership
Agreement Form and participate in a new member ceremony
held during a Sunday Service following the orientation.
The new member process is scheduled several times during
the year. Check the Calendar
or Events section
of the website for dates and times.
Click
here to download a Membership Agreement Form. If you
have decided to become a member, you can complete and return
this form to the office at any time. We will keep it in
our files and notify you when the next new member orientation
is scheduled.
The Golden Gate Center for Spiritual Living—formerly
the Golden Gate Church of Religious Science, Marin Community
Christ Church of Religious Science, and in the beginning,
the San Francisco Community One Church of Religious Science—has
a history as varied as those who gave it life and nurtured
its growth.
On Easter Sunday, April 3, 1983, at the
Theatre on the Square just a block from San Francisco's
Union Square, Rev. Lloyd Tupper realized a dream. Both of
his Science of Mind teachers, Reverends Robert Scott and
Raymond Charles Barker, had constantly reminded him that
his true place was to start a great movement in San Francisco
and that everything he had done before was to prepare him
for that day.
Rev. Lloyd, raised Catholic in Boston
with an accent to match, had found his true calling after
a successful entrepreneurial career, including a partnership
with Roy Kroc of McDonald's and a tree farming and reforestation
business in Arizona. After graduating from the Ernest Holmes
School of Ministry in San Jose in 1972, Rev. Lloyd's first
two pulpits were in Napa and San Mateo. When he founded
the San Francisco Community One Church in 1983, he was a
deathless, ageless being of 40-something who spoke his word
with such flair that seekers of truth came from far and
wide to study with him.
Rev. Lloyd founded the church with two
members of the San Mateo congregation, Erna Martin and Cheryl
Cady, and with Doris Jones who had recently moved from Arizona
to attend ministerial school in San Jose. Doris joined forces
with Rev. Lloyd to head up the first Ministry of Prayer.
She also has the distinction of being the only current member
who was with Rev. Lloyd that first Easter Sunday in 1983.
One of the people attending in those early days was Marcia
Sutton, later to become our minister.
The first classes were held at the Cogswell
College facility on Nob Hill, coordinated by Karyl Jones
(now Rev. Karyl Huntley), the first Director of Education,
who is now our Senior Minister.
By December, eight months after the doors
first opened, the church moved to the Scottish Rite Temple
on 19th Avenue at Sloat to accommodate an expanding congregation
and escape downtown congestion. Sunday morning attendance
grew, and an early morning healing service was added. Rev.
Lloyd, a scholar of the works of Judge Thomas Troward, added
a monthly class that met at his historic schoolhouse in
Freestone, teaching Troward's Bible Mystery, Bible Meaning.
The monthly class continued for three years, in good weather
meeting on Rev. Lloyd's gazebo surrounded by daffodils,
green fields and cows. The schoolhouse was also the site
of opulent Thanksgiving feasts, an occasional outdoor service
or barbecue, and much merriment.
In 1984, the offices were moved from Rev.
Lloyd's Pacific Heights apartment to office space on Bridgeway
in Sausalito. Soon after, Marin members began attending
a Wednesday night healing service and an early Sunday "come-as-you-are"
service there. About a year later, the church, motivated
by the tremendous support of its Marin members, moved its
Sunday celebration from the Scottish Rite Temple and San
Francisco to Corte Madera. The newly-named Marin Community
Christ Church of Religious Science planned to focus
on families, children, and future growth. For several months,
the church met at the Corte Madera Inn before finding its
current rental site at the Corte Madera Recreation Center.
In January, 1988, Rev. Lloyd took a medical
sabbatical and two leaders emerged during the transition.
Karyl Jones (now Rev. Karyl Huntley), a first-year ministerial
student who had shared the pulpit with Rev. Lloyd by adding
her "practical applications" to his talks, took
over the pulpit. At that point, she had only given two full
sermons. Lloyd Strom, President of the Board of Trustees
and a practitioner student (later to become Rev. Lloyd Strom
and another of our future ministers) also proved to be an
inspirational leader whose devotion to the church kept it
afloat.
Karyl described that era: "It was
truly an example of the expansion of Spirit in a way no
one expected. It was a time filled with challenge, excitement
and sadness, a time of growth and empowerment before we
realized that the growth and empowerment were happening."
(In July of 1989, Rev. Karyl started the Spiritual Arts
Church of Religious Science in San Francisco with Gregg
Tallman.)
In March, 1988, on his doctor's advice,
Rev. Lloyd announced to a very sad congregation that he
would not be returning. Rev. Jim Munson of Seattle became
his successor in June, 1988. His legacy was to enlist more
ownership from the congregation. Within a few months, a
strong core of congregants were involved in a long-range
planning process. A year after he arrived, Rev. Jim had
the opportunity to follow a lifelong dream to work with
his friend, Rev. Fred Vogt, at the Mile Hi Church of Religious
Science in Denver, then the largest church in the movement.
At that same time, Rev. Marcia Sutton
had just graduated from the Ernest Holmes College in Los
Angeles and had read our procurement committee's ad for
a church in search of a minister. She said, "The description
of this church touched my heart. It sang to me. It felt
right. When I came up to candidate, I trusted Spirit to
guide all of us in the best decision for me and for the
church." She became our Senior Minister on September
1, 1989.
Rev. Marcia's successful careers in higher
education and business development and marketing were exactly
what the church needed at that time. Within a year of her
arrival, she had put her expertise to work and, with the
help of the board, staff, and congregation, laid a solid
foundation for the church's financial future.
The history of the Golden Gate Church
of Religious Science would not be complete without mentioning
the legacy of Rev. Kendall Bryson, who for many years headed
up the Marin Church of Religious Science which also met
at the Recreation Center. Dan Sargent, who joined the board
in 1988, summed up our history until this point very succintly:
"Rev. Kendall and Rev. Lloyd gave birth to the idea.
Rev. Jim led us out of Egypt into the desert, and Rev. Marcia
is leading us into the promised land."
Rev. Marcia, joined by Rev. Lloyd Strom,
continued the focus on growing a spiritual community, moving
forward with an ongoing planning process, and looking forward
to the next major step: securing a permanent facility.
Source: Anonymous undated document
found in the files of the Golden Gate Center for Spiritual
Living.
