History
Christ Church of Los Altos History
Christ Episcopal Church, Orange Avenue, C 1915
In 1913 a group of Episcopalians met on Palm Sunday to worship in the upper room of a building in downtown Los Altos. The group received mission status from the Diocese of California and soon bought two lots on Orange Avenue, just one block from downtown. The cornerstone of the small English-style church was laid in April 1914, and the church was dedicated that August.
Through the next 50 years, as the orchards gave way to ranch-style houses, the church grew with the town. By the 1950s, the Sunday School was bursting at the seams.
Easter 1951, CC Church School Children, Orange Avenue.
In 1954 church members bought an orchard plot on Border Road. After acquiring two more parcels, the church sold the Orange Avenue property to Foothills Congregational Church. Two parishioners took down the original 1913 bell and stored it until it could be hung outside the new sanctuary.
The first buildings erected on the new site were the parish hall and three wings of classrooms that could house a school. Sunday services were held in the parish hall until the sanctuary was completed in 1968.
Christ Church parish hall, early 1960’s
In 1984 a windows committee commissioned the French artist Gabriel Loire to create four glowing walls of chunky dalles-de-verre glass—huge stained-glass windows for the sanctuary. In conjunction with the campaign to fund the windows, church members raised an equal amount of money to endow an outreach fund to serve the needs of others beyond the parish, locally, regionally, and internationally.
In 2005, then Rector the Rev. Dr. Malcolm Young established a parish preschool, named Ventana - Spanish for “windows” - after the stunning display in the sanctuary. Ventana School has grown from an early childcare program into a vibrant, Reggio-inspired Pre- and Elementary School serving children from age two through fifth grade.
Christ Church continues to be a community the celebrates the intersections of the arts and Christ’s mission for justice and mercy. In 2012, we welcomed the innovative choral ensemble Convivium as artists-in-residence, exploring through quarterly concerts and other special events themes such as LGBT identity, war, the refugee crises, and more recently the #MeToo movement. The spiritual lives of students at Ventana are being nourished through inclusive, mindfulness-based weekly community gatherings called Wondering Time. Since 2022, our participation in the Vital+Thriving Congregations initiative has opened our eyes to the spiritual longing present in our neighborhood and Silicon Valley more broadly, leading to a series of experiments and emerging ministries such as Community Dinners, Sacred Hikes, and Interfaith Collaborations. We also host various themed retreats exploring lived experiences of grief, awe, and belonging, and introducing participants to modalities such as yoga and contemplative practice.
2024 was a big year for our congregation! We joined other communities of faith, among them Episcopal Churches, at Silicon Valley PRIDE, affirming our practice of God’s radical love and acceptance of all, including those identifying as LGBTQ+. We hosted a multi-lingual Eucharist as part of the Peninsula Deanery convocation. We’re exploring innovative forms of adult formation, including unpacking historically misunderstood biblical texts as sources of insight and connection. And finally, this year we completed a large kitchen remodel, roof replacements across half our campus, saw solar panels installed on the Rectory, and completed the construction of two new classrooms to house Ventana’s vibrant Elementary program.
