History of Grace Chapel

Grace Chapel began in the fall of 1993. After serving as staff pastors at Grace Chapel in Tucson, Arizona, Chris and Mary Meade, along with their three children, moved to Boise, Idaho to start Grace Chapel. Soon after arriving, Staycee Petso joined the Meade family and together they gathered a small group of about twelve people in the living room of Chris and Mary’s Secretariat Street rental house in Boise.

For the next two years, Grace Chapel met in various locations throughout the city (Rodeway Inn, Red Lion Inn Downtowner, Doubletree Inn, Boise Center on the Grove and even a few parks) until, in 1995, the church moved into a renovated leased facility in the Evergreen Plaza Strip Mall near Cole and Ustick.

During this time Grace Chapel grew from a “small living room gathering” to a growing and maturing local church doing two services. It was during this time that Grace's core leadership team came together and galvanized. Today, many of those same men and women who joined Grace Chapel during that season are still a vibrant part of the leadership community.

In 2001, Grace Chapel purchased their own piece of commercial property and with the help of a sister church in the Seattle area, completed a full-blown remodel of a local computer company located on Eldorado Street near Cole and Fairview Avenue in Boise.

The Idaho Statesman ran a feature article on the church entitled, An Act of Grace: Boise Church Builds New Home. Here’s a snippet from the article:

It was absolutely incredible…a total miracle that transformed a business facility into Grace Chapel in six days. Almost 100 volunteers, 45 from Seattle and 50 locally, helped to redo the old computer building from top to bottom. "We believe in church as a team and this came to life for us, doing church as a team."

Not long ago Grace Chapel moved around like gypsies for two years, from the pastor's home to hotels to a store front…The church's 150 members came up with $75,000 in cash toward buying and making the building, thought to be a former Gowen Field barracks, into a real place of worship. The remodeling work, the fence-building, the landscaping and more would all have to be done on a volunteer basis by able church members, a task that seemed endless and daunting.

In a single week the entire project, which Grace Chapel members estimate would have taken professional contractors three months to finish, was all but complete. So now Grace Chapel has a home on a street named after a legendary South American land of riches. Grace Chapel has surely found its Eldorado.

During the next five years, we focused our efforts on evangelism, discipleship training, leadership development and extending the love of Jesus into our community and beyond. Community groups (small Bible studies) were started and gathered weekly throughout the Boise metro area (Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Kuna, and Nampa). As a result, two churches were planted out of Grace Chapel.

In 2006, Grace Chapel acquired the Old Gold’s Gym on Fairview Avenue in what was nothing short of another astounding miracle and act of God's grace. The congregation of Grace, along with some private donors, were able to raise approximately a half a million dollars in cash and purchase and completely remodel the fitness facility into a contemporary, artistic, and functional worship center in the heart of Boise.

As we have grown as a church we have focused on communicating the gospel in creative ways as well as living out the teachings of Jesus in our community. We do this through through compassion, missions, justice, and humanitariam efforts and serving. We are currently assisting a new Bhuantese/Nepali church fellowship get off the ground.

Today, over 400 people represent Grace Chapel. We continue to grow. Grace is a community of diverse people seeking to love one another, love the beautiful community of the Treasure Valley and its people, and love the God who makes it all possible: Jesus Christ.