City of Grace Mesa

To better understand who we are you must first understand where we come from.

The history of City of Grace began with two large churches embracing a dynamic vision to unite as one church on two thriving campuses.

Pastors Terry and Judith Crist planted CitiChurch in 2000 with a small church planting team gathered from their previous church plant in Tulsa Oklahoma. During the first three years the church met in a number of temporary locations before settling in an elementary school in North Scottsdale. Remarkably, in the fourth year, this fledgling congregation sacrificially gave one million dollars in two cash offerings to buy three acres of prime real estate. Year five brought about an official capital stewardship program and the completion of a new worship center and administrative building. As hundreds of people came to Christ and settled into the church family, the campus proved to be too small and the Church purchased three more acres adding additional parking and a youth center.  In order to keep up with the dynamic growth, CitiChurch then opened a second campus in the downtown arts district of Scottsdale. 

In stark contrast, Word of Grace has a much longer history. It began in 1980 with Charles McHatton establishing Gospel Echoes Eastside Bible Church in Mesa. In 1986, the church came under the dynamic leadership of Dr. Gary Kinnaman who led the church through a series of strategic changes including: renaming the church “Word of Grace,” securing a new church campus, and building a 2200 seat auditorium and a state-of-the-art Family Life Center. By early 2000 the church had grown to almost 6000 members. The church now sits on seventeen acres in the heart of Mesa and seeks to extend God’s grace to the surrounding community through community outreach programs, tutoring, recovery, and the global community through a commitment to fight AIDS in Africa.

When Pastor Gary decided to pursue God’s call on his life to mentor and network pastors as a “Pastor-at-Large”, Word of Grace began to search for a new senior pastor. While in the middle of a national search, Terry Crist approached Gary and proposed that Word of Grace consider merging with CitiChurch as “one church on two campuses.” After months of prayer and dialogue the board of directors of each church voted unanimously to unite under the leadership of Terry Crist as the Senior Pastor, thereby giving birth to one new church, City of Grace.