St. Peter's dates back to Whitsunday (May 29, 1887), when an Evening Prayer service was first celebrated by two lay readers in the parlor of the home of Charlotte Givens. Just one month later, on the Feast of St. Peter & St. Paul (June 29,1887), the Episcopal mission's first regular service was held in a store front on Clark Street. Members of the quickly developing Episcopal congregation took the name of St. Peter's to honor the great Apostle, who preached the first Whitsunday sermon in Jerusalem.

St. Peter's grew rapidly due to its location. Lakeview was an up and coming Chicago suburb, populated by the wealthy who sought to build their mansions along the shores of Lake Michigan. By 1888, the growing congregation has its own worship space -- a small wood frame chapel on Fletcher Street near Clark Street. About that same time, one of the lay readers who lead the original Whitsunday Evening Prayer service, Samuel Cook Edsall, went to seminary. He was ordained deacon and then became a priest in 1889. In 1890, while under the leadership of then Vicar Edsall, St. Peter's Mission was raised to parish status, Fr. Edsall was installed as the first rector and the congregation bought its current West Belmont Avenue property. By then the parish's membership was reaching 600. The Windy City was in the midst of its Gilded Age, as mansions sprang up along Lake Shore Drive, developing it as one of Chicago's prestigious residential streets in the late19th century. St. Peter's grew as a result.

The church's membership soon topped the one thousand mark and it became apparent that the small wooden oratory -- which had been moved to the West Belmont location -- could not accommodate the explosive growth. The growing congregation had grandiose plans and approached famed Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb to design a church befitting the Lakeview area. St. Peter's is only six blocks west of Lake Shore Drive and Belmont Harbor, which is one of the protected harbors in Chicago's harbor chain.

Cobb was looking at designing a Romanesque structure, a popular style of the era. However, the financial panic of 1893 quickly put an end to those hopes. When plans were again being considered for the building of a new church, a young Chicago architect, William A. Otis, was hired. His plans were for a 700 seating capacity Gothic style church more in keeping with 19th century Anglican church designs. That edifice was completed by Easter Sunday (April 14, 1895), when the first service was held, celebrating Jesus' Resurrection.

St. Peter's continued to grow at a phenomenal rate during the early years of the 20th century, with more than 3,500 baptized souls in the registry, making the Lakeview congregation the largest Episcopal parish west of the Allegheny Mountains of the eastern Appalachian chain. It was even thought that the church would have to expand to accommodate the increase in membership, but eventually the growth stabilized and funds were used to make modifications "in keeping with the liturgical taste of the parish during that era."

As the nation withstood two world wars, so did St. Peter's. Following WWII, Fr. John H. Scambler became the post-war rector. The church and its surrounding community was starting to show signs of massive change. Baby boomer parents were settling in other Chicagoland suburbs, taking their children with them, and the Lakeview area rapidly fell into decay.

As the population of the area shifted, the membership of St. Peter's took a nose dive. By the 1960's, it was the Episcopal Church of the Advent in Logan Square, and not St. Peter's on Belmont, that had the largest Episcopal congregation in the Diocese of Chicago. At that time, things were dire as St. Peter's teetered on the brink of closing. Fr. Scambler would only celebrate the Service of Holy Communion on a monthly basis, with the other Sundays having a simple Morning Prayer service, a common phenomenon for that era. Many mid-20th century Episcopal churches celebrated a once-a-month Sunday Eucharist with Morning Prayer and Sermon being the most common worship experience available.

Not only did Lakeview's population shift, but the area also changed and little by little the homosexual crowd moved in, developing its own "gayborhood", called Boystown, in Lakeview. St. Peter's, which is totally encompassed by Lakeview's "gayborhood". opened wide its red arched doors in welcome, as did Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church. The homosexual-friendly Catholic church is just one block west of St. Peter's on Belmont.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel has a strong Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach (AGLO) created by the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin. The Belmont Catholic church has one of the largest, albeit few, LGBT welcoming Catholic congregations in America. AGLO was controversially brought into being and authorized by the Archdiocese of Chicago while under the leadership of Cardinal Bernardin.

Chicago has the third largest LGBT community in the United States, only behind New York and Los Angeles in numbers, and followed by San Francisco's homosexual community. Recent research shows that 114,449 self-profess to be LGBT persons out of Chicago's 2.5 million population.

Chicago's "gayborhood" had its early beginnings during the Roaring Twenties, but it was during the 1960's, after Illinois became the first state to repeal its sodomy laws, that Boystown really took off and it became an "LGBT-friendly oasis in an otherwise hostile city" and the center of Chicago's homosexual culture.

It was also during that time that St. Peter's membership began to crumble and Church of the Advent claimed the bragging rights as the largest Episcopal church in Chicago.

St. Peter's membership continues to dwindle, although more than one million visitors annually pour into Boystown for the Chicago Gay Pride Parade, and it is the closest Episcopal church to Wrigley Field -- home of the Chicago Cubs. The open air baseball stadium can seat more than 41,000 each game day and Chicago's skyline can be seen from home plate.

Nowadays, according to the latest Episcopal Church 2014 stats, St. Peter's has a baptized membership of fewer than 200 and an ASA of fewer than 80. The church was built to seat 700 and at one time it was even considered too small. Now the church is configured to seat 350 wedding guests. St. Peter's Plate and Pledge income is about $160,000.

St. Peter's website shows that it has a staff of four: an interim rector, Samuel Colley-Toothaker; an assisting woman priest, Ellen Wondra; a female deacon, Nancy Meyer; and a 20-something organist, Charlie Carpenter, who, in 2011, was still in high school. The website shows the Class of 2018 and Class of 2019 vestry members, and the church treasurer. However, there are no junior nor senior wardens listed.

Only four Episcopal churches in Chicago are listed as Integrity Believe Out Loud LGBT Welcoming congregations: Trinity Episcopal, St. John's Episcopal, the Episcopal Church of Our Savior and Grace Episcopal. The Episcopal Church of the Advent is still listed, even though it closed last week, and St. Peter's isn't listed on Integrity's website.

St. Peter's does take pride in its wedding venue.

"St. Peter's is one of the most beautiful sacred spaces in the Lakeview/Boystown neighborhood and in the entire City of Chicago," the church's website proclaims. "Marriage is a gift of God and a symbol of God's love for His Church. Both opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples are welcome to celebrate their weddings at St. Peter's and to use St. Peter's space for wedding receptions. St. Peter's has been blessing same-sex unions for three decades and is delighted the State of Illinois has finally decided to recognize those unions, as well."

The website goes on to explain: St. Peter's conducts marriages on behalf of opposite-sex and same-sex couples. The rite of Holy Matrimony is used for opposite-sex couples and the rite of Holy Union is used for same-sex couples. At least one of the parties must be a baptized Christian."

St. Peter's also suggests that visitors to its website "take a moment to read this letter from our bishop, the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey D. Lee, celebrating marriage equality's arrival in Illinois." The Land of Lincoln first allowed same-sex civil unions in 2011, and upgraded that to same-sex marriage two years later.

Other than providing a welcoming place for homosexual weddings, St. Peter's doesn't seem to be aggressively evangelizing the wider LGBT community as is its near neighbor -- Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church.

Mount Carmel, which has an all-male ministerial staff of four priests and three deacons, has launched an ambitious parish transformation plan which includes actively engaging the LGBT community through providing a weekly AGLO Sunday evening Mass, as well as identifying and ministering to alienated and marginalized groups such as LGBT persons, the divorced, the disabled, and the elderly for greater community involvement and evangelization. Although, "officially", the Catholic Church does not accept the active homosexual lifestyle and considers that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered", Our Lady of Mount Carmel seems to have no problem in energetically ministering to the LGBT crowd living in Chicago's Boystown.

These are the very same people who need to be evangelized by the Gospel message and need to be ministered to. They could fill St. Peter's empty pews.

Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to VirtueOnline