A Brief Background

John W. Utterback and his wife, Florence, started the Union Sunday School in Topanga in 1933. Using his residence, Utterback formed a corporation, naming it Topanga Union Church. The Articles of Incorporation clearly spell out the church as a non-profit, non-denominational religious corporation. Utterback was a member of The American Sunday School Union, a Philadelphia-based religious organization dedicated to starting Sunday Schools across the nation. This organization is now called American Missionary Fellowship, and Topanga Christian Fellowship (TCF) still has ties to this highly respected group.

In 1944, the present land site was purchased from Karl A. Mathison, and construction began! The church bylaws prohibited debt, so local families joined together and pitched in.

In 1951, Streeter Blair of Leucadia, CA, a dealer in early American furniture, found the bell for the church. Weighing 250 pounds, the bell you hear ringing every Sunday morning once hung in a Dutch church in Lebanon, PA for more than a century, and it was believed to have been in Europe long before that.

The church building was finished in 1953. In 1957, the church changed its name to Topanga Community Church. In 1994 the name was once again changed, this time to Topanga Christian Fellowship. While there have been interior improvements due to maintenance and up-keep, there have not been any exterior structural changes. You will find the church to be nearly the same as when it officially opened its doors in 1953. It is, in fact, a designated California point of historical interest.