Hill United Presbyterian Church’s yearlong centennial observance culminates this weekend with a dinner Saturday at the Tanglewood Center in Lyndora and Sunday’s centennial worship service at the church.

Plans for celebrating the church’s 100 years of existence began in June 2011.

Hill United started as an extension of St. Andrews United Presbyterian Church, which built Hill’s building at 501 Second St. in 1911, but started a church there the following year.

Because St. Andrews had been called First United Presbyterian, the new church was known as Second United Presbyterian. In 1958, Second United became Hill United Presbyterian, possibly because many of its congregation lived near Institute Hill.

“We have 355 members,” said Hill’s present pastor, Rev. Clark Sawyer. “One time, maybe in the 1950s, early ’60s, there were as many as 1,040 members.

“People moved out of the city,” Sawyer said. “At one time this was very much a neighborhood congregation. The congregation was so much a part of this neighborhood.”

At the dinner, which begins with a 4:30 p.m. social hour, a “Memories of the Hill” video, featuring interviews with 15 people who have been members of the church for 50 years or more, will be shown and memorabilia from church members will be on display.

Favors for those attending will include a centennial CD with pictures including the six ministers who have served Hill United in the past century, a booklet of church history and another booklet featuring missionaries the church has supported over the years.

Dolly Fetterman, who served as church secretary for 26 years before her retirement, will present the congregation with a watercolor painting of the church she created.

On Sunday, a centennial worship service will be at 10:30 a.m. followed by a social hour in the Fellowship Hall in the church basement, which was renovated for the 100-year anniversary.

A signature quilt, signed by members of the congregation, was installed in the hall recently, said Barb Bishop of Butler Township, who belonged to an informal group of quilters who created the 60-inch-by-60-inch quilt hanging in observance of the centennial.

“It was completed about six months ago, but it was framed and hung up last month,” said Bishop.

“Two of us did the bulk of the work putting it together,” added Bishop. “We had blank squares and people wrote their names, or in memory of their parents, and we set it into a design, and the colors were chosen to represent the colors of the Presbyterian Church: red, blue and gold.”

Bishop said it took six people six months to collect the signatures. Then it took her and fellow quilter C.J. Mitchell of Butler another month or so to put it together in preparation of having it machine quilted.

Sunday’s service will mark the end of the church’s “flashback” project, inserts containing church history placed into church bulletins.

Hill United’s church bulletins, starting in 1919, were bound into books, said Nancy Scott Slezak, who was on the original committee with Lorma Weaver Hill, Bea Welch and the late Nancy Huth Thompson.

The group quickly grew to 30 volunteers, Slezak said.

“We had 30 people who each took on a year or two or three and compiled interesting announcements” for present-day bulletins, she said.

“There are too many other people for me to rattle off, who were willing to take a year and in many cases they’d say ‘That was so much fun reading, may I have another year to do?’”

Slezak said the original intent was to cover one year in one insert, but some of the years, particularly the 1940s and World War II, required multiple inserts. The inserts began appearing in church bulletins last fall.

Slezak said the committee decided to end April 1 with the year 2000.

The last few bulletin inserts, she said, have concerned the history of Presbyterian women and were compiled by Welch. They will end with Sunday’s bulletin.

“I think for a lot of people who have been at Hill for a lot of years, it’s been good memories,” said Slezak. “For newer folks, it’s ‘My oh my, look what the church has done over the years.’”

“It’s been a good and enriching experience for us, relative to bringing us together as a church family,” said Sawyer. “In particular, bringing us together around the theme: Living in His Presence: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

“We’re of course looking forward with eagerness of going into the future and serving the Lord Jesus Christ through this church,” added Sawyer.