---

Church opens just for yuppies
The group of serious-looking twentysomethings and college students meeting in the ballroom of the Wyndham City Center Hotel near Dupont Circle does not look like a church in utero, but starting at 5 p.m. tomorrow, "Grace DC" becomes the District's newest church.

Its first official service — after several years of "unofficial" gatherings — will include a yuppie demographic that traditionally avoids religious commitment: the single and the metropolitan. Seventy percent of Grace's members are young professionals under 30.

Grace DC is part of an effort by an Atlanta-based Presbyterian denomination to begin a network of hip, theologically conservative churches for young urban professionals in the hearts of America's cities....

..."It's part of a movement to plant churches in cosmopolitan, world-class cities," said the Rev. Stephen Um, whose CityLife Church in Boston has 300 members after 23 months. "We reach out primarily to post-everything professional urbanites and bohemians." ...