“The Harvard representatives were on a fact-finding meeting—they were not there to make a commitment,” Wiberg said. “But they certainly absorbed what we told them.”

Power said that she had heard of the congregation’s endowed-chair initiative, but that Harvard had not yet formally considered the proposal.

“Our next step is for us and the congregation to work together and discuss their needs,” Power said.

This is not the first time the congregation has faced threats of losing its chapel and the surrounding property.

In the 1960s, in hopes of raising funds, the Swedenborg seminary tried to sell the chapel property—and the possibility arose of selling the land to Harvard and moving the seminary to California.

But the congregation, opposed to the move, halted such attempts by suing the seminary. The suit rose as high as the Supreme Judicial Court—and the court demanded that the seminary preserve the chapel.

But the court also granted Harvard second right to refusal on the chapel property and allowed the seminary to sell its own building—Sparks House, where Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes now lives—to Harvard. The seminary moved to Newton, where it remains today.

Crisis struck again for the congregation in 1999, when the seminary tried to sell the chapel property again—and proposed a sale to a developer who planned an 11-story, 50-unit apartment building which would use the chapel as a lobby.

This time, neighbors intervened—drafting a petition and posting “Save The Chapel’’ signs around Cambridge. They succeeded in getting the city to grant the property a downzoning order—which requires any building on the property to be no taller than three stories.

“Thankfully, the downzoning order greatly reduced the attractiveness of the property to the developer,” said Jackie B. Lageson, the current chaplain administrator.

Still, fearful of other buyers, the congregation decided to bring the case to court—arguing that the seminary could only sell the property to the congregation or Harvard, who had first and second right to refusal respectively.

But the court ruled that the seminary could sell the property to whomever it wished—dashing the congregation’s hopes of keeping the chapel property.

“We were in a quite a quandary,” Wiberg said.

Luckily for Wiberg and others, the church ministers proposed a solution: a mortgage contract which allows the congregation to purchase the chapel property, worth more than $4 million, if they raised $2 million in two years.

“We are so grateful to the ministers of the church for convincing the congregation and seminary to solve the problem between themselves, rather than the court,” Wiberg said.