The Church on Fire

Klondike Community Church

Recently I visited a nearby country church with a tumultuous history.  Built in a burg called Klondike, it was originally a Catholic church.  In the 90’s, the building was hit by lightening.  The volunteer fire department bravely climbed up into the attic and put the fire out, at some risk to their own lives.  Repairs were made and the church went on.

But a few years later, in 2005, the Diocese closed the church, and its members migrated to another nearby parish.  The building sat empty for awhile until two women bought it and tried running a bakery out of the church kitchen.

When that tanked, a nearby family purchased it and decided they would form a new congregation in the building.  They hired a preacher, printed an article in the paper and invited the neighbors.  A few showed up.

But just as traffic began to pick up, another disaster hit: an arson who had started a series of fires in the area broke into the building and lit one in the chancel.  Once again the fire department was called.  The fire charred the walls of the sanctuary and rose up into the steeple, but the building was not lost.

Without enough insurance, but with determined owners and well wishing neighbors, money was raised and repair on the building was carried out by volunteers.  During the restoration, the little band met in an outdoor open shelter, which was cloaked in thick plastic during the winter months.

Today, the building looks beautiful, inside and out. My friend Michael is its current preacher.  A forty-something African-American pastor from Cleveland, Michael came to northern Wisconsin to work as a Christian radio announcer, and has now found himself moonlighting as the church’s spiritual leader.

The day I visited, there were about 25 in worship, despite the sub-zero temperatures outside.  The sanctuary was cheerfully adorned with Christmas poinsettias.  A keyboard player accompanied us on “Softly and Tenderly”.  Then she pulled out a guitar and led us in a cowboy version of “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” Michael, in his conversational style, preached to a room full of pink cheeks and white hair, wondering aloud what it would be like if white church leaders called up black church leaders to just talk about the racial tensions in Ferguson.  He called upon us to remember that Christ died “just for you”, and urged us, out of gratitude for our own salvation, to reach out in community toward others.

After worship, we gathered in the basement for coffee.  There, a church leader named Don told me the story of his church’s multiple encounters with disaster and closure.  The more he told, the more fervent he became in the telling.  It wasn’t religious fervor, exactly, but more like wonder at the persistence and hard work of so many people in the tiny Klondike community who have cared for their disaster-prone building.

Without a a denominational affiliation, a permanent pastor or even sturdy walls, this community is determined to preserve its spiritual gathering place.  Is it possible that something beyond human tenacity is at work here?

I have written previously about resilience in churches.  Sometimes resilience is the result of adaptation and flexibility, and sometimes it comes from sheer stubbornness.   But there may be churches that are resilient because they are just on fire with the Holy Spirit.

Partners in Sacred Place Sharing

SOAR Powerkids

Recently, my church made a connection with an after school program for kids.  They needed a large room for martial arts classes after they lost their space at a nearby school.  They found our building, with its large hall and polished wood floor, and asked if they could rent the space from us for a small fee.  After checking out the insurance arrangements and how furniture would be moved before and after the program, an agreement was reached, and now, two afternoons a week, the upstairs is full of kids kicking and punching the air, testing each others’ strength,planning community service projects and, most remarkable, listening quietly and respectfully to their leader, a female martial arts expert.

The program not only teaches martial arts, it also focuses on character development, bullying prevention and civic responsibility.  While it is not a faith based program, it is consistent with many of the core values we teach kids in our own youth programs.

Your church may be sharing its building with other community organizations: a Scout troupe, an AA meeting, or a yoga class, for example.  You might think of these other groups as “tenants” who help you pay the bills.  But it’s possible that they are co-workers alongside you in the building of God’s reign.

Partners for Sacred Places is an organization that provides resources to help churches team up with other organizations for the building of community life through “mission based space sharing”.

In this Youtube video, they explain how they are creating a network to match local arts and non-profit organizations with churches for space sharing that is not only mutually beneficial for each group, but also creates “social capital” in neighborhoods, helping them build their own cultural life using the “moral and physical” presence of church buildings.  The video points out many other reasons why sharing space is a good idea for your church AND your neighborhood’s vitality.

Check it out!

 

 

 

A Shared Church

Years ago, on a Holy Land tour, I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,  considered by some Christians to be the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial.  I went back a few days later to a Sunday worship service of the Syrian Orthodox Church, and found it was conducted in a small alcove of the church for an ethnic Syrian congregation of about 50 people.  Services of other churches were being conducted in other alcoves located off the main sanctuary.  In a city as plagued by religious division as Jerusalem, I was struck by the ability of Orthodox and Catholic Christians to share space in this way.

Since that visit, I’ve often dreamed of a large church building where several churches, or even different faiths, might worship at different times in cooperation with each other.  And my dream has come true in some places such as Springhouse Ministries in Minneapolis and the Brookville Church in Nassau . I’ve imagined that someday, one of those big mega-churches might be converted to a shared space church for small churches who can’t afford their own buildings, like condos.

I also used to dream of starting a church in a mall.  Just think of all that empty storefront space with big windows where people would walk by, look in, and see that we Christians aren’t ogres, after all!

Then I read this article about a mall in Ft. Myers, Florida that converted all its retail space into churches, synagogues and mosques: one stop faith shopping! As I listened to the article, alas, I realized it was a hoax, and a very funny one!  But even in this played up example of the “church mall”, I recognized a piece of my dream.

From Wikipedia (a slightly more fact-based source than the site above), I learned that simultaneum mixtum is a term coined in 16th Century Germany for a church where public worship was conducted by more than one religious group.  It is said to have been “a form of religious toleration” in the wake of the Reformation, stemming from a situation where both Catholics and Protestants needed worship space.

So it is not so new and cutting edge for churches to share space, and if they could do it in the heat of 16th Century Reformation conflict, we should be able to do it today.  Today, the conflict wouldn’t be about transubstantiation and consubstantiation.  It would more likely be about who gets the kitchen on Saturday morning and who left wax stains on the carpet!

In your community, who might share church space with each other for mutual good and the glory of God?

A Parallel Start in New Orleans

Carrollton UMC

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.  (Jeremiah 29.11)

On a recent mission trip to New Orleans, I visited Carrollton United Methodist Church, where two brand new pastors are dreaming of a new venture: a parallel start.

My group was visiting a senior center that is housed at Carrollton each day, providing lunch and classes in sewing, Spanish language, tai chi, and more.  Guests play Bingo and lounge in the church’s windowed breezeway when the programs are over.

But the senior center is now the most significant ministry occurring at the Carrollton church.  A couple of small non-profits share the building, and they once built showers to host workers who came for Katrina clean-up.  But now the worship community is down to about 30 people and there is a sense that the building is haunted by its own unfinished business: how to be vital not just as a community gathering place, but as a church.

So the United Methodist Church has infused this congregation with funds to hire two new full time pastors, Sione and Billy, who had both started working there the day before we arrived.  These two have the task of maintaining the current organizations that house the building AND launching a new church development there at the same time.  That’s sometimes called a parallel church start.

Our hosts gave us a tour of their meandering building, which in some parts still has the lingering odor of standing flood waters. Its rooms are a mixture of forlorn memories and promising potential.  A large parlor will be used for worship by the older congregation.  The hall pictured above has been used for children’s programs, but badly needs a face lift and some blades for the ceiling fans.  There seemed to be kitchens everywhere we turned, including one in a closet, but none of them looked fit for preparing a large meal.

The closet kitchen

In every room, the two new pastors saw hope.  They were imagining how the rooms could be repaired, revived and filled with new ministry, the way Jeremiah did when he imagined a future for his fallen city :

Thus says the Lord:
I am going to restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob,
    and have compassion on his dwellings;
the city shall be rebuilt upon its mound,
    and the citadel set on its rightful site.  (30.18)

There is no way to move forward in these times except with bold imagination.  But a little money really helps, too!  Kudos to the UMC for investing in the future with these two ambitious leaders.  May God bless them with a future and a hope.

There is not much out there to read about parallel church starts.  From the Episcopal tradition, check out this article, though it’s a bit outdated.  And this recent DOC newsletter mentions a parallel start project in Washington.  If you have more examples of parallel starts, please send them my way!

Turning Burdens into Blessings

The Episcopal Church Building Fund (ECBF) is finally doing something about the growing problem of how church building maintenance is colliding with pursuit of a church’s mission.  They are gathering leaders to talk about how congregations can use their buildings in new ways.

The ECBF will gather on April 28th – 30th in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to discuss ways churches can transform their empty, expensive buildings into uses that complement or fund their true missions.

The ECBF website includes clips from the 2012 ECBF conference, at which Bishop Gregory Rickel and others spoke.  It was in his address at this conference that Rickel used the phrase “Religious Industrial Complex” referring to the grand building campaigns of growing churches during the post WWII boom.  This phrase seems harsh to those who lived through the optimism of that time, but to a younger generation now encumbered by the buildings their parents erected, it seems strangely apt.

Nevertheless, there is hope for churches and their buildings.  When you go to the site, be sure to click under “info., links and tools” and check out the many alternative uses for church buildings they have documented.  These are real examples from real churches in real cities you can check out.  And these are only Episcopal churches!  It is inspiring to see the creativity that is emerging as churches wrestle with the challenge of turning real estate from a burden into a blessing.

*Photo by Katjusa Cisar, licensed by Creativecommons.org

Toward the Better Country

Toward the Better Country: Church Closure and Resurrection

by L. Gail Irwin

is now available from

Resource Publications/Wipf & Stock Publishers 

You can order your copy here,

Web price:$17.60 plus shipping

Copies are also available online at Amazon.com

Book Synopsis

The pews of many mainline churches are clearly not as full as they used to be.  While committed Christians are trying everything they can to keep their churches open and thriving, history has shown that no local church is meant to live forever in its current form.    Like people, churches are born, live and breathe, fulfill their missions, and pass away.  And recent history shows that more churches will be closing or re-shaping their ministry in the near future.

Toward the Better Country tells about the grief stages, discernment processes and creative options explored by lay leaders, pastors and regional leaders who have dealt with this sensitive time in the life cycle of a church.  These are woven in with the author’s own experience of leading a church through steep decline toward closure.

This resource, based on interviews with over thirty lay, clergy and judicatory leaders, will offer healthy, practical ways for congregations to move through the terrain of loss, discern God’s path for their future and pass on their legacies to emerging ministries.  It can be used for personal reflection, leadership training, or in discernment groups in local churches.  Scripture readings and questions for conversation are included at the end of each chapter, along with a list of additional resources for churches struggling with decline.

Chapter Titles:

1. Introduction

2. The Rise and Fall of Sacred Places

3. Expressions of Grief in the Faith Community

4. Discerning the Failure to Thrive: Lay Leaders

5. Discerning the Failure to Thrive: Pastors

6. Discerning the Failure to Thrive: Regional Pastors

7. Multiple Paths to the Future

8. A Tale of Two Closures

9. Laying the Foundation for Future Ministry

10. Seven Ways to Say Goodbye

11. New Wine for New Wineskins

Appendices, Additional Resources and Bibliography

The Mission Finds a Church

There is the Church.  There is the mission.  And there is the building.  Not necessarily in that order.

Here’s a story about a church that closed: Westside Church of Christ in McKinney, Texas.  Their building was sold to the McKinney School District, which found a use for it as an alternative school for students who had committed anything from “serious breaches of the district rulebook to misdemeanor crimes.”

Then, after the school was in its new home, a church that has no “home” found the school (that used to be a church) and made the school its mission.  Sound confusing?  Read the article here.

What I love about this story is that it distinguishes between a building, a church (faith community), and a mission:

* The building has been a church, and is now a school.  It’s just a building, after all; we can make it into anything we need it to be.

* The church is a group of people who have come together to serve the world in the manner of Christ, and they can do that in any number of ways.  In this case, it’s The Parks Church: a young, 300 member congregation that “has no home of its own, drifting from venue to venue since 2011″.

* The mission is the opportunity God puts in front of a congregation to live out their faith in practical ways in the world.  In this case, it means caring for the students and teachers at a school that is easily overlooked; a school that works with kids on the verge of delinquency who need a temporary, academic “time out”.

Maybe it isn’t always wise to separate building, mission and people.  Sometimes they are inextricably woven together.  But in some cases, it is good to do the exercise of pulling them apart:

* Who is your church community and what are they capable of?

* What is the mission God is calling your church to carry out?

* What is your building suited for and what does the community need it to be?

By separating these questions from each other, maybe some churches will find that the building and the people have two separate missions.  Others will find they don’t need a permanent home at all (!Let me know if you are aware of churches like this!).  Some may find the building is an obstacle to fulfilling their mission, while others will find uses for their buildings that help them carry out a new mission altogether.

Thanks again to Joe Duggan of Congregational Seasons for sniffing this story out!

Photo by Kevin Bauman (Kevinbauman.com)

The Multi-Faith Campus

I’ve written elsewhere about Springhouse Ministry, a church building shared by three congregations of different denominations in south Minneapolis.  Here is a story about three congregations of  different faiths who are now sharing space on Long Island.

In both these cases (and in one I experienced where a largely Caucasian Presbyterian church shared our building with an evangelical Hmong congregation), sharing the use of a building can lead to other types of sharing.  The Long Island congregations are celebrating Thanksgiving by having each clergy leader preach on a text from another’s tradition.  The Springhouse churches share Sunday School programming and some mission projects, although they worship separately.  In my former church, we gathered for a class on Hmong culture and occasionally shared worship and Hmong/American New Year  celebrations.

On one level, this new sharing excites the imagination: a greater unity is being pursued among the faiths!  On closer inspection, this kind of sharing may present challenges ranging from who owns what “stuff” (talk to your insurance company before your new partner moves in) to theological differences (what if the church we share our building with is protesting abortion and we are pro-choice?)  For many people of faith, there is still distrust lurking in the shadows.  Can we all really be just “one happy household”?

The pressures faced by local churches these days are leading to some “strange bedfellows” partnering for new mission ventures.  I find that exciting.  I wonder how God feels about it.

Thanks to Joe Duggan at Congregational Seasons for sharing this story!

*Photo from Wikipedia images; licensed by Creativecommons.org

A Temporary Church

A church I once served was born in a cheese warehouse, grew, purchased property, built a building, grew some more, plateaued, added an addition,  declined and closed, all in a fifty year timespan.  Now its building sits vacant, as much a liability as an asset to its judicatory.

Those fifty years of faithful ministry are worth celebrating.  But a vacant church building is just sad.  And expensive.  Did you know it costs about twice as much to insure a vacant building as it does to insure one that has an occupant?

Here’s a novel idea: in New Zealand, they built a temporary church.  When a gothic cathedral in Christchurch was destroyed by an earthquake, its members dreamed of rebuilding.  But they knew it would take decades to replace their old building.  So while they are waiting, they had an architect build a temporary building that will only last fifty years, and can be easily dismantled.

Really?  Fifty years is temporary?  And look at this building!  Who would build a gothic cathedral when they could have this one, which is built out of cardboard.  No kidding!

So, what do you think? Should we start building cardboard churches?

Thanks again to Joe Duggan at Congregational Seasons for tossing this story my way!

Photo by Jocelyn Kinghorn

New Uses for Holy Ground

The Water Chapel

I got a LOT of interest in a recent post about whether or not congregations should consider selling their buildings.  I think this is an issue under the surface that church leaders are considering, but reluctant to talk about with their congregations.  Here’s some information about a couple organizations that are thinking creatively about church properties:

Partners for Sacred Places is a non-profit organization that helps congregations team up with their communities to find new uses for their buildings.  Here’s a story about a church in Fort Worth that has become the new home for an eye clinic for the poor.

Sacred Places has also developed a system for assessing the economic value of churches to their communities.  This was originally done for Catholic dioceses when they had to decide which churches to close in consolidations.  Sacred Places actually helped them figure out which churches were generating the most social and economic benefit in their neighborhoods.   (Think Robert Putnam’s “social capital” from his book “Bowling Alone“, only with dollar values attached).

Here’s a story about what they learned in a community called Covington.

And here’s something wierdly fascinating!  www.churchshare.net offers its customers…

“a turnkey church rental package. You can literally move in tomorrow! Not only can you afford it, but you’ll be occupying a real church with room to grow and prosper.”

This Florida business offers church buildings to congregations who want to rent and are willing to share space with other congregations.  Large scale campuses; retreat space; you can even rent the “Water Chapel” pictured above for that special immersion baptism you are planning  (no anchors, you anchorites!).

If you are interested in reading more about what’s happening with church buildings and closures, check out Episcopal blogger Joe Duggans’  website and accompanying Facebook page Congregational Seasons.  I have him to thank for many of the stories I’ve found.

Tell me what you think of these options!