Alban Weekly - Alban at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States - "A downtown church forges a new path when it decides to tear down two decaying buildings"

Alban Weekly - Alban at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States - "A downtown church forges a new path when it decides to tear down two decaying buildings"

PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS

The Rev. Emily Hull McGee, pastor of First Baptist Church on Fifth, stands with her son Liam in the breezeway between two of the church buildings. The building on the left is slated for removal; it's part of an ambitious plan to tear down, rebuild and renovate the church's buildings in downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Photos by Alex Maness

Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS, BUILDINGS, MONEY, SUSTAINABILITY
A downtown church forges a new path when it decides to tear down two decaying buildings

A downtown church forges a new path when it decides to tear down two decaying buildings
BAPTIST CHURCH HOPES SMALLER FOOTPRINT WILL REVITALIZE MINISTRY
More than 50 years ago, a church member with a love of children badgered the Rev. Randall Lolley about the congregation's underused space: "We can't have these rooms sitting empty," Mitzi Moore told him. "I think we should start a school."
Scattered among the church's three large buildings that cover an entire city block in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, were 49 Sunday school classrooms.
In those days, First Baptist Church on Fifth, one of the city's most stately and historic congregations, had more than 2,000 members and had grown to encompass 114,000 square feet of space, including a gym and a chapel. Yet even then, classrooms stood empty during the week.
Lolley, one of the most forward-looking pastors of the era, agreed with Moore, and the church founded the county's first racially integrated day care for children ages 8 weeks to pre-K (plus an after-school program for children through age 12).
This month, the five-star center will close as the church prepares to tear down two of its buildings in a revitalization effort aimed at pushing a now much smaller congregation into the 21st century.
After months of investigating options for keeping the center open or moving it to a new location, the church could find no viable solution for its signature ministry, which it subsidizes with $100,000 a year.
Read more about First Baptist on Fifth »
The 146-year-old Baptist congregation hopes a smaller footprint will allow the church to redefine its mission and identity while saving its historic sanctuary.
More than 50 years ago, a church member with a love of children badgered the Rev. Randall Lolley about the congregation’s underused space: “We can’t have these rooms sitting empty,” Mitzi Moore(link is external) told him. “I think we should start a school.”
Scattered among the church’s three large buildings that cover an entire city block in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, were 49 Sunday school classrooms.

Repairing the historic sanctuary is one of the priorities under the new plan. The church now has a block-long footprint. In those days, First Baptist Church on Fifth,(link is external) one of the city’s most stately and historic congregations, had more than 2,000 members and had grown to encompass 114,000 square feet of space, including a gym and a chapel. Yet even then, classrooms stood empty during the week.
Lolley, one of the most forward-looking pastors of the era, agreed with Moore, and the church founded the county’s first racially integrated day care for children ages 8 weeks to pre-K (plus an after-school program for children through age 12).
This month, the five-star center will close as the church prepares to tear down two of its buildings in a revitalization effort aimed at pushing a now much smaller congregation into the 21st century.
After months of investigating options for keeping the center open or moving it to a new location, the church could find no viable solution for its signature ministry, which it subsidizes with $100,000 a year.

The church's daycare, as well as the playground behind the church building, are slated for removal.
Scores of mainline Protestant and Catholic churches are making similar, often painful choices. Faced with crumbling infrastructure and costly maintenance that consumes an increasingly large slice of church budgets, congregations are looking to downsize and at the same time reimagine a different vision for ministry.
“We spend so much money just keeping the lights on,” said the Rev. Emily Hull McGee, the First Baptist pastor. “We’re significantly impeded from doing new things -- being creative, hiring new staff, giving more money away or finding new partnerships -- because so much of our annual budget is going to the building.”
What is the cost to your organization of -- metaphorically or literally -- "keeping the lights on?"
Church building experts see this happening across the nation. In their zeal to build, post-World War II Americans left future generations with hulking edifices that now stand as testaments to outsize ambition.
These days, groups such as the UCC Church Building & Loan Fund(link is external), the oldest society of its kind in the U.S., do more consulting than church financing. About two-thirds of the loan fund clients are congregations figuring out how to repurpose, reuse or rethink their buildings.
“Most churches have an upside-down relationship with their building,” said the Rev. Patrick Duggan, the executive director of the Church Building & Loan Fund.
What kind of relationship does your organization have with its buildings or other facilities?
“The building becomes the important thing to hold on to. It’s an unfortunate thing when that happens, because it’s a small group of people who can’t afford the upkeep on a building trying to figure out every way possible to keep it going, and that becomes what church is.”
At First Baptist Church, members are righting that ship. They have slowly but decisively concluded they must raze two later additions, including the brick edifice that houses the Children’s Center, while repairing and upgrading their original sanctuary building.
This Advent season, they are taking stock of their assets and trying to imagine what purpose and mission will carry them into the next decade. For many in the church, it is a time of waiting.
The Camelot years
As its name suggests, First Baptist has long been a trailblazer.
Founded in 1871 at a time when the region had more Moravians and Methodists than Baptists, the church was instrumental in birthing Baptist churches in every quadrant of the town. One of its early pastors, H.A. Brown, helped organize the local Baptist association, which led the founding of several dozen more churches.
The current sanctuary, completed in 1925 in the Greco-Roman style, is round and seats 1,200. Green Corinthian columns support a soaring domed ceiling.
“When it was built, it was considered the finest church building anywhere in the Southeast,” said Paul McCraw, the church historian. “People came from everywhere to see it.”
The church reached its apex in 1957 with 2,800 members and another 700 nonresident members.
It had already built Building B to accommodate all those members, and in 1961, it completed Building C. Not only did the church open the first downtown gym; it also hired a minister for youth and recreation -- a novelty in those days.



Older members have fond memories of the gym.
Gayle Edwards, 73, who grew up in the church, remembers “community night on Fridays, where people could come in and skate.”
“Basketball teams played there,” she said. “We had lock-ins, birthday parties.”
Beginning in 1967, the church also had the Children’s Center. The yearly budget paid for the upkeep of the center, including utilities and cleaning services. Tuition paid for the teachers’ salaries and supplies.
Most of those enrolled in the day care were not the children of church members, but the congregation kept its commitment to the town’s black and white working families. Most people in town would have known First Baptist on Fifth principally because of the Children’s Center at a time when so few offered such a service.
Yet despite its vibrant pastor, who went on to become president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1974, the church’s Camelot days were ending.
Though Baptists are still the largest denomination in North Carolina, downtown churches such as First Baptist, which is affiliated with the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship(link is external), have seen a 40-year decline, as suburban churches often overtake them in numbers.
Today, its $1 million annual budget includes $340,000 to keep up its facilities. Utilities cost about $10,000 a month.
The downtown has newer, more modern gyms, and the church is no longer a hub for family outings. The buildings -- with their linoleum floors and fluorescent lights -- have fallen into disrepair, evident not so much in their physical appearance as in their internal workings: the boiler, the roof, the masonry are all in need of major upgrades.
As important, the church has far fewer members -- some 500 active members (and another 700 inactive members). Sunday worship draws about 220.

• Can you identify assets that your organization possesses? Which ones fit with your current mission? Which do not?
• Earlier this summer, church members voted nearly unanimously to tear down the two buildings.

“It would be easy for folks to say, ‘Well, we’re losing a gym. We’re losing a chapel. We’re losing all this space,’” said Gary Knight, who chairs the special committee on facility and mission. “But I felt good that people recognized we have an abundance of other assets.”
First Baptist Church is ready to lead in new ways.

McGee looks on admiringly at the kids performing a musical program after a church supper.
New leadership, new vision
When she arrived two years ago, McGee knew the buildings were in significant disrepair.
The copper dome atop the historic sanctuary was leaking; water damage from the roof was causing the plaster in Building C to flake off; the masonry on the terra cotta and limestone cornices was crumbling; and the boiler serving all three buildings needed to be replaced, as did the underground pipes.
During her interviews for the senior pastor position, McGee learned that the church was already discussing the campus’s sustainability. A research group had been formed to study the facility, and its members recognized that the church was at a crisis point.

• Is your organization at a crisis point? How would you recognize such a moment, and how would you respond?

“When I came in, I knew the facilities were a problem and that I would need to tackle it pretty quickly after I got here,” she said.
The 36-year-old mother of three is the church’s first woman pastor. And she is uniquely qualified for the role.
Her grandfather, William Hull, was dean of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, provost at Samford University in Birmingham and longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Her father, David Hull, was pastor of First Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama. He now teaches and consults while his wife, Jane, McGee’s mother, serves as pastor of Union Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Watkinsville, Georgia.
Pastoring is in McGee’s DNA. Still, shepherding First Baptist in a new direction weighed on her.
The research group had already suggested tearing down one of the buildings. But its report was not binding, and McGee quickly formed a new committee to bring a recommendation to the membership for a vote.
That committee set out to examine all options.
“We all started thinking we’d figure out some way to save all the buildings,” McGee said.
But the results of an engineering study made it clear to committee members that the challenges were significant. Repairing all the buildings and bringing them up to code would cost $8 million to $10 million.
And as committee chair Knight pointed out, “Even if we had unlimited resources and the ability to renovate the entire campus, it still left us with buildings that don’t meet 2017 needs.”
Critically, the repairs would not save the Children’s Center.
The state now requires day care facilities to be on the ground floor with an exit from each classroom. The current day care, which takes up two floors, is grandfathered in. If the church were to renovate the facility, it would have to rebuild the day care from scratch.
The committee spent months trying to find an alternative solution for the Children’s Center. It talked to outside partners. It studied other day cares. It priced a free-standing building. It looked at moving the center to one of the other church buildings. No viable solution emerged.
“Looking at things in a vacuum, you could say, ‘Isn’t there a critical need for day care?’” Knight said. “But what we came down to was, you could either have the church or have the children’s center. It was the toughest part of our work coming to that conclusion.”
Although the congregation largely supported the decision, they did face pushback from families whose children attend the day care.
“There were a ton of tears shed this morning,” Meg Shipley, a parent, told the local newspaper(link is external) upon hearing that the center would close this month.
Ultimately, what brought life to the committee was shifting from the idea of trying to save the buildings to that of tearing them down and renovating the sanctuary building.
Winston-Salem’s downtown has been undergoing a revitalization(link is external). It now has nearly 4,000 apartment units -- more than half built over the past decade -- and many more in the works. Several top hotel chains have announced plans to open.

• Is there momentum in your community toward growth and thriving? How could your organization be a part of it?
• What if First Baptist were to tear down its crumbling buildings and be part of that revitalization?

“It felt like we were freed of a weight that was holding us down,” said McGee. “It’s as if that just freed us to think creatively about our space.”
From that point on, the committee focused its efforts on presenting the church with a scaled-back plan for a smaller campus -- minus buildings B and C -- that would meet the needs of a smaller but more nimble congregation.
On a Wednesday night in November, after a supper of lasagna and garlic bread, Knight, the committee chair, and McGee unveiled a PowerPoint presentation for a $5 million to $6 million renovation of the sanctuary building and the addition of a 4,200-square-foot glass atrium to the rear of the building, as well as an outdoor garden.
The atrium would accommodate shared meals, celebrations and community events. (Demolition of the two buildings, included in the total, would cost between $250,000 and $500,000.)

These renderings show possibilities for the future. Image by WalterRobbs Architecture and Planning
Still ongoing are discussions about the church’s identity minus the Children’s Center, which has defined First Baptist for so long.
In conversations during November, the church began the process of envisioning a new mission.
Perhaps the church could start a music academy for children, stage public concerts on the front steps of the building, offer Bible studies for young people downtown or partner with the Benton Convention Center one block away.
To mark the passage into a new vision, McGee suggested a history wall or mural to be filled with images, artifacts and a timeline that might help the congregation tell its story. The church could even commission artwork for the renovated structure using materials from the buildings that will come down.
Church members want to continue the mission Mitzi Moore proposed in the 1960s with the introduction of the Children’s Center. It won’t be a day care, but it will probably involve children.

After a musical performance, people socialize in the lounge outside the main sanctuary. Renderings of the new plans are on the wall.
“Children,” Edwards said, “will always be important to the church.”
For now, church members are captivated by the possibilities. Those include a smaller footprint but a deeper sense of community, a more modest budget but an openness to creating new ministries.
In January, the committee is expected to present the congregation with a new mission, vision and values statement.
This Advent, it is waiting for that vision to be birthed.
Questions to consider:

• What is the cost to your organization of -- metaphorically or literally -- "keeping the lights on?" 
• What kind of relationship does your organization have with its buildings or other facilities? Is it "upside down?" If so, how might you begin to right it?
• Can you identify assets that your organization possesses? Which ones fit with your current mission? Which do not?
• The Rev. Emily Hull McGee learned the church was at a "crisis point" when she arrived, and that she needed to lead out of it right away. Is your organization at a crisis point? How would you recognize such a moment, and how would you respond?
• First Baptist decided to join in the revitalization of downtown Winston-Salem. Is there momentum in your community toward growth and thriving? How could your organization be a part of it?

Faith & Leadership
CAN THESE BONES
A Faith & Leadership podcast »
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, PASTORAL LEADERSHIP, HEALTH & WELL-BEING, VOCATION
Episode 1: Amy Butler on her role as the first woman to lead Riverside Church

FAITH & LEADERSHIP PODCAST: CAN THESE BONES

Our colleagues at Faith & Leadership are launching a podcast that asks a fresh set of questions about leadership and the future of the church. The Rev. Bill Lamar and the Rev. Laura Everett talk with people of faith inside and outside the church -- conversations that breathe life into leaders struggling in their own valley of dry bones.
In the premiere episode of "Can These Bones," co-host Bill Lamar talks with Amy Butler, the senior minister of The Riverside Church in the City of New York, about her experience in that historic pulpit.
Read more about the first episode and listen here »
At first, the Rev. Dr. Amy Butler chafed at being identified as the first woman to lead The Riverside Church in the City of New York. But she has come to believe that her role as a pioneer is something to embrace. In her conversation with “Can These Bones” co-host Bill Lamar, she talks frankly about the sexism she has faced, the effect growing up in Hawaii has had on her leadership, and the memoir she is writing about taking on a new role while at the same time facing her younger brother’s death. She also reflects on the power of community to help find life in the “valley of dry bones.”
This episode is part of a series. Learn more about Can These Bones or learn how to subscribe to a podcast.
Listen and subscribe




ABOUT THIS PODCAST »
Listen to all the episodes and learn more about the hosts.
More from Amy Butler
Patheos blog: “Talk with the Preacher”(link is external)
Sermon video: “Hysterical”(link is external)
USA Today: “The truth about my late-term abortion”(link is external)
Faith & Leadership: “Love God, love your neighbor,” by Edie Gross, on Calvary Baptist Church and Butler’s role in its revitalization
Transcript

Bill Lamar: From Faith & Leadership, this is “Can These Bones,” a podcast that asks a fresh set of questions about leadership and the future of the church. I’m Bill Lamar.

Laura Everett: And I’m Laura Everett. This is the premiere episode of a series of conversations with leaders from the church and other fields. Through this podcast, we want to share our hope in the resurrection and perhaps breathe life into leaders struggling in their own “valley of dry bones.”

Bill Lamar: We are excited about the future of the church, and we want to share that excitement with you through conversations with interesting people doing some very, very interesting things.
Laura Everett: Bill, you are one of those interesting people I need to be in conversation with, and honestly, one of the reasons I said yes to doing this is I wanted the chance to talk with you.
Now, you and I have known one another for over a decade, and in some ways, our paths are quite different. But we both lead legacy institutions -- you at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., and me at the Massachusetts Council of Churches, based in Boston.
Bill Lamar: Laura, I’m looking forward to talking with you and with others about the struggles and the joys of this life of service.
Laura Everett: We have a wonderful guest list lined up, and our first guest is Amy Butler.
Amy Butler is the senior minister of The Riverside Church in the City of New York. Bill, why was Amy the first on your list?
Bill Lamar: So, Laura, when I came to D.C. to serve at Metropolitan, Amy was serving at Calvary Baptist Church here in the city, and I had heard of her work. She was doing some very exciting things, but she was on her way out as I was beginning my tenure, so we didn’t get a chance to meet in Washington.
But subsequently, about a year ago, we had a chance to meet. And I have just been compelled by her honesty, by her willingness to be very, very clear about who she is and about her major change in scale and scope going from Calvary to The Riverside Church, one of the most storied pulpits in the United States of America.
When I spoke with her, for example, she was recovering from neck surgery, and she was willing to share all of those challenges with us.
Laura Everett: That sounds really good, Bill. Let’s listen to your interview with Amy Butler.
Bill Lamar: This is Bill Lamar, and joining me is Pastor Amy Butler, the seventh senior minister of The Riverside Church in the City of New York. Welcome, Amy.
Amy Butler: Thanks, Bill.
Bill Lamar: Thank you for joining us. My first question is, how are you? I know that you have taken some time due to some [health] issues. I just want to check in and see how you are.
Amy Butler: Oh, thank you for asking. So I was two months out, recovering, but I’m back and ready to go.
Bill Lamar: Excellent. Well, one of the interesting things about your life is that you were born in Hawaii, and our conversations lead me to believe that your being born there deeply formed you in ways that affect who you are and your work in the world. Can you share something about what Hawaii means to you?
Amy Butler: Bill, thank you so much for asking that question. I feel like this summer, things have sort of shifted for me in terms of my identity as a native Hawaiian person, and the deeper understanding of how growing up in an island culture impacts my leadership.
I went to Hawaii in August with my children, and Hawaii is a place that is so tactile -- the air hugs you; you feel the water; you smell the flowers -- and I felt healed when I got there. And it caused me to reflect a lot on what I learned about how you build and lead a community by growing up watching my father, who is a native Hawaiian activist and community organizer, and just the idea that when you live on an island, you have to learn to get along or you’re all going to die.
[Laughter]
So [Hawaiian culture has] this pull toward community and making sure that everybody has a place at the table, and I think it’s foundational to who I am as a leader and as a pastor.
Bill Lamar: So -- Harry Emerson Fosdick, William Sloane Coffin, James A. Forbes, Amy Butler. What does it mean to you to be listed among those sainted persons?
Amy Butler: I might not forgive you for saying that. I try not to think about it, because in my mind, like in the minds of so many other people, they are legends, and the work that they did at the time that they did it really changed the world.
And I have come to know them in a different way from the inside, because they were people, just like I’m a person and you’re a person, and they had immense gifts and tremendous challenges, just like I do.
Where it leads me, Bill, is the constant thinking that I do about this platform and the faithful stewardship of this platform. It’s overwhelming some days, and scary.
Bill Lamar: So you did phenomenal work at Calvary Baptist, and I want you to share a little bit about what it was like to go to that place, and the significant ministry that you and that community birthed in Chinatown in Washington, D.C.
Amy Butler: I started looking for a pastorate when I became an associate pastor, because I loved the parish. And in the Baptist world, we don’t have a lot of places for women to serve in head leadership roles.
I grew up in Hawaii, as you mentioned, and so I need diversity around me all the time. I also have an adopted daughter who is biracial, and I needed to be in a place where she would fit -- and where all of my children would understand the family of God to be something other than how they looked.
Calvary, I think, was a bit desperate -- you know, they had this storied past, but they were having a hard time figuring out who they were and where they wanted to go.
And they called me, and I went. Probably both of us would rethink that decision if we had to go back again, because it was 11 years of really hard work and pain. And then the birth of, as you said, this amazing community. And we did it together.
For me personally, I learned so many critical lessons about leadership going through church conflict -- that for an institution to live through transformation, there has to be conflict.
And most of all, what I learned is it isn’t about me. So I have to really credit that congregation for teaching me how to be a pastor and a leader. I’m just eternally grateful for that lovely community.
Bill Lamar: I know that you have been about the business of writing. How much can you share with us about what your forthcoming project is about?
Amy Butler: Yes, I’m publishing a book, and, Bill, you’ll just die when you hear this. I finished it, and then all of my health issues happened, and I’ve sort of landed in a place where I feel like I need to rewrite the book and bleed a little bit more, and that is incredibly fear-inducing for me.
But I think the story of coming to Riverside is something that is important to tell. A lot of people don’t know the whole back story about how my brother -- my younger brother -- died at the same exact time, and I think I’m finally ready to write about that.
The book is a memoir, and it’s called “Beautiful and Terrible Things.” That moment was such a beautiful -- being called as the first woman pastor of The Riverside Church in the City of New York -- and [at the same time] my younger brother, having to take him off life support, and his death.
So here I am, trying to stare down the fear and make this book what it needs to be.
Bill Lamar: In this moment, Amy, for people -- personally, as a pastor, and then from the platform that you have been given to steward -- there are a lot of persons looking fear, in its various manifestations, in the face. How are you walking with people in that process?
Amy Butler: Well, I could use some tips, but one of the biggest things for me is my own fear. Naming it. Knowing when to name the darkness and call for the hope in a way that’s genuine and acknowledges the tremendous pain that we’re going through corporately right now.
Internally, within the church -- you know this -- when people are afraid, they behave badly. And so my work within our community is a work of reassurance and calling people to genuine community and trying to articulate how our work building beloved community can actually change the world -- that it’s worth it.
I’m very aware that people are watching me, especially other pastors who perhaps don’t have as much freedom in their pulpits as I do. I take that responsibility very seriously, and I want to help people become a voice of faith that is a counternarrative to what we’re hearing from evangelical right-wing pastors, because that’s not the witness of faith in this moment.
And I also want to say that I think, in a way, the church in America has been given a gift, and this is our moment. We -- there’s no question about what our work is here, and we have to have the courage to stand up for what’s right and to keep doing it. And in a way, I’m so grateful for that clarity.
I say sometimes in crazy church council meetings, “People, Donald Trump is the president! You know? Let’s focus.”
Bill Lamar: Amy, I think one of the hallmarks of your work is an ability to be very honest. You have talked and written about your divorce; you’ve talked and written about your late-term abortion. What is it about you that propels you to do these things as a part of your public ministry?
Amy Butler: Well, to be perfectly honest, Bill, it’s that I’m tired and I can’t maintain a faux persona. It’s too much work. And I -- at the very core of who I am -- I do this work because I need authentic community, too. And so I want to be honest about who I am and my journey of faith and how I think that impacts the church.
I never, I never want to be somebody different outside the pulpit than I am in -- ever, ever.
Bill Lamar: Another of the hallmarks of your leadership at Riverside, in my opinion, is your ability to gather some of the best and brightest folks as senior staff and other folks to push forward the great mandate for ministry that is a part of Riverside’s heritage and its present and its future.
So can you say something about this wonderful team that you have and how it’s been built and how you’re cultivating it?
Amy Butler: Oh, they are so incredible. I mean, I work with some of the brightest people I have ever met. I -- well, this is how it started. I’ve always had the management philosophy that you should hire people who are smarter than you are, and I have managed to do that.
And when I came to Riverside, I just thought that everybody in the church world would be like, “All right, let’s do this. I want to come and help.” And that really wasn’t the case. I think people were hands-off -- “Let’s see if she falls flat on her face.”
And so I decided to employ what is, for me, an avocation, as I know it is for you, too, Bill -- going out and finding the next leaders. You know, people who have this amazing talent and push and call who are willing to take a risk on me and on this church and who I might be able to help form into the next leaders of the church.
I feel like if I left Riverside today, I would be so proud of that work, because my colleagues will not be at Riverside for their whole careers. They’re going to leave, and they’re going to change the landscape of the American church. And you know, if I never preach a good sermon ever again, that’s something I’m really, really proud of.
Bill Lamar: So you have shared with me and with others in larger venues how women especially -- not just young women, but a lot of young women -- pull on your energy, because they see you, and then they can see themselves, doing this kind of work. They want mentorship. Can you speak to that?
Amy Butler: Sure. I mean, this issue has been so deep and evolving in my life for these past three years. And particularly as we’re watching issues of women leaders sort of roll out on the national and international stage, I’ve shifted exponentially around this issue.
When I came to Riverside, Bill, I was so annoyed that Time magazine, The New York Times, everybody’s like, “She’s the first woman. She’s the first woman.”
It just made me angry -- like you think I was called here because my hair is cute? I was so angry about that. And it had to do with sort of the philosophy I’ve had my whole career, which is, “Don’t tell me I can’t do something, because it will make me want to do it more, and I’ll just work harder and I’ll just do better. Just try to stop me -- you won’t be able to.”
And coming to Riverside, I learned that young women and young men and the church need to see women in these roles. And it particularly hit home to me when I published an article in USA Today about a late-term abortion that I had about 20 years ago. And, boy, the hate mail I got for that. Oh my gosh, that’ll make a great book someday.
But someone sent me an email and said, “We have never before in the history of the American church had a woman in a high-steeple pulpit as pastor talking about her personal experience of abortion, ever. And that’s so powerful.”
So there have been several incidents like that that have made me, whoa, take a step back and say, “You need to reframe this. This is important. It’s important for the church. It’s important for the world.”
And then the second thing I want to say about that is, you know, this is a pulpit that is deeply rooted in issues of social justice, and so a big part of my learning curve is, “How do I authentically be prophetic?”
In this past year, I’ve really come into more naming of misogyny as an injustice that happens. And part of that is because the sexism and misogyny that I face in this job is so overwhelming. I’m just stunned by it almost every day.
And the [third] thing is I don’t know who else is talking about this. I preached a sermon at the end of June called “Hysterical,” which was about Sarah laughing when she found out she was going to have a baby. And I made some joke about, “Can you just imagine a whole bunch of men sitting around talking about whether or not you can have a baby?” You know, these are issues that we face, and they need to be talked about from the pulpit.
So I’m growing into that, and I’m struggling with the whole, “Oh, she’s just a bitter woman who’s so negative about everything,” which actually was said to me two weeks ago. It is real, Bill. It’s real, and it’s wearying. It is so wearying.
Bill Lamar: So your moving from Washington and Calvary Baptist to Riverside was a huge jump in scale and scope, and for our listeners who are moving from one scale and scope of institutional work or ministry [to another], what wisdom can you offer when you’re taking that big jump?
Amy Butler: Right. When I left Calvary, there were about 250 members, probably an eight-person staff, and just a little over a $1 million annual budget.
So when I came to Riverside -- $12 million annual budget, 150 employees, this huge plant -- I had a big learning curve. You know, all of a sudden, I’m leading a corporation.
And one of the things that I did not anticipate that I wish someone had told me is the feelings of grief and loss that I had, and still have. I’m sort of tearing up now when I talk about it, because some of my favorite parts of being a pastor are now not part of my work.
For example, I don’t do weddings; I don’t do funerals; I don’t go visit babies in the hospital; I don’t visit people who are sick. I don’t have those kinds of pastoral moments that really fed my soul at Calvary.
There are 2,000 members at Riverside, and you can’t be that kind of pastor to such a large group and not die. So I’ve had to really think about some of the grief and letting go and trying to understand my call in a new way, and I wish I had been more prepared for that.
Bill Lamar: Can you say something about the institution that is Riverside Church and how you and your team are helping to shape a vibrant future? I mean, it’s a storied past, but -- I’m very much in a similar situation, with a place with a storied past -- but what future is emerging that’s giving you all energy?
Amy Butler: Bill, you know this about me. One of my huge passions is institutional leadership. And I think Riverside’s history is still in place, and it’s still a big part of who we are, but the church had come to a point where you can’t live in the past anymore. You can’t propel yourself forward with an orthodoxy of nostalgia.
Bill Lamar: Wow.
Amy Butler: It’s just not ...
Bill Lamar: Hold on. I think you just said -- that’s a book -- an “orthodoxy of nostalgia.” Wow. Hmm.
Amy Butler: Truth be told, I stole that from Brian McLaren, but, you know.
Bill Lamar: OK. We’ll give him his credit.
Amy Butler: Yeah. I think it’s a cool phrase.
I think the state of the world is propelling us forward, but I also think, from an internal standpoint, the church is finally at the point now where it’s ready to fly.
I’m doing a massive staff restructure, and we’re working to infuse health into our lay leadership, and as you know, that’s very time-consuming and tedious work. But I can see the progress being made, and I can see that the world needs this voice, and that just makes me very passionate.
Bill Lamar: What are your practices -- spiritual, physical -- that keep you, in the midst of so many demands?
Amy Butler: Well, this is, you know, a constant struggle for me, because, as I was saying to a friend yesterday, everything seems so important all the time. I’ve put into place some stricter boundaries around how often I’m in the office, and I try to leave -- I do leave -- every morning until 10 a.m. [reserved] for prayer, reflection, reading, writing.
I live right next to Central Park, and so I’m in the park every morning running. And I just got this new running shirt that says “I hate running,” which makes me so happy.
I have a spiritual director, who I see every two weeks. I have a coach. I have a group of colleagues that are very close to me, who I’ve been in intentional relationship with for 15 years.
So those things keep me going. One of the hard things for me, Bill, is that there are not a lot of people who understand this -- Riverside, New York, my job. You know, it’s kind of lonely, because I’m not going to call you and be like, “Oh, Bill, I’m so nervous because Hillary Clinton’s coming tonight,” you know, because then I’m going to sound like a jerk.
[Laughter]
So I don’t know -- I feel isolated and lonely a lot, and I feel the gap between what other pastors experience and the craziness of my life, which, you know, pulls me forward and also makes me wonder if it’ll kill me.
Bill Lamar: Wow. It seems like you’re doing a lot of things to make a full life, and will err on that side.
My final question is -- the title of the podcast, the name of the podcast, is “Can These Bones,” and as a great preacher yourself, you know that that comes from the Ezekiel text. And I just wanted to ask you where you are seeing life in the midst of death, where you are seeing resurrection across the landscape. What are you seeing that’s giving you that kind of hope?
Amy Butler: The landscape is so stark now, isn’t it? Yeah. You know, I believe so deeply in beloved community and in the church and in what we can be together in terms of the work of healing the world.
I remember when I was interviewing with the search committee, you know, it was all very secret, and I couldn’t talk to anybody about it. I had never been to Riverside, so I took the bus up from D.C., and I did the tourist thing, and I walked in. And of course my manager mind is like, “Oh, those flyers need to come down off the wall right now.”
But I remember going into the nave and sitting in the third pew and feeling, like, the darkness, the lack of hope and just the darkness, and I just remember thinking, “I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I can’t do it -- I cannot do this.”
And when I walked into the nave yesterday, I was reflecting on that, and I thought, “It’s light in here. It’s light, and there’s life, and there’s community, and there are children crying, and there’s beauty all around, and there are people who love each other and who are learning to love each other.”
And when I am assaulted by the news, just like everybody else, I hang on to those things, because beloved community can change us and can change the world, and I don’t know what I would do, Bill, if I didn’t believe in that.
Bill Lamar: Amy, thank you for your time and for your work, and we’re praying for your speedy recovery -- no more surgeries -- and I look forward to talking with you again real soon.
Amy Butler: Thanks, Bill. It’s good to hear your voice.
Bill Lamar: Thank you, Amy.
Laura Everett: That was my co-host Bill Lamar’s conversation with Amy Butler, the senior minister of The Riverside Church in the City of New York. Bill, as I was listening, I was struck by Amy’s bravery -- how willing she was to look fear in the face in so many settings.
You and I have talked about this, and I know you’ve experienced it, too. As the leader of a prominent black church after the shootings in Charleston, how did you look fear in the face in your institution?
Bill Lamar: Oh, Laura, it was quite a challenge. I recall that Wednesday night in 2015 when I began to get text messages from members of my denomination from around the country, most especially from South Carolina. I got news of the death of Pastor Pinckney and others before it was reported nationally, because of my personal relationships. And I was thrown into a tailspin, along with many of my congregants, because not only did we know Pastor Pinckney, but many of us knew multiple victims of that awful, awful tragedy.
That next morning, I got a call from my bishop, who asked me to begin to plan a national day of mourning at Metropolitan, which is considered the national church of our denomination. And so, really, I was struggling with trying to put together the kind of worshipful experience that would honor the lives of those who had fallen, but also trying to have a space of hope and trying to manage my own grief and difficulty.
And so it was much more than I would have imagined in the way of taxing me personally, along with those in the congregation. The eyes of the world were upon us. We were talking to media from Germany and Russia, Japan -- it was a very, very, very big undertaking.
But what I have considered, Laura, in the aftermath of that event, is how throughout the founding of our own denomination, this event in Charleston was not anomalous. Time after time, we have had to be the space of hope and the space of lament in the midst of countless tragedies and assaults on black bodies in the United States and around the world. It is a part of who we have been, and it’s a part of my ministry, and it is challenging.
But I gain strength from the strength of the people, and I gain strength from the strength of our ancestors, who continue to persist and to be brave and to move forward upon their theological convictions in the midst of a lot of struggle and difficulty.
Laura Everett: I hear in both your story, Bill, and in Amy’s a deep sense of this pastoral responsibility to name the fear and the darkness even as we are sitting with our own sense of fear and darkness.
Bill Lamar: I love Amy’s use of the phrase “orthodoxy of nostalgia.” I still think it could be a great book title. Laura, how do you encounter the orthodoxy of nostalgia in your own work?
Laura Everett: Well, I run an institution that’s 115 years old now, and it was really formed at a different time. That orthodoxy of nostalgia, in my experience, means that some parts of our life and history can be amber-colored, sort of frozen in time, as if that’s the only way to do God’s work in the world.
One of the ways that I’ve really had to learn to notice that orthodoxy of nostalgia, and break it open, is to ask, “What is the core commitment we are trying to enact, and are there other ways to do it?”
So, for example, we used to have a committee called the Strategy in Action Commission, and it was populated with the staff people in the denominations who had public policy or Christian public witness as a part of their portfolios.
Well, in Massachusetts, a lot of the denominational bodies have needed to cut staff, so the people who populated that committee no longer exist in the same sort of way. We still have an obligation to do the work; we just don’t have the people that were once in place to do it.
And people are really sad. People are really disheartened, and they think that the commitment to public Christian witness won’t continue if it doesn’t continue in that form. And so I’ve had to try to help my people see that there are other ways to fulfill the mission.
I think we’ve gotten stuck in an orthodoxy of nostalgia of structures rather than a core commitment to the values we’re trying to enact.
One of the other things I heard in the interview and found incredibly brave was the way Amy talked about sexism, and the way she changed her mind about being identified as the first woman to have the job of senior pastor of The Riverside Church in the City of New York.
I’m really grateful for you, also, for not including that in your introduction to Amy; it comes later in the interview. I’ve talked and written about misogyny and the sexism that I’ve encountered as a woman in ministry, and it is such a hard thing to do, to name it.
I confess that sometimes when I talk about it, I feel like it undercuts my own leadership. I wonder, as a male colleague in this work who I know is so committed to the liberation of all people to fully use our gifts for God, how do you work with the misogyny and the sexism you see in Christian leadership?
Bill Lamar: Laura, what I try to do is assume a posture as student and not as teacher when it comes to working with my woman colleagues in ministry.
It’s very interesting. Recently, I was having a conversation with a colleague who leads the Ethical Humanist Society here in town, and she was speaking with me about “mansplaining” -- a term which I had not heard. I assume that I have been living under a rock.
[Laughter]
She explained to me how she’ll go to meetings and she will say something perfectly wise and perfectly appropriate, and a male colleague will feel the need to interpret it. She talked about how she lives in the midst of mansplaining but how she also never lets mansplaining happen unchecked. She doesn’t check it in ways that are disrespectful, but she is very clear when mansplaining occurs.
My ignorance was such that I said to her, “Would you please, the next time we’re in a meeting and someone mansplains, just tap me?” And we were in a meeting and she tapped me at least three times, and so I finally got the gist of what it looked like.
So I’ve learned a lot, and I feel like I’m growing. I’m always listening and learning from my colleagues who share with me where those things may even surface in me and I may not be aware of them. So I’m very thankful for colleagues who are willing to teach and very thankful that I know I’ve got a lot yet to learn.
Laura Everett: Bill, I’m so grateful for the ways that you notice the sexism in the church, and the ways that Amy named it in her interview, too. One of the things that came through so clearly in this interview is that Amy is a particular person with a particular past and a humanness that’s a model for public leadership.
She’s not some clergy-bot following the role of what it’s supposed to be to be the senior pastor of The Riverside Church in the City of New York. But that authenticity of where she’s been and who she is and what she’s experienced is coming through loud and clear in that interview.
Bill Lamar: Laura, I think that you have coined a very helpful term in “clergy-bot.” I like that a lot. And I hope, as we continue learning the individual stories of these wonderful people, that no one who listens will determine they need to be a clergy-bot, or an automaton of any type, but that they can live fully into who they’re called to be. And that indeed is a point of resurrection for each and every one of us -- the authenticity of our calling and our work.
Laura Everett: Amen.
Bill Lamar: We want to thank you for listening to “Can These Bones.” Laura, this was a lot of fun, wasn’t it?
Laura Everett: It was really good, Bill.
Bill Lamar: There is more about Amy Butler, including video of her preaching, on our website, www.canthesebones.com(link is external). Laura, who are we talking with next time?
Laura Everett: Bill, we’ve got a great conversation with Astead Herndon, who covers the White House and national politics for The Boston Globe.
Bill Lamar: There’s nothing to say about politics or the White House or any of that stuff -- but I can’t wait for that conversation, Laura. Looking forward to it.
Laura Everett: I’ll see you soon, Bill.
Bill Lamar: “Can These Bones” is brought to you by Faith & Leadership, a learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. It’s produced by Sally Hicks, Kelly Ryan Gilmer and Dave Odom. Our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. Funding is provided by Lilly Endowment Inc.
We’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts about this podcast on social media. I’m on Twitter @WilliamHLamarIV(link is external) -- that’s the Roman numeral IV -- and you can reach Laura on Twitter @RevEverett(link is external). You can also find us through our website, www.canthesebones.com(link is external).
I’m Bill Lamar, and this is “Can These Bones.”
This transcript has been edited for clarity.

IDEAS THAT IMPACT:
WHAT TO DO WITH BUILDINGS & GROUNDS?
Leaking gutters and sacred spaces: Practical tips for facility repair
In this Congregations magazine story from 2006, two experts from the Indianapolis Center for Congregations offer their best advice for dealing with one of the questions they receive most often -- how to handle church buildings in need of repair.

Leaking Gutters and Sacred Spaces: Practical Tips for Facility Repair by Ryn Nasser
First Baptist Church of Cumberland, Indiana, had a gutter and roof problem. At least that’s what the trustees thought. They knew they had storm damage, and during the past few winters they had noticed that ice was backing up. This may have had something to do with the various ages of the roofs and gutters. Over the years, new wings had been added to First Baptist’s building—not unlike the additions to many churches dotting the metropolitan Indianapolis landscape.
So the Rev. Kevin Rose, associate pastor, called the Indianapolis Center for Congregations,1 looking for someone who could do church guttering and roofing work. Since its inception almost seven years ago, the center has fielded thousands of requests from congregations in its nine-county service area as part of its mission of helping Indianapolis-area congregations find solutions to their practical problems. We who work at the center do that by connecting churches with excellent resources, both local and national.
Building issues are among the top requests. Center staff members have handled more than 75 congregational cases related to building concerns in the past six years. These include questions on selection of architects, facility expansion, accessibility issues, and stained-glass window restoration. Many other cases that come to the center are indirectly related to sacred space issues—such as capital fund drives for new or expanded buildings, strategic planning, worship, and relocation issues. In addition, the center, through its innovative Resource Grants Program,2 has awarded more than $70,000 to 16 area congregations for building-related resources and projects.
Looking at the Big Picture
As the center’s resource director, Nancy DeMott took First Baptist’s case. After talking with Kevin Rose, Nancy gave him the names of some guttering firms recommended by other Indianapolis-area congregations. The Indianapolis Center for Congregations frequently relies on the experience of area congregations in compiling a list of best resources for other congregations. That’s part of the center’s work—serving as a sort of “consumers’ report” for congregations.
Equipped with these references, the church’s trustees met. Afterward Kevin called Nancy and reported that the trustees, after discussing the guttering problem, had decided that they needed to find a general contractor who could give them some overall help with maintenance. They wisely realized that they needed someone who could help them with a “building big picture,” rather than a firm that could do only a bit of guttering and roofing.
Nancy asked the associate pastor if the trustees might want to consider doing a facility assessment. Center staff members have learned that various types of facility assessments can be made—something that most congregations don’t realize. Types of assessments include Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Assessment (an evaluation of a building for compliance with that 1990 federal law), energy efficiency studies (see the box on page 13 for more information), historical renovation assessment for older buildings, and analysis of a church’s space needs. Nancy recommended for First Baptist an assessment in which a consultant comes in and identifies what immediate repairs are needed and develops an ongoing plan for repair and maintenance. Specifically, she recommended using a local nonprofit group that calls on the expertise of experienced retired and semiretired executives and professionals who work for low or no fees.
First Baptist went with that recommendation, and a retired architect from that organization was assigned to work with the congregation. He surveyed the facility and helped the trustees find three high-quality facility assessors that did the kind of work needed. The trustees then selected an inspection firm to analyze their facility thoroughly, to create a priority list of immediate repairs, and to develop a multi-year preventive maintenance plan. The consultant was also present during the assessment to “ask the right questions.”
As the project progressed, the inspection turned up major building problems. They were all related to shoddy work done when the church added classroom space 10 years earlier. To completely repair the water damage and prevent future damage, some of that work would have to be redone.
By then, the folk at First Baptist were fairly frustrated. What had seemed a simple problem had grown into a full-scale investment of time and money. But to its credit, the congregation did not back away from the problems that had been identified. Empowered by having reliable information on the nature of the problem and positive solutions to it (what sort of work needed to be done and who could do it), the trustees moved from frustration to action. They hired the appropriate contractors to repair their facility and did it right. In the end, they were well satisfied—and their gutters no longer leaked.
What First Baptist Learned
Looking back at the process, members of First Baptist Church of Cumberland reflected, identified, and shared with the center the following five essentials they learned—steps that can help your congregation maintain and repair your facilities.
1. Get an inspector. First Church members learned that when their “new” classroom space and narthex were built more than 10 years ago, they should have hired a professional inspection company before signing off on any work. This practice is extremely important for church building committees or trustees who oversee such projects. Limited expertise or knowledge on the part of well-meaning volunteer committee members often creates a situation in which unscrupulous contractors and shoddy work can be overlooked. A high-quality professional inspector will quickly catch improper procedures and poor workmanship. An independent inspector should be involved throughout any building process. “The cost of hiring an inspection company is worth every penny,” said Kevin Rose.
2. Do it right the first time. They learned that temporary fixes and shortcuts only postpone and often multiply the expense of repair. While a short-term fix may be less expensive, it is always better to make repairs thoroughly and correctly the first time. If the job is done right, a five-year period of fixing gutters doesn’t end up concealing that make-do fixes were driving water up under the roof, ruining decking and plaster beneath.
3. Get a facility maintenance report. The congregation learned that getting a full facility maintenance report gives a committee the big picture. This point is important because it relates to the temporary-fix temptation cited above. Building problems are often interconnected. A full report helps a group avoid focusing on one small problem and spending money to repair it, only to discover a year later that a previously unidentified but related problem must be corrected before the initial problem can be properly dealt with. Without a comprehensive report, costs can quickly spiral out of control, and repairs will fail to produce a unified solution.
4. Refer to your inspection report when hiring contractors. The congregation found that obtaining an outside inspection report gives a common focus to a property ministry team, as well as a list of needs to check off when interviewing potential contractors. One contractor often has a different idea from another on how to repair the presented problems. Methods used to gather information about your needs and goals vary from contractor to contractor. Contractors may also take different views as to the primary issues, concerns, and challenges presented by your church’s project. With such a report in hand, your committee can more easily determine which suggested solutions meet the inspector’s description of needed repairs and help prospective contractors stick to the tasks you believe need to be done.
5. Be patient with the process. First Church learned that it takes time to move through the interviewing, inspection, and reporting process. Those congregation members who just want to “get things fixed” need to be reminded of the benefits of the process, and not just the fix. Yes, it can seem as though nothing is happening—especially when the roof is obviously falling down. But patience and process are keys to arriving at a successful solution to any sacred space issue.
First Baptist Church learned valuable lessons. And while experience may be the best teacher, one congregation may find it more prudent (and less frustrating) to learn from another church’s experience than to discover the pitfalls on its own. What First Baptist found from its experience may well save you time, money, and frustration as you encounter similar building-related issues.
Guidance on Building Issues
You can learn from the Center’s experience, too. We’ve learned (and are constantly relearning) in our work with local congregations that simple building questions (fixing the gutter or repairing windows) often don’t have simple, straightforward solutions. In many cases, while immediate building problems are being repaired, deeper problems are discovered. Congregations need to be aware of this possibility and to be prepared to invest the time, energy, and frustration to address the emerging deeper problems.
We offer the following guidance to help you as you begin addressing any building issue—whether it be gutter repair or redesign of interior space or major additions or renovations. The answers will help you as you work with an outside consultant or contractor. You may find, though, that not all the questions apply to your situation or that some of them are answerable only as your project progresses.
1. Describe the problem. Begin by carefully describing your church’s problem. It’s not enough to say (especially to a contractor), “We have a gutter problem.” Be as specific as you can. Is the problem that the gutters are falling down? Leaking? Leaf-laden? Not draining?
2. Decide how to solve the problem. After you’ve defined the problem, ask what you think needs to happen to solve it. Is it something members can do themselves, or is outside help called for? If so, what kind of outside help? In First Baptist’s case, the retired consultant helped trustees differentiate between the need for a project manager or for a general contractor, and to determine which was best for their situation. Both approaches can work. First Baptist, following the consultant’s recommendation, went with a proven contractor with his own crew.
3. Determine your time investment. Carefully consider how much time and energy the congregation is willing to invest in fixing this problem. This calculation has a lot to do with preparing the congregation for how much time it will take truly to solve the problem. Remember, many people will want to “just get it fixed.” You need to have clear answers to 1 and 2 on this list to help them realize that it won’t be fixed tomorrow—unless, of course, it will (as in the case of a youth group member’s crushing a basketball into a building gutter, which needed only to be replaced).
4. Ask financial questions. Ask two money questions: “How much can we realistically afford to spend?” and “How much can we afford not to spend?” To understand the second question, remember that the quicker fix may be less expensive in the short run but more costly in the long term. A simple gutter patching may solve the leakage problem—but not the problem of ice building up under the roof. When dealing with finances and buildings, you may have to look at special arrangements—going outside the regular budget, drawing from congregational endowments, borrowing from a bank or church-extension service, or embarking on a special fund drive. When you know what you can spend, communicate that clearly to the contractor—and stick to it! And realize, too, that unless you’ve had a thorough inspection of the problem, you may not have a realistic idea of the actual cost.
5. Determine your time frame. Consider another time issue. How soon would you like the problem to be addressed? “Yesterday” is not the right answer. The problem, most likely, did not develop overnight. And the solution won’t be found quickly either. Still, you need to think carefully about a time frame that will work for your congregation—considering both the problem and your church calendar. Ask yourselves, “Are there rigid time constraints?”—especially in relation to congregational events and holidays. As you negotiate with prospective firms, ask them how busy they are and how interested they are in your congregation’s project. Discuss whether they think they can meet your proposed schedule. Then get them to put the dates in any contract you sign. You’ll need to communicate all of this information to the contractor or firm you’re working with.
6. Clarify roles. Decide early on who will represent the church as the primary contact with those involved in designing and building your project. If too many cooks can spoil the soup, too many church members offering too many ideas or proposed changes to the contractor can botch a building project. At the very least, such advice can slow the job considerably. At most, it can lead to cost overruns, confusion, and dissatisfaction with the final job. Likewise, settle up front who from the firm will work directly with your congregation.
Dealing with Vendors
Finally, ask, “What are we looking for in a vendor?” If you’re like many church building volunteers, you may have no idea how to answer that question. From our own experience with congregations, contractors, and sacred space issues, we offer the following two suggestions for thinking through this question.
1. Find out whether the vendor has ever worked with a congregation. Ask what percentage of the firm’s practice involves projects with congregations. Those of us who are involved with congregations know that they are very different from most other organizations. They have peculiar characteristics and a culture unlike that of other groups. To us, but maybe not to a contractor, there are obvious ways of dealing with business—committees, boards, sessions, and so on, depending on the congregational polity. Then certain finance issues are often common to many congregations—like years of underbudgeting for routine maintenance or renovation, dwindling operating income, or unrealistic expectations of how much professional renovations (versus volunteer efforts) really cost. Finally, the emotional and spiritual investment of the congregants may be high. Some of them may have served on committees that made previous building decisions. Ask prospective vendors for a list of past church clients and the names of contact people they worked with at those congregations. As you consider your budget issues, check the firm’s track record with cost estimating (and confirm it with the other congregations it has worked with). Ask for samples of actual construction costs versus budget costs for recent projects. You’ll also want to find out whether the firm has completed projects such as yours for other congregations.
2. Make sure that any vendors carry the proper limits of liability and other insurance. If a project-related accident occurs, you want to ensure that the congregation isn’t liable. Likewise, if the job is botched, you want to know that you have recourse. You hope you’ll never need to use the insurance—but it’s important for your peace of mind. Also contributing to peace of mind during the project is knowing that the vendors have all the proper licenses (such as an architect’s license) and permits for your locality. Ask for copies of all these documents.
Sacred space issues—whether they be leaking gutters or major renovations— can seem daunting. Putting to good use the lessons learned by First Baptist Church of Cumberland, Indiana, and the Indianapolis Center for Congregations can ease some of your concerns, leading to the completion of a project that is both satisfactory and satisfying.
—————
NOTES
1. The Indianapolis Center for Congregations, Inc., established in 1997, was founded to help strengthen congregations in the central Indiana metropolitan area. The center is affiliated with the Alban Institute, a research, publishing, education, and consulting organization based in Bethesda, Maryland, which provides resources for congregations nationwide. The Center is a gift to the greater Indianapolis area from Lilly Endowment Inc.
2. The Center’s Resource Grants Program is designed to help provide congregations with the financial ability to find and use the best resources available for addressing their challenges and opportunities. Grants can be used for resources ranging from print and digital media to consulting services, educational programs, and workshops. These matching grants are awarded in amounts up to $15,000, and cover half of the cost of a project or resource.

Read more from Brent Bill and Nancy DeMott »

Faith & Leadership
Detroit pastor and her church are building something big with tiny homes
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, PASTORAL LEADERSHIP, INNOVATION, CONGREGATIONAL INNOVATION, MISSIONS & EVANGELISM
A Detroit pastor and her church are building something big with tiny homes
As both pastor and nonprofit executive director, the Rev. Faith Fowler is known for her outreach to the poor. Her latest effort: a village of tiny homes that will allow people to become stakeholders in their neighborhood and in their city.

The Rev. Faith Fowler stands in front of the first of 25 new tiny homes that will be built in Detroit by Cass Community Social Services. Photo by Diane Weiss
In Detroit’s urban core -- ravaged by depopulation, unemployment and abandonment -- the Rev. Faith Fowler is building something big with tiny homes.
The pastor of Cass Community United Methodist Church, known for her innovative, entrepreneurial outreach to the poor, has conceived and captained a project to build a village of 25 very small houses that the working poor or formerly homeless can rent to own.
“People will come here to see these tiny homes; they will become a destination,” said Fowler, 57, as she stood before the first Cass house, a neat 300-square-foot stucco Tudor with a stone faux chimney.
But the homes are about more than a place to live, Fowler said. More importantly, they will be a foundation for the low-income poor to grow and hold an asset, to become stakeholders, literally and figuratively, in their neighborhood and in Detroit.
“When the community is completed,” Fowler said, “there will be 25 new taxpayers on what was once vacant land.”

• What does it mean to be a stakeholder? To what extent is your church a stakeholder in its neighborhood?

The tiny homes are just the latest in a long string of creative initiatives by Fowler and her church to fight poverty in Detroit, using an asset-based approach to community development. Founded in 1883, Cass Community UMC is the third-oldest United Methodist Church in Detroit. The church today may be small -- only about 100 or so attend worship in the historic Romanesque building on Cass Avenue -- but it makes a very big impact through its nonprofit, Cass Community Social Services(link is external).
Like all the Cass programs, the Tiny Homes project is the result of much planning and thought. These are not cookie-cutter fabrications, mobile trailers or recycled shipping containers; the homes are designed to be not only efficient but eye-catching. Even darling.

Different styles of the houses are displayed on a cork board in the Rev. Faith Fowler's office. Photo by Diane Weiss
Ranging from 250 to 400 square feet, they will have unique exteriors, evoking styles from mountain-lodge rustic to midcentury modern to New Orleans French Quarter. They will have decks and front porches and be built on individual lots.
The Tudor house -- in effect, the development’s model -- has a good-sized bathroom plus a single main room that features a sleeping nook, a living area, a washer-dryer and a full kitchen with donated granite countertops.
Seven years to home ownership
By year’s end, Fowler aims to have seven homes built and occupied. So far, more than 600 people have requested applications, hoping to meet the project’s financial qualifications to rent to own. Rent will be based on square footage, generally $1 a square foot -- $300 a month for the Tudor home. If residents keep up rent payments for the first three years, they’ll qualify to make monthly payments on a subsequent four-year land contract, offering them full ownership in a total of seven years.

Sitting in the Tudor model, Dewayne Hooper, 26, fills out an application for his own tiny home. Photo by Diane Weiss
Tiny homes have enchanted segments of popular culture, with cable network shows appealing to those who want to downsize, economize and live simply. And communities across the country are turning to them as a solution to the problem of homelessness.
An effort for the homeless in Austin, Texas, has created a village of pint-size individual shelters(link is external) much smaller than the Cass homes. And San Jose, California, recently enacted measures(link is external) permitting individual structures as small as 70 square feet for housing the homeless.
But the Cass development is not intended to be a glorified homeless shelter. Fowler says she’s aiming for a diverse group of inhabitants “so people won’t drive by and say, ‘That’s where the homeless live.’”
In fact, the homes are not necessarily for the homeless. Residents will need to have a source of monthly income. Cass envisions a mix of young and old, low-income workers, seniors on fixed incomes, people receiving disability benefits and students.
Some residents will likely be employees of Cass Community Social Services -- many of them once homeless or former addicts who’ve remade their lives through various Cass Community programs. The nonprofit agency, which Fowler heads as executive director, grew out of her ministry at the church, which for decades has been a haven for the addicted, disabled and homeless of Detroit’s now-gentrifying skid row.
The church’s history
For its first 40 years or so, Cass Community UMC served a mostly well-to-do congregation, traces of which can still be seen in the sanctuary’s Tiffany windows and Johnson tracker pipe organ. Just north of downtown Detroit, the neighborhood was originally a fashionable upper-class enclave, but as residents began moving farther north in the 1920s, it began a long decline.

Founded in 1883, Cass Community UMC has a long history of ministry, mission and advocacy. Photo by Rebecca Cook
For much of the past 60-plus years, the area has been known as the Cass Corridor. But today, positioned on the edge of Wayne State University and Detroit’s cultural institutions, it is a hip, millennial magnet rebranded as Midtown.
Despite the gentrification, Fowler and the church still deal mostly with folks more emblematic of Detroit’s 40 percent poverty rate and big-city struggles.
“Every Sunday service, you see her stand at the front of the church, and there’s at least one person there who asks for help,” said head usher Keith Hill. “They’re homeless, or they’re about to be homeless, or they need assistance.”
Fowler’s first Sunday preaching before the congregation, a woman with developmental disabilities -- a frequent Cass usher -- yelled from the back of the church mid-sermon: “Hey lady! We’re out of toilet paper!” Fowler stopped to get her a roll.
“From prayers to giving you the resources or the connections to make everything better, she tries to help,” Hill said. “Some people have passion in this world. She has fire.”

Standing on her tiptoes, a shoeless Faith Fowler leads Sunday worship at Cass Community UMC. Photo by Rebecca Cook
Hill knows it to his core. When he was a teenager, Fowler helped him escape an abusive home and gave him a place to live. His mother’s boyfriend, having forced Hill to drop out of school to work, had pointed a gun at the teen’s head when he refused to turn over a paycheck.
Now 38, Hill works at the Cass Activity Center, assisting with training and work for adults with developmental disabilities.
Fowler describes Hill’s story, and the toilet paper sermon, in her book “This Far by Faith,” which was produced through another of Fowler’s innovations, Cass Community Publishing House(link is external).
CCSS, a $6 million nonprofit
As the executive director of Cass Community Social Services, Fowler manages a $6 million nonprofit that has created programs to aid people dealing with homelessness, hunger, addiction, HIV/AIDS, disabilities and job preparedness.

Cri Cri Snead plays the tambourine as the choir sings at the Warehouse Worship service at Cass Community Social Service on a Wednesday night. Photo by Diane Weiss
Among CCSS enterprises are programs that put people to work recycling tires -- 45,000 picked up from city streets -- into mud mats and flip-flops, available for purchase on the nonprofit’s website(link is external). Reclaimed wood from abandoned Detroit houses is crafted into holders for coasters, which depict vintage Detroit landmarks. A shredding business is also flourishing. And the CCSS kitchen dishes out 1 million meals a year, seven days a week.
The Tiny Homes project will cost about $1.5 million, more than half of which Fowler has already raised from private donations and grants. Each house will cost about $40,000 to $50,000 to build, and volunteer groups, including United Methodist teams, will help with finishing touches, such as drywalling, painting and sodding lawns.
“What makes Cass Community unique -- and Faith, in particular -- is they’re working on transformative projects that break the cycle of poverty,” said Jim Vella, the president of the Ford Motor Co. Fund, which donated $400,000 to the enterprise.
“They take people who are unemployable and don’t have skills and really make a difference in their lives,” said Vella, who also sits on the CCSS board.
Vella describes Fowler as a visionary who gets things done -- “a combination of CEO, COO, CFO and Mother Teresa all rolled into one.”
Fowler’s impact has drawn widespread accolades, both in church circles and in the Detroit area. She recently was honored with an annual Shining Light Award, sponsored by the Detroit Free Press and the Metropolitan Affairs Coalition to recognize outstanding community contributions. Last month, she had to skip the church’s weekly Wednesday night service to attend her induction ceremony into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.
And she’s a premier teacher and preacher for UMC events. Next spring, for the third year in a row, Fowler and Cass Community will host about 40 pastors and lay staff in Detroit for a UMC training event entitled “Ministry with the Poor.” Drawing upon Fowler’s approach to ministry, the sessions are about service “with” and not “to” people and communities in need, said the Rev. Nora Colmenares, community engagement leader with the UMC General Board of Global Ministries.

Chosen Bishop, 13, reads along with his grandmother Esther Bishop-Files during Sunday worship at Cass Community UMC. Photo by Rebecca Cook
Asset-based perspective
“Most churches and others do ministries with the poor as a charity, and from a needs-based perspective,” Colmenares said. “We’re intentionally trying to lead the church away from a needs-based perspective.”
Colmenares said Fowler approaches ministry from an asset-based perspective, drawing upon the talents and labor of people in the community.
What are the needs and assets in your community and how might your church or organization respond?
“She sees that those who have disabilities have assets,” Colmenares said. “Those who were in jail have assets. Those who were addicted and homeless -- they have assets.”
Cass Community UMC has a long history of outreach, dating back to the Great Depression. In 2002, Fowler spun off the church’s social services efforts into the CCSS nonprofit agency when the various programs and ministries began to overwhelm the church’s capacity.
“Every room, every wall was filled with food and medical supplies; people were everywhere,” Fowler said. “My office was used as an examining room for the medical clinic. And the associate’s office was floor-to-ceiling macaroni and cheese.”

• What is the relationship between innovation, evolution and sustainability?

Now, the nonprofit provides food, housing, health care, jobs and job training from a campus of buildings about four miles north of the church. It receives funding through government grants, fees for service, foundation and corporate giving, and donations from other churches and individuals. Fundraisers provide about $1 million annually, including an upcoming “Roastin’ the Rev” dinner.
The Cass congregation is supported by offerings, donations and fundraisers. The church pays its own bills, “including my salary and housing, which wasn’t the case when I arrived,” Fowler said. It’s also paid its UMC apportionments in full for 20 years.

The Rev. Faith Fowler leads Sunday worship at Cass Community UMC, where she has served as pastor since 1994. Photo by Rebecca Cook
Navigating her roles as pastor and CCSS executive director can be tricky. Some parishioners receive services through Cass or work at the nonprofit. To minimize conflicts, Fowler relies on the nonprofit’s staff to make decisions about employment or who receives assistance. (Fowler herself hires only executive-level personnel.)
“Occasionally, a church member gets fired or a member of the congregation might feel they deserve preferential treatment,” she said. “I try to allow agency staff members to deal with most situations. Nevertheless, it gets complicated at times.”
A daughter of Detroit
Fowler grew up in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, with three brothers, a schoolteacher father, and a mother who was an active union rep at the chain grocery where she worked. She lives in a historic 1864 Victorian a 1.5-mile bike ride from the church.
“I had a safety net,” Fowler said. “Poor people don’t. If I screwed up, my family might give me a lecture -- but also give me a check.”
The services provided by CCSS make a difference in the lives of hundreds every day. But when clients are ready to move on, they often have few places where they can go. That’s what the Tiny Homes project seeks to address.
When Fowler wanted to explore building tiny homes, she turned to CCSS aide and development coordinator Stacy Conwell-Leigh to do the research.
“She could be the billionaire CEO, but she’s got the heart of a minister,” said Conwell-Leigh, who shows the Tudor model to potential applicants -- and the simply curious -- each Wednesday afternoon.

• How can you and your organization nurture people with innovative, theologically robust imaginations?

At a recent open house, one visitor asked Conwell-Leigh why the houses aren’t designed to accommodate several individuals in shared living space. Conwell-Leigh explained that many poor people live communally out of necessity -- in shelters, or with relatives and eating their meals at soup kitchens.
“Faith wants our folks to have what she had and so many of us have -- a backyard, a place of our own,” she said. “Faith had a happy life and wants to pass it on.”
But whoever lives in the Cass tiny homes won’t be alone. They can get help and community services just across the street.
“They can earn a GED, learn job training, use the gym facilities and get a free daily meal in our programs across the street,” Fowler said.
The Tiny Homes project is on the CCSS campus in central Detroit -- not a current hotspot in Detroit’s comeback. The neighborhood has 500 blighted buildings and 300 vacant lots, and the CCSS buildings and services provide a harbor of stability.

A construction worker excavates the foundations for the next phase of Cass Community Social Services' project. Photo by Diane Weiss
Mark Linton, 54, who lives in the low-rent apartments that CCSS renovated adjacent to the project, recently toured the showcase tiny home.
He’s on disability. He likes the Tudor’s curb appeal and the 300 square feet of efficient living space, “but it’s smaller than what I’ve got now,” he said.
When he hears about plans for three streets full of similar houses, Linton’s eyes widen, and he smiles.
“We need it around here. We have all these eyesores,” Linton said. “This will be beautiful.”
Questions to consider:
Faith Fowler paid attention to the needs -- and assets -- of her community and then responded in creative, innovative ways. What are the needs and assets in your community and how might your church or organization respond?
 Cass Community leveraged their available land for the Tiny Homes project. What assets do you have that are underutilized that could be put in service of ministry?
Part of the story of Cass Community is the evolution of the nonprofit independent from the church. In your own experience, what is the relationship between innovation, evolution and sustainability?
How can you and your organization nurture people like Faith Fowler, with innovative, theologically robust imaginations?
To what extent is your church a stakeholder in its own neighborhood and community?

Read more about Cass Community United Methodist Church »

FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY

Greening Spaces for Worship and Ministry: Congregations, Their Buildings, and Creation Care by Mark Torgerson
Greening Spaces for Worship and Ministry is a comprehensive guide for congregational leaders considering construction of new buildings, renovating existing structures and providing ecologically-wise preservation for historic properties. Site development, material choices, energy generation and consumption, water use, interior air quality, green cleaning programs, and beauty are discussed.
The book provides a rationale, strategies, and resources for fulfilling environmental stewardship through the land and buildings of Christian and Jewish congregations.
To illustrate his argument, Torgerson uses the stories of ten congregations from across the United States and Canada as examples of excellence in creation care in and through their built environments.
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