PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
Faith & Leadership: 
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
Worship at Convergence takes many forms, including this Bible study and collage-making event.
Photos by Suzanne Rossi
Shortly after 5 p.m. on a Sunday in early March, about 20 adults gather around a long table in a gallery space in Alexandria, Virginia. Before them are scissors, glue sticks, pastels and colored pencils, and nearby, stacks of old magazines.
For the next hour and a half, they cut and paste and color, making collages and talking about what brings them joy, everything from quiet walks in the woods to tables full of oysters and beer.
Bible study participants sort through old magazines that they will search for images of "joy."
It’s not an art class. It’s Sunday worship at Convergence, an alternative faith community that is both church and arts center. This week, the gathering (“service” seems too formal a word) is a creative Bible study. The Rev. Lisa Cole Smith, the pastor and artistic director, sets the tone with a verse from Matthew -- “Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear” (Matthew 13:16 NIV).Under the guidance of Anita Breitenberg, an artist and Convergence member, the participants flip through old sheet music and outdated issues of National Geographic, Savory, Motor Trend and other magazines, clipping images and phrases that illustrate joy:
A school of dolphins. Towering redwoods. A peaceful shoreline. Jude Law’s come-hither gaze.
Christina Sorensen (center) explains her collage and how fearlessness brings her joy.
The gathering is the first in what will be a yearlong series, “Practicing the Presence of God.” Every other Sunday, members will explore artistic and spiritual practices that can help them see beauty in the ordinary. Bringing together faith and art, it’s a typical event at Convergence. In the decade since the church was founded as a restart for a struggling Baptist congregation, visual arts, dance, music, poetry and theater have informed virtually every act of worship -- and much else of the community’s life together.
How can a church be more than a faith community? What other roles could your church serve?
Today, Convergence still takes seriously its roles as both church and community arts center. In addition to the worship and discipleship groups that make it “church,” Convergence provides affordable practice, performance and studio space for musicians, dancers, drama troupes and visual artists of all kinds.The point isn’t to lure artists into church; opening their doors to artists is simply what Convergence feels called to do.
How can your church support groups doing important work in your community?
“Because of our relationship with God and because the work they’re doing is important, we feel compelled to support them,” said Smith, who worked as an actress and director before attending seminary and founding Convergence.
Lisa Cole Smith, Convergence's pastor and artistic director, talks with participants before they begin making collages.
Art and faithSmith has always felt connected to God, she said, and in theater, she experienced many of the same feelings she’d had in church. Both evoked a sense of community and working toward something greater than oneself, she said. But artists are by nature inquisitive, and Smith worried that conventional churches often don’t make space for the kind of creative exploration that artists crave. At Convergence, art provides a springboard for spiritual exploration -- and vice versa.
How well does your church make space for creative exploration?
Artists often feel as though their own beliefs and views don’t fit well with church, but in their art they inevitably think about and wrestle with important issues, Smith said.“I believe artists have something to say into this spiritual realm,” she said. “The perspective of artists is as valuable as any product they might produce. We need a sense of imagination to show that God is at work in the world.”
Convergence is one of a dozen innovative congregations highlighted in “Divergent Church: The Bright Promise of Alternative Faith Communities,” by Tim Shapiro and Kara Faris of the Center for Congregations in Indianapolis. The authors applaud Convergence and the other churches for finding new ways to help Christians explore their faith, connect with God and impact their communities.
“Convergence is a community of people who not only value creativity, they see it as inseparable from spirituality,” the authors wrote. “They believe that imagination, creativity, and the arts are spiritual matters and their cultivation is of benefit to the church, the local community and the world.”
The congregation is eclectic. Like Smith, some members have an extensive background in the arts; others may never have considered themselves artistic but appreciate the freedom of expression that comes with the church’s creative and inclusive worship style. Whether in Sunday gatherings or in small discipleship groups, people are encouraged to share as little or as much as they want. No question is considered too off-the-wall or inappropriate.
“We get to know each other quite deeply,” said Stephanie Mass, a former middle school social worker. “It creates a feeling of safety and community. The church I was at before -- they’d want instant change, instant conversion. That doesn’t really work. The way we do church allows for deeper relationships. We’re allowing ourselves to be known.”
That atmosphere of safety and community was evident at the collage-making event in March. The participants were relaxed and jovial as they pieced together their creations. Smith encouraged everyone to trust their instincts: “Go with your gut.”
Art of paying attention
“Attentiveness, the art of paying attention, is really what the arts are most equipped to teach us,” Smith told the group. “Attentiveness is about learning to pay attention to our deepest impulses, noting a color, a shape, a feeling, an image. So collage is a really great way to get started on this journey to attentiveness.”
Images of apples, owls, home and "fathers" can lead to discussions about God's call.
As the evening drew to a close, the artists talked about their designs, and soon the discussion roamed far beyond images of serene landscapes, birds in flight and gourmet food. The collages prompted a host of questions: How do you live fearlessly? Where do you hear God’s voice the clearest? What are you being called to do? How do you intend to answer that call?Creating art -- or anything else -- almost always takes you to unexpected places, said Kathy Prudden, a licensed clinical social worker and expressive arts therapist who attends Convergence.
“When you create, you bring something into being which is more than what you intended it to be,” she said. “It takes us somewhere. It changes how we interact with the world. The act of creating changes us. I think the arts are a way for God to really enter in.”
What role, if any, do the arts play at your church?
A core group of about 40 people attend worship at Convergence. Because musicians and other performers routinely work on Saturday nights, the “service” is held on Sundays at 5 p.m.The first and third Sundays are reserved for creative Bible study, when members wrestle with biblical themes such as conflict and forgiveness, doubt and belief, redemption and social justice, by engaging in role playing, composing haiku, studying famous works of art or, as in the March event, creating artwork of their own.
Second Sundays feature a contemplative Taizé service, sometimes with an instrumental meditation performed by musicians in the congregation. And the fourth Sunday is marked by a celebratory potluck dinner where members socialize and tackle hard questions: What are you hungry for spiritually? What do you reach for when that hunger strikes? When and how is that hunger satisfied?
All of it feels very egalitarian. Though Smith often opens the gatherings with a welcome and scripture, all are invited to participate, get their hands dirty and explore what God is calling them to do and how they will respond.
The Convergence community designed and painted this mural in partnership with a D.C. nonprofit in 2013.
Blank canvas of improvImprovisation is an essential part of that process, said Karen Swenholt, a professional sculptor who has a studio at Convergence and several pieces in its sculpture garden.
“What Lisa [Smith] does is very brave, because she kind of steps out almost as if on a blank canvas,” Swenholt said. “Then, she lets God participate in what happens. She doesn’t hyper control what happens.”
Because Smith encourages that kind of freedom and movement, unexpected moments take place, where people are clearly affected by what’s happening in the room, Swenholt said.
Several members said they had felt stifled in more traditional churches but feel encouraged and affirmed at Convergence. Rita Hadley recalled coming home in tears after small group members at her former church immediately rejected a topic she had raised for discussion.
“I need the freedom to follow God the way I hear God calling me,” she said. “At Convergence, you have the freedom to hear what God is saying to you rather than what you’re told God is saying to you. People aren’t afraid to feel vulnerable and real.”
Traditional worship services can be powerful and engaging for those who know and understand the script, Smith said. But they typically lack the immersive, experiential piece that is an integral part of the gatherings at Convergence. Traditional worship is often not very good at explaining the why behind the rituals or very willing to explore that why with worshipers, she said.
How well do people at your church understand the “why” of worship?
“If it’s become rote, that’s different from when everybody’s present and really calling on God to be in the midst of that,” she said. “I’m somebody [for whom] being a passive participant is not very engaging. A lot of artists are definitely that way. They want to know the whole puzzle and get their hands into everything.”From ‘theater kid’ to pastor
A self-described “theater kid” in high school, Smith studied drama at Carnegie Mellon University and then moved to Los Angeles after graduation to pursue her acting career. Seeking “roles that mattered,” she spent four years touring with the Covenant Players, a professional theater company that performs Christian-themed works at venues around the globe.
While on tour, Smith noticed that the shows often evoked a strong response in audience members, even those who weren’t Christians. She wondered whether drama might be a ministry of its own, a way to deliver messages that a traditional sermon could not.
After returning to Virginia where her parents lived, Smith spent four years studying the intersection of art and faith at the John Leland Center for Theological Studies, founded a theater group, and consulted with local pastors on how to embrace creative worship. When she graduated in 2006 with an M.T.S. degree, she thought she might continue working with her theater group or pursue a doctorate.
“It never even crossed my mind to be a pastor,” she said.
That’s when a committee from the 60-year-old Fair-Park Baptist Church approached her. After years of decline, the congregation had voted to explore a complete restart. The committee wanted to know, was she interested in establishing a new vision for the church?“To their credit, it was a real faith thing,” Smith said. “I created this crazy vision, and they said yes, and then we had to figure out how to make that happen.”
The first item on Smith’s list was partnering with local artists to provide affordable space for everything from photo exhibits and theater productions to dance recitals and all-ages do-it-yourself punk shows. While a church service might attract 20 to 30 people, roughly 200 visit Convergence each week to take a class, view an exhibit, enjoy a play or hear a live band.
"Monumental Fool" is one of several pieces by Karen Swenholt in the Convergence sculpture garden.
Under the church’s new “Hope Through Beauty” project, launched earlier this year, Convergence plans to link local nonprofits with artists willing to volunteer their services. For instance, several Convergence members lead children in art projects at a monthly food distribution organized by an Alexandria shelter and child development center.When it began, Convergence was given five years to become self-sustaining, and in 2011, trustees for the former Fair-Park Baptist made good on their promise, deeding the building and property to the new congregation. About half of the church’s revenue comes from member support; the rest is generated by renting space to artists and an Anglican congregation that meets in the sanctuary on Sunday mornings.
Demand for space in the building is high, and sometimes the church books itself out of its own home. On a recent Sunday, a citywide high school art exhibit filled the gallery while theater productions were underway in the sanctuary and another large space. As a result, the congregation held its monthly potluck celebration in the nearby home of Smith and her husband, Jay, a musician and composer. The couple married in 2012 and have a 2-year-old daughter.
Jay Smith, Convergence's cultural architect, tells other participants about his collage.
‘Cultural architect’A member of the Convergence staff since 2009, Jay Smith serves as Convergence’s “cultural architect,” helping ensure that the church’s many initiatives fit within its mission, integrating faith, life and work for members and unleashing imagination and creativity.
What is the "cultural architecture" at your church or organization? How well does it fit with the mission?
Church, he said, has a vital role to play in creating culture and must be involved in that process “at its inspiration, at its creation, not catching up at the end.”“We need to support these kids, these bands playing in their basements,” he said. “We need to start loving them, nurturing them, understanding them and helping them understand themselves, so when they get into Rolling Stone or MOMA, even if they’re not Christians, they’re not saying, ‘Church was destructive to me’ but rather, ‘It loved me.’”
Dan Abh came to Convergence in 2009, seeking a venue for a punk music and arts festival he was organizing. “Atheist and anti-institutional” at the time, Abh had spent years helping local DIY musicians find places to rehearse and perform. He said he felt immediately at ease with Jay Smith, who asked him something no one else had: “Why do you care?”
“I told him when I was growing up, I never had anything like that, and I got into some trouble,” Abh said. “I firmly, firmly believe young people need a creative outlet, and Jay was wanting the same thing.”
Sitting on the floor, Dan Abh, Convergence's community coordinator, assembles the pieces for his collage.
For three years, Abh ran Convergence’s program for young artists as a volunteer, hosting shows, open-mic nights and festivals featuring emerging bands, but he never set foot inside the church’s sanctuary. After losing his two closest friends and his grandfather in a six-month period, a distraught Abh decided to attend a small discipleship group meeting, just to check it out. Worried what his friends in the DIY community would think, he didn’t tell them -- or even his then-girlfriend.But the congregation was supportive, and Abh said he increasingly felt called to be there. In 2012, he traded his longtime job as a store training manager at Trans World Entertainment for a part-time gig as the janitor at Convergence, and in 2015, he became its community coordinator.
“We’re a moving church. We’re not sterile,” said Abh, who was baptized last Easter. “Most of the things I’ve learned about spirituality are not from reading anything but from those interactive Bible studies. Those have the most impact on me. I take huge, monumental steps in the space of 45 minutes, and you can feel it. You can really, really feel it.”
Ken Hadley and Matthew Kiehl bow their heads as the Bible study/collage-making event closes with prayer.
Convergence has a focus on healing, development and action, Jay Smith said. The arts provide a means for moving people “past brokenness,” encouraging them to develop spiritually and challenging them to share their gifts with the world. After a decade, that culture has taken hold at Convergence, and is manifested in the way the congregation engages authentically with each other and the surrounding community, he said.Prudden, the art therapist, said much the same.
“At Convergence, there’s a lot of room for being different,” she said. “Here’s a place where you can be your funky artist self and it’s OK. We’re unabashedly Christian. We just go about it in another way.”
Questions to consider:
- How can a church be more than a faith community? What other roles could your church serve?
- What groups are doing important work in your community? How can your church support them?
- Do non-artists also crave creative exploration? How well does your church make space for creative exploration?
- What role, if any, do the arts play at your church?
- How well do people at your church understand the why of worship?
- What is the "cultural architecture" at your church or organization? How well does it fit with the mission?
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: HYBRID MINISTRIES
Faith & Leadership: A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
After years of struggling to keep up its 1928 building, the congregation of First Christian Church of Oakland decided to make it a center for nonprofits working for peace. Photos courtesy of Oakland Peace Center
Concerned about violence in their city, members of a declining church in Oakland shifted focus, redefined its ministry and invited nonprofit service agencies to work together as the Oakland Peace Center.The Oakland Peace Center makes its home in the First Christian Church of Oakland, an imposing Mission Revival structure in a residential neighborhood of this California city. Completed in 1928, it has arched doors and windows and red stone embellishments. The 40,000-square-foot building spreads out over five levels.
The exterior still resembles the grand church it once was. But inside, there are signs that the First Christian Church congregation isn’t alone in this space.
The entry hall holds a shelf filled with free books, a bin piled high with free clothing, and a bulletin board with information on volunteer opportunities and scheduled events. The sanctuary, chapel and two large halls are used for conferences, music programs, plays and movie screenings. Smaller spaces house offices and host small group meetings, common meals and a variety of other peacemaking activities. Twice a month, a drumming group gathers at the center to explore rhythm as a spiritual practice. On work days, volunteers come and fix up the aging facility.
Conceived more than a decade ago by a church struggling to envision its future, today the center is both a physical space and a network of 40 local nonprofit organizations, all committed to promoting peace, curbing violence and advancing social justice in Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Our members’ hearts are sold out to Jesus, and the Oakland Peace Center emerged from those hearts,” said the congregation’s pastor, the Rev. Monica Joy Cross. “They knew this was a church in a position to change, and what they did was prophetic.”
“It’s a space from which healing for this planet can spring,” he said. “This is a journey, and the center is just one step. But maybe we can be a role model for other places as we seek peace in our time.”
‘No one has to do this work alone’
More than just a building with a collection of tenants, the Oakland Peace Center is structured to foster collaboration among its member organizations. The definition of “peace” is broadly construed; while some organizations work directly to combat violence, others have a wider mission.
“Our partners are creating an overwhelming new ministry and making a difference in Oakland,” said the Rev. Sandhya Rani Jha, the center’s founder and executive director. “They also show up for each other, help each other and remind each other that no one has to do this work alone.”
The “peace partners” co-sponsor events, share strategies and resources and organize trainings. Twelve nonprofits rent space, and roughly 30 more affiliate with the center out of a sense of shared vision.
“This building is a place of synergy where we’re all in it together, working to strengthen each other,” said Angela Urata, a center board member and the operations director of the partner Niroga Institute, which is focused on yoga and meditation.
Although the congregation is now just one of the many partners, Jha emphasizes that the center is the legacy of the First Christian Church: “What has happened here happened because the congregation determined they could not be all things to all people, and they created a way for others to help. This is a phoenix story.”
Discerning the way to peace
Jha, 42, is a warm-hearted woman with a ready smile who has a background in community organizing and political engagement. Her mother is Scottish Presbyterian and her father Hindu. Born in England and brought up in Akron, Ohio, Jha was ordained in 2005 in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
In 2006, First Christian Church of Oakland called her as their minister. Jha recalls that some colleagues tried to discourage her from taking the job, predicting that the church was “destined to die, with no hope of transformation.”
Jha, who holds both an M.Div. and a master of public policy degree from the University of Chicago, accepted the post. She was the congregation’s first nonwhite pastor, and was eager to help them move into a new chapter.
Under her leadership, they undertook a visioning process -- in the later stages it included the Disciples’ New Beginnings program, designed to help “the congregation that knows it can’t continue ‘as is’ but doesn’t yet know what to do.”
As the decades passed, the neighborhood and the congregation changed. Once all-white, the church slowly integrated as the demographics of the neighborhood shifted.
Some members moved away. Some newcomers to the neighborhood belonged to churches elsewhere. Some younger people rejected their families’ religious traditions, and older members died. When Jha arrived, the church had about 20 members. It grew under her leadership, but still faced challenges.
The building had become too large for the congregation, and too difficult to maintain. Members of the church’s men’s fellowship took care of the maintenance, said Fields, a retired broadcast engineer whose family was one of the first to integrate the congregation.
In 2007, Jha organized a visioning retreat to discuss the congregational identity. At the time of their retreat, First Christian Church members were praying every week for neighbors in prison or those lost to or affected by violence in the neighborhood. The issues of violence and peace were not an abstraction; the time felt right to assess their role in the congregation’s mission.
The 15 participants discussed how the church might serve as a hub or incubator of peace -- a space where peace might radiate out into the surrounding community. At the retreat, the congregation also established criteria -- still in effect -- for all potential tenants and other members of the Oakland Peace Center.
All affiliated nonprofits must share these goals:
“Change is difficult,” he said. “Some members were pleased, and some were skeptical about the new plan.”
Fields’ daughter, Aimee, then a teenager, was instrumental in helping move the idea for the center forward, and today she serves on the board.
“The organizations that are part of the center are doing life-changing work and feel a responsibility to what God’s plan is for his people, for all of us,” the elder Fields said. “That’s ministry.”
In 2009, the congregation determined that the center would be the primary work of First Christian Church. The official launch was held on Martin Luther King weekend in 2012, with 25 peace partners on board.
As the center has evolved, the relationship with the church has shifted. Once the center received 501(c)(3) status, the church could act as an equal partner within the organization rather than simply as landlord.
Three years ago, the congregation decided to place the building in a trust with Disciples Home Missions, a general ministry of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). That process continues; when it's complete Home Missions will lease the building and the land to the center, while guaranteeing the congregation a place to worship.
Originally a congregant, Cross is a transgender activist, social justice advocate, writer and speaker. She has an M.Div. from the Pacific School of Religion and is a graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry.
Cross works part time for First Christian Church; she also serves as an associate minister at Tapestry Ministries (Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]), as founding minister of the Global Prayer Network, as founding minister and CEO of the nonprofit A Different Imagination for a Just and Sustainable Humanity and as a transgender clergy consultant.
Cross leads the congregation of about 20 members, ranging in age from 24 to 90. Despite the small size, the congregation is seeking to make a difference, she said.
“They are forward-leaning, risk-taking individuals, still finding justice issues to work on. It is a joy to minister to them,” she said.
A decade after it was first envisioned, the center is living into the vision. Fields’ son Daniel described it early on as “an epicenter of peace” -- a powerful metaphor for people familiar with earthquakes.
One recent morning, for example, the in-house partners met to discuss how to protect immigrants they work with, as well as new strategies for capacity building this year and next.
The center has recently hosted peace-promoting theater performances, book readings, discussions and a Law for Black Lives conference, held in February.
OneLife Institute, a peace partner that provides “the place where healers can heal and leaders can lean,” has a saying: “We lift up the folks who lift up the folks.”
Tia-Lynn Rounsoville, a communications and development intern at the center, said, “That’s Sandhya’s motto too.”
Has this work made a difference? "Call me in 50 years," Jha said. Violence has decreased since the center opened, though Jha is does not claim credit for that trend.
Oakland’s rate of homicide and other violent crime has dropped dramatically, but its homicide rate is still four to five times greater than that of the rest of California; last year, the problem was pressing enough that the city created the new Department of Violence Prevention. And recently protesters gathered outside the district attorney's office to demand she file charges against a transit officer who shot Sahleem Tindle to death at an Oakland BART station in January.
The work of the Oakland Peace Center is a culture shift, she said, with a much longer trajectory: "We're at the very beginning of the work."
A former professional basketball player, Jackson coaches the youth basketball team at the First Mongolian Christian Church, a program he hopes to expand as yet another way to spread peace.
“We should celebrate peace like we celebrate Halloween or like … we have a street fair,” he said. “Just go out in the streets and celebrate it, and create community around it.”
For Jha, the work of the center stems from the work of a small group of people willing to embrace a new way of being the church in the world.
“A congregation that numbers six in worship on Sunday is in many ways responsible for over 86,000 people in our community having greater access to peace,” she said. “That’s thanks to their willingness to collaborate and to listen to the needs of the community and to check their fears and ego at the door in order to let the work happen.”
Questions to consider:
So when 1812 Productions, Philadelphia’s only all-comedy theater company, arrived about a year later to inhabit the space with its antics, the parish applauded. And they welcomed the company at an ice cream social.
“To have a school close in a community is such a big deal,” said Jennifer Childs, co-founder and artistic director of 1812 Productions. “To know there are still important things happening in that space means a lot to them. They are thrilled that something creative is still going on here.”
The theater company rents the repurposed Our Lady of Mount Carmel classroom space for $3,000 a month. For that, they get twice the amount of room for $10,000 a year less than they had been paying. Now, in the same building where hallway coat hooks hark back to school days, and where a downstairs chapel still holds the parish weekday Mass, Childs and her troupe make funny in expanded rehearsal and office space. She and the landlord-pastor have lunch periodically, comparing notes on each other’s calling.
Enter Karen DiLossi, the director of Arts in Sacred Places. With a background in theater, DiLossi first saw the potential for bringing congregations and arts groups together during her eight-and-a-half-year tenure at the former Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, a service organization for the city’s arts community. Together with Partners for Sacred Places, the Theatre Alliance had begun to research and occasionally advise churches and arts groups to share space. When DiLossi came on board at Partners in 2011, Arts in Sacred Places was born, formalizing the program.
In its three and a half years, the nonprofit organization, entirely grant-funded, has brokered 16 long-term space-sharing arrangements and numerous short-term partnerships. Its standing in the Philadelphia community makes AiSP the go-to when groups need or have space. And elsewhere, its reputation is growing.
Done well, the matches are a classic win-win. Congregations gain much-needed income to maintain expensive-to-carry, unused rooms and buildings. Artists gain below-market-rate space in generally mortgage-free buildings. Neighbors get a surge in street activity on formerly quiet, even desolate, blocks.
Ideal space for the arts
Though designed for a very different purpose, houses of worship offer ideal space for arts groups. Fellowship halls have large open expanses, often unimpeded by pillars. Their floors, compared with those of commercial spaces, are often softer -- essential for dancers’ safety. And sanctuaries, with their theaterlike pews, light-flooded altar areas, lovely acoustics and striking architecture, are natural performance rooms.
Expanding beyond Philadelphia, AiSP is also doing some matchmaking in Chicago and providing informal counsel elsewhere. Baltimore, Detroit and Austin are currently under study via a grant-funded program to determine need and availability, and to compile a database of potential matches.
Rents and deals vary with each partnership, but AiSP aims for consistency, using a formula that factors in square footage, the term of the lease, frequency of use and whether the use is shared or exclusive. DiLossi figures on an hourly rate of about $10 to $20 for short-term rehearsal space, but the ideal, she explained, is the long-term, exclusive match. This may yield the host site $15,000 to as much as $50,000 annually, minus the costs of renting the space. Some facilities have a staff member on hand when the tenants are there, while many simply entrust their renters with the keys.
In Philadelphia, AiSP has been known to perform miracles. Director Alysia Lee’s Sister Cities Girlchoir, for instance, had only a month’s notice earlier this year that its Saturday rehearsal space was closing. Without missing even a single rehearsal, the group was installed at First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, right where they wanted to be.
The pastor and some of the elders welcomed them, happy at the chance to serve as a safety net. The choir got room to expand, as well as occasional use of the sanctuary for performances. Lee envisions a growing bond between the congregation and her girls -- at-risk students for whom the choir provides life skills as much as music. Out of the emergency, “great good prevailed,” DiLossi said.
Intangible benefits
The partnerships are about more than rental income or square footage. Some of the most important benefits are intangible. As the congregants enjoy the artists’ infusion of youth and energy and appreciation for their buildings, the artists grow to value being part of a stable community, within and beyond the congregation.
As more people -- both artists and audience members -- experience the spaces, public support grows for saving and preserving the beautiful old church buildings. People begin seeing buildings they once walked by with barely a glance as community assets.
Theatre people tend to soak up the sacred spaces, DiLossi said. “They’re artists. They want to know everything: What’s the story? What’s the history?”
The Rev. Fred Kinsey, the pastor of Unity Lutheran Church in Chicago, sees an average Sunday attendance of 40, in a changing neighborhood that houses two other Lutheran churches of the same synod. Income from AiSP partnerships has boosted morale at his struggling church.
“The biggest benefit is our status in the community,” Kinsey said. “Everybody sees that we are a congregation that’s active. Now, when it comes to the alderman’s office, to the chamber of commerce, we are a minor player.”
As with other church leaders, Kinsey considers the partnerships as much outreach as book balancing, and he’s worked hard to convey that to his congregation.
“I explained that this is a way we can reach out to the community,” he said. “It’s who we are as Christian people.”
The worst of the adjustment period seems to be over, he said, though the struggle to make ends meet remains: “AiSP gave us a little bit of extra hope that we can make something happen here.”
Shiloh Baptist Church, one of the original AiSP partners, shares space that hadn’t been used in 15 years with two performing groups at its vast Philadelphia complex. With his congregation wary at first, the Rev. Edward Sparkman said he pointed them to their prayers: “We’ve asked the Lord for help, and now he’s helping us.”
Today, church members take things in stride, even attending their dance company’s performances and inviting performers to church activities.
“Now, a lot of our members are viewing the church as being alive,” Sparkman said.
Content and other issues
Of course, all is not perfect -- not only because longtime church members can be change-averse. A house of worship needs to have ample space available to accommodate the diverse needs that may arise. Noisy rehearsals may conflict with church events and need to be rescheduled. Lights may get left on. Congregation leaders may deliberate too slowly for impatient potential tenants.
And then there’s the matter of content. Will the incoming troupers infuse sacred buildings with vulgarity, even nudity? Will the partners’ politics conflict? Will the landlord pressure an edgy director to edit when the director wants to go full-throttle? These are the situations that can make or break a partnership, and guiding the parties through long and serious talks is AiSP’s specialty.
“Relationships are so key,” DiLossi said. “Discussions are so key.”
Taking into account the particular nature of each congregation and arts group, the partnerships manage to come up with arrangements that work for both sides. Some congregations and theater groups reach a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding creative content. Others agree that a sanctuary should be for holy use alone, while the rest of the building is less sensitive. And others agree that all church space may be used by a group, like the Girlchoir, whose art is by nature uplifting.
To DiLossi, art is much like church. Raised Catholic, the 38-year-old fell in love with drama as a freshman at Washington College in Maryland. She’d been planning on law school, but the draw of the stage, with its sense of purpose and community, made her realize she had a different vocation -- a “calling,” in the parlance of her Catholic schooling.
While some churches want to keep their partners’ art wholesome, others believe that showing the underbelly of life can itself be a ministry, DiLossi said. Such is the case with the Church of the Crucifixion, an Episcopal congregation in downtown Philadelphia that rents its former parish house to Luna Theater Company, a group unafraid of pushing the limits. Luna bills this year’s offerings as “Season of Seduction.”
DiLossi believes that church can be an appropriate venue for theater that brings troubling issues into the light. After all, it’s not just the Ladies Auxiliary and the Men’s Group that meet in church basements. So too do groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous -- where real-life drama incorporates all manner of struggle.
Light and dark, comedy and drama
In the theater and in the church, there is room for both light and dark, comedy and drama. And if Luna Theater is at one end of the spectrum, 1812 Productions is at the other. Seated around a script-strewn table in their vintage classroom one recent frigid morning, a half-dozen members of the comedy group make like the schoolchildren whose space they now inhabit.
Her company and her landlord have a lot in common, director Jen Childs observed. “We’re both trying to do good in the world.”
Questions to Consider:
Leaders of a 100-year-old United Methodist Church in San Antonio discerned a call to create a new, missional community. But instead of planting a church, they planted a coffeehouse.Update: Riverside Community Church moved into a former steakhouse building in Bulverde, Texas, in 2014.
Situated close to Highway 281’s frenetic northbound lanes, about 30 miles north of downtown San Antonio, Texas, a coffeehouse called The Loft beckons visitors into its cozy interior.
Visitors are enveloped by the warmth of a wood fire and the smell of fresh-ground coffee and cinnamon rolls. Cushy leather sofas frame the stone hearth, and a wooden staircase leads to a loft with work stations.
“Customers might not know that this is a church,” said Tami Piatnik, who works on Saturdays. Indeed, The Loft displays few crosses or other signs of its affiliation with the United Methodist Church.
Though it wears its identity lightly, The Loft coffeehouse is a core ministry of Riverside, a church community in Spring Branch, Texas, (pop. 7,200) planted six years ago by San Antonio’s Alamo Heights United Methodist Church.
Riverside was born of a pastor’s two epiphanies: One by the Jordan River in Israel, and one in a Texas Starbucks.
The church plant began with The Loft coffeehouse, then expanded to include a food bank, thrift store and a resource center for the needy -- all before it held its first Sunday service.
Though Riverside now holds two Sunday services with about 500 worshippers, the community still has no formal membership and owns no church buildings.
“We’re the smallest church you’ll ever meet, because we have zero members,” said the Rev. Scott Heare, Riverside’s pastor. “Or, we’re the largest church you’ll ever see because we believe that all people in our community belong.”
A church in transition
The Rev. David McNitzky is the popular and erudite pastor of Alamo Heights, a 5,000-plus member “high-Methodist” congregation. It is the second-largest United Methodist Church in the Southwest Texas Conference, founded in 1909.
McNitzky joined the Alamo Heights staff in 1995, soon after the church moved to its 13-acre hilltop campus dominated by a soaring sanctuary. Locals have dubbed it “the Methodome,” a not-especially-welcome reference to San Antonio’s Alamodome.
Though clearly a successful leader of a venerable church community, McNitzky found that Alamo Heights was not immune to the national trend of declining attendance.
“Those who used to come every Sunday came for three weeks, those who used to come three Sundays came two, and so on,” McNitzky said. “If people could drop away from worship so quickly, what were we really doing? Were we really helping them? Were we really growing them?”
The trend caused McNitzky to reevaluate, and now he is piloting what he describes as a traditional church undergoing a transition. Alamo Heights has been renewed and challenged by its leaders’ conviction that the future of Christianity lies in actions that advance God’s kingdom.
And his willingness to empower other pastors and lay leaders to experiment has helped bring about that transition.
“It takes some courage to try and do something in a brand new way,” said Robert Scott, a longtime member and former trustee of Alamo Heights. “David is very permission-giving.”
Being Missional
The Rev. Heare is a young and energetic minister, a graduate of Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. After arriving at Alamo Heights, Heare found in McNitzky a “spiritual father,” mentor and close friend.
Alternately, McNitzky said that his younger partner has challenged and surprised him over the years. When together, their easy-going enjoyment of each others’ company is tangible.
Both pastors share a keen interest in the Jewish roots of Christianity, in particular the teachings of the Rev. Ray Vander Laan, who advocates that Christians draw lessons from the Hebrew culture of Jesus’ day.
They also share a commitment to the missional church, which McNitzky defines as “simply meaning you’re there for others, to be in the world, not trying to gather people into the building.”
Soon after arriving, Heare pioneered a contemporary worship service that draws younger families, and McNitzky realized his associate had a gift for innovation. “When Scott first came, he was obviously talented and gifted. I got a sense from God, in a way, that I was David and he was Solomon, and the next big building is his, not mine.”
Neither pastor knew that “the next big building” would not be a building at all.
A lesson at the Jordan River
In 2002, McNitzky initiated a strategic planning process for the church. The planning group’s method was to read and discuss books on church growth. “After several months, we weren’t getting anything,” he said.
Turning to prayer, McNitzky changed the process to “strategic listening” in order to discern where God was leading the church.
The approach yielded a clear message -- three committee members, almost on the same weekend, got the same sense from God that they were supposed to start a second campus, McNitzky said.
That direction became even clearer after Heare had a pair of epiphanies.
The first came in the summer of 2003, when Heare visited the Jordan River on a study tour of Israel.
“The river was rushing and loud,” Heare said. “And the lesson was about while we present our lives as the calm water, the reality was our lives looked more like the white water. It’s God’s job to go into that chaos and to pull us out. The job of community is to be on the riverside with wet feet remembering that we’ve come from that -- and pulling others out.”
Heare was deeply moved by twin images of calm and chaos depicted in the story of Jesus’ baptism.
“I’m sitting in the Jordan River,” Heare said, “wondering what such a community would look like. It dawns on me, I’m supposed to be the one who goes and plants the church, and it’s supposed to be called Riverside.”
‘Create community’
Alamo Heights now had clear direction to create a new worshipping community and the choice of a pastor, but where would the church be planted and what would it look like?
This time the answer was to be found in a more mundane location: a San Antonio Starbucks.
A few months after returning from Israel, Heare was sitting in a coffeeshop, mulling over the step-by-step training he’d received in starting a new church, while taking in the scene around him. That day, the customers at the Starbucks included a group of sales reps and a women’s Bible study. On the window was a sticker that said, “Create Community.”
“Suddenly, it was brightly clear to me, and I burst out laughing,” Heare said. It occurred to him that he was sitting in the place he’d been seeking -- a meeting ground for the churched and unchurched. “I was sitting in the shephelah.”
Drawing from what he’d learned in Israel, Heare likened the Starbucks to an ancient region in Judea referred to as a shephelah, a term he used metaphorically to mean a meeting place among people of different faiths.
Grabbing his milk-and-sugar-laden coffee, Heare got in his car and started driving north.
All fall, Heare had been searching for a location to plant a new church, but nothing seemed right. On this day, fueled by caffeine and prayer, he drove past San Antonio’s suburban sprawl.
Pulling off the road, he saw a two-story ranch house with a “for rent” sign. The building owner happened to pull up, and soon Heare was touring the grounds, talking real estate. It had a barn and storage unit in the back, and a woman was painting the back porch -- getting the place ready for the next tenant.
“It was clear to me that this could work, and it freaked me out,” Heare said.
Then he faced the next step: Taking his idea to McNitzky and Alamo Heights’ leadership.
Questions to consider:
The birthing of Riverside was not without labor pains.
When the finance committee of the church heard that their long-studied new building was, first of all, a coffee shop and, secondly, located in Spring Branch, they initially balked.
“They formed a task force to do due diligence and came to the conclusion that we can’t afford a coffee shop, it will not make money, the rent’s too high,” Heare said. They said: “We’ll support your worshipping community. We will not support your coffee shop.”
The church wasn’t going to stop them, but they initially wanted the group to rent a cheaper place nearby.
They did have supporters, including Scott. “Our business model -- build it and they will come -- is no longer working. Riverside is an example of how you engage the culture rather than waiting for the culture to engage you,” Scott said.
Undaunted, the leaders of the nascent church began looking for ways to move ahead with limited resources. Church members learned about an auction of a foreclosed coffee shop, and with a small donation of $3,000, decided to attend. They bid and won equipment valued at $30,000.
“That weekend, all the people interested in Riverside filled their cars with [coffeehouse] equipment and drove it out to The Loft,” Heare said.
Heare also decided that to form a community, he needed to live in the community. He and his wife and children moved to Spring Branch, which was a disappointment to the contemporary worship community he had led at Alamo Heights.
Eventually the differences were resolved and the church began supporting Riverside. McNitzky is philosophical now about the hurt feelings the project created.
“I think a number of us felt like it was the thing to do, but we didn’t educate the congregation well enough about why we’re doing it,” he said. “The challenge is to be true to the message…and travel at the speed of life. We were so passionate, but we had to go at a level that the church could stay with us.”
Serving God -- and coffee
The Loft coffeehouse opened in early 2004, providing a place for the community to gather, for Bible study and for a core group of Riverside founders to meet. Most importantly, The Loft provided a place “for the unchurched and the churched” to meet in Spring Branch.
An extrovert, Heare set out to meet people in the community, getting to know the area better, and inviting them to Riverside. The Loft soon became a popular local hangout, becoming the shephelah he had envisioned.
Jenny Rudd, The Loft’s manager, tacked a note by the cash register that said, “You may be the only Bible someone ever reads.”
About six months after the coffeehouse opened, Pam Barquest, the woman Heare had encountered painting the porch on his first visit, started the Hope Center, a combination food pantry, thrift store and social service resource referral service. She had become a dedicated member of Alamo Heights and Riverside, and wanted to draw on her experience of being unemployed to help others.
The following spring, Riverside held its first Wednesday-night services in local homes, and later held them in the barn area behind The Loft.
“We were doing worship out there in 103 degrees,” Heare said. “We did not have a certificate of occupancy, no working bathrooms. We had something like 50 people…They were leaders. They were hungry. They were interesting. They were heavy prayer people.”
It would be more than a year after the founding of Riverside’s coffeehouse and Hope Center before they would start Sunday services, which now draw 500 people.
“What we’ve found is what works best is a more organic way of life, where things are birthed spontaneously within the community,” said Linda Marceau, a prayer leader at Riverside. “We’re a very close-knit community, very familial.”
Experimentation and stability
A few years ago, Heare participated in a worship service with McNitzky at Alamo Heights in which he apologized to the community for any immaturity in leadership or hurt feelings he had caused. The congregation was moved by this humble stance.
Today, Riverside and Alamo Heights are increasingly sharing resources and ideas, each bringing gifts to the larger congregation.
Pam Barquest of Riverside has started a Hope Center at Alamo Heights. The two communities are starting a speaker exchange, and the two ministers have founded something called “The Kingdom Leadership School” for training lay people.
“They’re almost like a laboratory,” McNitzky said of Riverside. “They teach us a lot, and we offer stability and encouragement and some resources.”
Those resources have increasingly come from Riverside itself. It has gradually become more financially independent. At first fully supported by Alamo Heights, it has become self-sustaining. Heare’s salary was shifted over a five-year period, and this year Riverside has 100 percent responsibility for the senior pastor’s salary.
Although Riverside technically has no membership structure , it collects offerings and pays expenses through offerings, donations and earnings from the Thrift Store and The Loft. Each quarter, Riverside reports to Alamo Heights’ general Finance Committee, and last year began contributing to the Methodist apportionment. Riverside is officially a campus of Alamo Heights, and Heare is on the staff of the mother church. If the members officially belonged to a church, it would be Alamo Heights, but people who inquire about membership are instead directed to participation in the community in other ways, such as Riverside's extensive home group network. McNitzky said they are still working out some details of this unconventional church.
In October 2009, 119 individuals and about 50 families received food through the Hope Center. Riverside also supports an orphanage in Uganda and a mission in Mexico, and plans are in the works to open a health clinic in Spring Branch.
The whole setup, said McNitzky, “speaks to our point that accountability is through relationship more than rules and policies.”
Today, Riverside thrives by walking out the biblical narrative in its own unconventional way. As its leader, Heare sees a lesson for the church more broadly.
“There’s a longing here for transition for the church as a whole. From traditional, to contemporary Bible churches, to all these structures that are an organic way of doing church...
“What David has shown me,” Heare said, “is how to lead during a dramatic transition in the church’s history. How do you lead from the ideas of the traditional church that are so comfortable into an entirely new way of being churched?”
Read more about The Loft »
The exterior still resembles the grand church it once was. But inside, there are signs that the First Christian Church congregation isn’t alone in this space.
The entry hall holds a shelf filled with free books, a bin piled high with free clothing, and a bulletin board with information on volunteer opportunities and scheduled events. The sanctuary, chapel and two large halls are used for conferences, music programs, plays and movie screenings. Smaller spaces house offices and host small group meetings, common meals and a variety of other peacemaking activities. Twice a month, a drumming group gathers at the center to explore rhythm as a spiritual practice. On work days, volunteers come and fix up the aging facility.
Conceived more than a decade ago by a church struggling to envision its future, today the center is both a physical space and a network of 40 local nonprofit organizations, all committed to promoting peace, curbing violence and advancing social justice in Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Members of First Christian Church of Oakland with the Rev. Monica Joy Cross (back row).
The original congregation -- which numbered 1,500 at one time -- now has a half-dozen people in Sunday worship. Yet it has been given new life, and its impact is significant: last year, the center’s partners served 86,000 people.“Our members’ hearts are sold out to Jesus, and the Oakland Peace Center emerged from those hearts,” said the congregation’s pastor, the Rev. Monica Joy Cross. “They knew this was a church in a position to change, and what they did was prophetic.”
What forms of ministry might your organization undertake that don't resemble what you're doing today?
Ernie Fields, a church trustee, said he is excited about the new direction for the congregation to which he has belonged for more than 60 years.“It’s a space from which healing for this planet can spring,” he said. “This is a journey, and the center is just one step. But maybe we can be a role model for other places as we seek peace in our time.”
‘No one has to do this work alone’
More than just a building with a collection of tenants, the Oakland Peace Center is structured to foster collaboration among its member organizations. The definition of “peace” is broadly construed; while some organizations work directly to combat violence, others have a wider mission.
“Our partners are creating an overwhelming new ministry and making a difference in Oakland,” said the Rev. Sandhya Rani Jha, the center’s founder and executive director. “They also show up for each other, help each other and remind each other that no one has to do this work alone.”
Volunteers prepare to paint a mural on a wall in the center's parking lot to send a message of peace as people enter the space.
Some of the center’s agencies provide direct services to individuals. Others work toward policy or cultural shifts in society. Still others emphasize the value of cultivating inner peace through practices such as yoga and meditation.The “peace partners” co-sponsor events, share strategies and resources and organize trainings. Twelve nonprofits rent space, and roughly 30 more affiliate with the center out of a sense of shared vision.
“This building is a place of synergy where we’re all in it together, working to strengthen each other,” said Angela Urata, a center board member and the operations director of the partner Niroga Institute, which is focused on yoga and meditation.
Although the congregation is now just one of the many partners, Jha emphasizes that the center is the legacy of the First Christian Church: “What has happened here happened because the congregation determined they could not be all things to all people, and they created a way for others to help. This is a phoenix story.”
Discerning the way to peace
Jha, 42, is a warm-hearted woman with a ready smile who has a background in community organizing and political engagement. Her mother is Scottish Presbyterian and her father Hindu. Born in England and brought up in Akron, Ohio, Jha was ordained in 2005 in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
In 2006, First Christian Church of Oakland called her as their minister. Jha recalls that some colleagues tried to discourage her from taking the job, predicting that the church was “destined to die, with no hope of transformation.”
Jha, who holds both an M.Div. and a master of public policy degree from the University of Chicago, accepted the post. She was the congregation’s first nonwhite pastor, and was eager to help them move into a new chapter.
Under her leadership, they undertook a visioning process -- in the later stages it included the Disciples’ New Beginnings program, designed to help “the congregation that knows it can’t continue ‘as is’ but doesn’t yet know what to do.”
That dilemma no doubt would have been incomprehensible to the congregation in its heyday.
At one time, the church had more than 1,500 members. Established in 1876, it moved in 1929 into the building on Fairmount Avenue, which was designed by well-known architect W.H. Weeks. The Spanish-style building with multicolored tilework and a white tower featured 11 beautiful stained-glass windows that still gleam in the vast sanctuary.As the decades passed, the neighborhood and the congregation changed. Once all-white, the church slowly integrated as the demographics of the neighborhood shifted.
Some members moved away. Some newcomers to the neighborhood belonged to churches elsewhere. Some younger people rejected their families’ religious traditions, and older members died. When Jha arrived, the church had about 20 members. It grew under her leadership, but still faced challenges.
The building had become too large for the congregation, and too difficult to maintain. Members of the church’s men’s fellowship took care of the maintenance, said Fields, a retired broadcast engineer whose family was one of the first to integrate the congregation.
If you are struggling to keep up your physical plant, could you turn it from a burden into an asset?
“We ran a tight ship, but over time we had fewer people, and upkeep was a struggle,” he said.In 2007, Jha organized a visioning retreat to discuss the congregational identity. At the time of their retreat, First Christian Church members were praying every week for neighbors in prison or those lost to or affected by violence in the neighborhood. The issues of violence and peace were not an abstraction; the time felt right to assess their role in the congregation’s mission.
The 15 participants discussed how the church might serve as a hub or incubator of peace -- a space where peace might radiate out into the surrounding community. At the retreat, the congregation also established criteria -- still in effect -- for all potential tenants and other members of the Oakland Peace Center.
All affiliated nonprofits must share these goals:
- To nurture tranquility and peace for all generations in a world of chaos and violence
- To create a sense of family in a profoundly disconnected culture
- To shape opportunities to experience the Holy Spirit in our community and in the world
What is the primary issue facing your community? Could you build your ministry around it?
Fields recalls that while outreach has always been part of the church’s mission, the idea to bring in nonprofit organizations did not sit well with everyone at first.“Change is difficult,” he said. “Some members were pleased, and some were skeptical about the new plan.”
Fields’ daughter, Aimee, then a teenager, was instrumental in helping move the idea for the center forward, and today she serves on the board.
“The organizations that are part of the center are doing life-changing work and feel a responsibility to what God’s plan is for his people, for all of us,” the elder Fields said. “That’s ministry.”
The East Point Peace Academy holding a nonviolence conflict reconciliation training based on the teachings of Martin Luther King at the Oakland Peace Center.
Evolution of the Oakland Peace CenterIn 2009, the congregation determined that the center would be the primary work of First Christian Church. The official launch was held on Martin Luther King weekend in 2012, with 25 peace partners on board.
As the center has evolved, the relationship with the church has shifted. Once the center received 501(c)(3) status, the church could act as an equal partner within the organization rather than simply as landlord.
Three years ago, the congregation decided to place the building in a trust with Disciples Home Missions, a general ministry of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). That process continues; when it's complete Home Missions will lease the building and the land to the center, while guaranteeing the congregation a place to worship.
What existing institutional structures could help you achieve your aims?
In 2013, Jha stepped down as pastor to concentrate on her role as executive director of the center, and a year later Cross became pastor of the congregation.Originally a congregant, Cross is a transgender activist, social justice advocate, writer and speaker. She has an M.Div. from the Pacific School of Religion and is a graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry.
Cross works part time for First Christian Church; she also serves as an associate minister at Tapestry Ministries (Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]), as founding minister of the Global Prayer Network, as founding minister and CEO of the nonprofit A Different Imagination for a Just and Sustainable Humanity and as a transgender clergy consultant.
Cross leads the congregation of about 20 members, ranging in age from 24 to 90. Despite the small size, the congregation is seeking to make a difference, she said.
“They are forward-leaning, risk-taking individuals, still finding justice issues to work on. It is a joy to minister to them,” she said.
Project Darreis, a nonprofit founded by the mother of a young man killed in Oakland, offers a Halloween party for children who might not feel safe trick or treating in their neighborhood. Volunteers fill their trunks with candy and park in the center's lot so children can "trunk or treat."
‘Epicenter of peace’A decade after it was first envisioned, the center is living into the vision. Fields’ son Daniel described it early on as “an epicenter of peace” -- a powerful metaphor for people familiar with earthquakes.
One recent morning, for example, the in-house partners met to discuss how to protect immigrants they work with, as well as new strategies for capacity building this year and next.
The center has recently hosted peace-promoting theater performances, book readings, discussions and a Law for Black Lives conference, held in February.
OneLife Institute, a peace partner that provides “the place where healers can heal and leaders can lean,” has a saying: “We lift up the folks who lift up the folks.”
Tia-Lynn Rounsoville, a communications and development intern at the center, said, “That’s Sandhya’s motto too.”
Has this work made a difference? "Call me in 50 years," Jha said. Violence has decreased since the center opened, though Jha is does not claim credit for that trend.
Oakland’s rate of homicide and other violent crime has dropped dramatically, but its homicide rate is still four to five times greater than that of the rest of California; last year, the problem was pressing enough that the city created the new Department of Violence Prevention. And recently protesters gathered outside the district attorney's office to demand she file charges against a transit officer who shot Sahleem Tindle to death at an Oakland BART station in January.
The work of the Oakland Peace Center is a culture shift, she said, with a much longer trajectory: "We're at the very beginning of the work."
Are you willing to "listen to the needs of the community and to check your fears and ego at the door"?
Some folks have taken part in the center’s mission in multiple ways. Clidell “Franceyez” Jackson, who was helped by some of the center’s agencies when he was younger, co-founded one of the early partners -- United Roots, an organization that “engages and empowers marginalized youth in socially innovative ways” -- and is now the center’s facilities coordinator.A former professional basketball player, Jackson coaches the youth basketball team at the First Mongolian Christian Church, a program he hopes to expand as yet another way to spread peace.
“We should celebrate peace like we celebrate Halloween or like … we have a street fair,” he said. “Just go out in the streets and celebrate it, and create community around it.”
For Jha, the work of the center stems from the work of a small group of people willing to embrace a new way of being the church in the world.
“A congregation that numbers six in worship on Sunday is in many ways responsible for over 86,000 people in our community having greater access to peace,” she said. “That’s thanks to their willingness to collaborate and to listen to the needs of the community and to check their fears and ego at the door in order to let the work happen.”
Questions to consider:
- What forms of ministry might your organization undertake that don't resemble what you're doing today?
- If you are struggling to keep up your physical plant, could you turn it from a burden into an asset?
- What is the primary issue facing your community? Could you build your ministry around it?
- What existing institutional structures could help you achieve your aims?
- Are you willing to "listen to the needs of the community and to check your fears and ego at the door"?
Faith & Leadership: A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
In a 2010 production of Twelth Night, Curio Theater Company takes the stage in Philadelphia's Calvary UMC under an arrangement brokered by Arts in Sacred Places.
Photo by Kyle Cassidy
Arts groups need their space, and many older churches have plenty to spare. In a win-win for everyone, a Philadelphia nonprofit is pairing up theater, dance, music and other arts groups with congregations that have underused space.No one was laughing when Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic School closed in 2012. Not only were the residents of the South Philadelphia neighborhood losing what had been a bulwark institution for generations; they also had no idea what would become of the landmark building.So when 1812 Productions, Philadelphia’s only all-comedy theater company, arrived about a year later to inhabit the space with its antics, the parish applauded. And they welcomed the company at an ice cream social.
“To have a school close in a community is such a big deal,” said Jennifer Childs, co-founder and artistic director of 1812 Productions. “To know there are still important things happening in that space means a lot to them. They are thrilled that something creative is still going on here.”
What "important things" would neighbors say are happening in your church?
It was a match made in heaven, with more than a little help from Making Homes for the Arts in Sacred Places (AiSP), an initiative that fosters partnerships between arts groups that need space and congregations that have plenty to spare. The program is an offshoot of Partners for Sacred Places, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit established in 1989 to advocate for the sound stewardship and active community use of America’s older religious properties.The theater company rents the repurposed Our Lady of Mount Carmel classroom space for $3,000 a month. For that, they get twice the amount of room for $10,000 a year less than they had been paying. Now, in the same building where hallway coat hooks hark back to school days, and where a downstairs chapel still holds the parish weekday Mass, Childs and her troupe make funny in expanded rehearsal and office space. She and the landlord-pastor have lunch periodically, comparing notes on each other’s calling.
A former classroom at Our Lady of Mount Carmel School gives actors plenty of room to work on dance steps for an upcoming play.
Photo by Sabina Pierce
“Having a landlord who understands mission-driven work is astonishing,” Childs said.
The arts need their space. For the roughly 2,000 arts organizations in Philadelphia, whether fledgling or established, space is typically one of the greatest expenses and most critical needs, second only to personnel. At the same time, some two-thirds of Center City Philadelphia sacred places report having space that could potentially be available for sharing with the community.
What resources are being underutilized in your church? Who could put them to better use?
Enter the directorEnter Karen DiLossi, the director of Arts in Sacred Places. With a background in theater, DiLossi first saw the potential for bringing congregations and arts groups together during her eight-and-a-half-year tenure at the former Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, a service organization for the city’s arts community. Together with Partners for Sacred Places, the Theatre Alliance had begun to research and occasionally advise churches and arts groups to share space. When DiLossi came on board at Partners in 2011, Arts in Sacred Places was born, formalizing the program.
Karen DiLossi, director of AiSP, says artists are inspired by the sacredness of Philadelphia's historic churches.
Photo by Sabina Pierce
AiSP now tracks congregations with unused space and arts companies that need it, pairing up underused fellowship halls, Sunday schools, sanctuaries and other church buildings with theater, dance, music and other arts groups. The organization helps partners draw up leases, figure out how much to charge, and negotiate terms. And it facilitates enduring relationships by providing training on how to be a successful landlord, and a good tenant.In its three and a half years, the nonprofit organization, entirely grant-funded, has brokered 16 long-term space-sharing arrangements and numerous short-term partnerships. Its standing in the Philadelphia community makes AiSP the go-to when groups need or have space. And elsewhere, its reputation is growing.
Could your church broker needs and resources in your community?
“They’re a very creative, very valuable organization,” said Amy Fitterer, the executive director of Dance/USA, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group for professional dance. “They’re doing really important work by keeping these sacred venues in the community -- taking space that should remain in use and using it for the public good.”Done well, the matches are a classic win-win. Congregations gain much-needed income to maintain expensive-to-carry, unused rooms and buildings. Artists gain below-market-rate space in generally mortgage-free buildings. Neighbors get a surge in street activity on formerly quiet, even desolate, blocks.
Ideal space for the arts
Though designed for a very different purpose, houses of worship offer ideal space for arts groups. Fellowship halls have large open expanses, often unimpeded by pillars. Their floors, compared with those of commercial spaces, are often softer -- essential for dancers’ safety. And sanctuaries, with their theaterlike pews, light-flooded altar areas, lovely acoustics and striking architecture, are natural performance rooms.
As movement consultant, Tony-award winning Bill Irwin puts the cast of "To the Moon" through their paces.
Photo by Sabina Pierce
Artists are inspired by the spaces, said DiLossi -- “the oldness, the sacredness.” At the same time, the church community provides the performers a stable counterweight to what can be a nomadic existence.Expanding beyond Philadelphia, AiSP is also doing some matchmaking in Chicago and providing informal counsel elsewhere. Baltimore, Detroit and Austin are currently under study via a grant-funded program to determine need and availability, and to compile a database of potential matches.
Rents and deals vary with each partnership, but AiSP aims for consistency, using a formula that factors in square footage, the term of the lease, frequency of use and whether the use is shared or exclusive. DiLossi figures on an hourly rate of about $10 to $20 for short-term rehearsal space, but the ideal, she explained, is the long-term, exclusive match. This may yield the host site $15,000 to as much as $50,000 annually, minus the costs of renting the space. Some facilities have a staff member on hand when the tenants are there, while many simply entrust their renters with the keys.
In Philadelphia, AiSP has been known to perform miracles. Director Alysia Lee’s Sister Cities Girlchoir, for instance, had only a month’s notice earlier this year that its Saturday rehearsal space was closing. Without missing even a single rehearsal, the group was installed at First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, right where they wanted to be.
The pastor and some of the elders welcomed them, happy at the chance to serve as a safety net. The choir got room to expand, as well as occasional use of the sanctuary for performances. Lee envisions a growing bond between the congregation and her girls -- at-risk students for whom the choir provides life skills as much as music. Out of the emergency, “great good prevailed,” DiLossi said.
Intangible benefits
The partnerships are about more than rental income or square footage. Some of the most important benefits are intangible. As the congregants enjoy the artists’ infusion of youth and energy and appreciation for their buildings, the artists grow to value being part of a stable community, within and beyond the congregation.
As more people -- both artists and audience members -- experience the spaces, public support grows for saving and preserving the beautiful old church buildings. People begin seeing buildings they once walked by with barely a glance as community assets.
Bill Irwin gives Tracie Higgins and other "To the Moon" cast members pointers.
Photo by Sabina Pierce
DiLossi recalled one Philadelphia church that shared its lobby with a theater company. On performance nights, curious theatergoers regularly peered into the locked and darkened sanctuary. Eventually, the church began leaving the sanctuary lights on during play runs so as to share their church’s beauty with visitors.Theatre people tend to soak up the sacred spaces, DiLossi said. “They’re artists. They want to know everything: What’s the story? What’s the history?”
The Rev. Fred Kinsey, the pastor of Unity Lutheran Church in Chicago, sees an average Sunday attendance of 40, in a changing neighborhood that houses two other Lutheran churches of the same synod. Income from AiSP partnerships has boosted morale at his struggling church.
“The biggest benefit is our status in the community,” Kinsey said. “Everybody sees that we are a congregation that’s active. Now, when it comes to the alderman’s office, to the chamber of commerce, we are a minor player.”
Where does the community see signs of life in your church?
Kinsey said it took some doing to convince his struggling congregation that opening their arms and their space to outsiders was a good idea. But church rooms they considered sacred cows -- long designated as the space for Boy Scouts or other activities -- hadn’t been more than storage closets in years.As with other church leaders, Kinsey considers the partnerships as much outreach as book balancing, and he’s worked hard to convey that to his congregation.
“I explained that this is a way we can reach out to the community,” he said. “It’s who we are as Christian people.”
The worst of the adjustment period seems to be over, he said, though the struggle to make ends meet remains: “AiSP gave us a little bit of extra hope that we can make something happen here.”
Shiloh Baptist Church, one of the original AiSP partners, shares space that hadn’t been used in 15 years with two performing groups at its vast Philadelphia complex. With his congregation wary at first, the Rev. Edward Sparkman said he pointed them to their prayers: “We’ve asked the Lord for help, and now he’s helping us.”
Today, church members take things in stride, even attending their dance company’s performances and inviting performers to church activities.
“Now, a lot of our members are viewing the church as being alive,” Sparkman said.
Content and other issues
Of course, all is not perfect -- not only because longtime church members can be change-averse. A house of worship needs to have ample space available to accommodate the diverse needs that may arise. Noisy rehearsals may conflict with church events and need to be rescheduled. Lights may get left on. Congregation leaders may deliberate too slowly for impatient potential tenants.
And then there’s the matter of content. Will the incoming troupers infuse sacred buildings with vulgarity, even nudity? Will the partners’ politics conflict? Will the landlord pressure an edgy director to edit when the director wants to go full-throttle? These are the situations that can make or break a partnership, and guiding the parties through long and serious talks is AiSP’s specialty.
“Relationships are so key,” DiLossi said. “Discussions are so key.”
Taking into account the particular nature of each congregation and arts group, the partnerships manage to come up with arrangements that work for both sides. Some congregations and theater groups reach a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding creative content. Others agree that a sanctuary should be for holy use alone, while the rest of the building is less sensitive. And others agree that all church space may be used by a group, like the Girlchoir, whose art is by nature uplifting.
To DiLossi, art is much like church. Raised Catholic, the 38-year-old fell in love with drama as a freshman at Washington College in Maryland. She’d been planning on law school, but the draw of the stage, with its sense of purpose and community, made her realize she had a different vocation -- a “calling,” in the parlance of her Catholic schooling.
Is DeLossi right about the similarities between art and church? How so?
Before long, she said, theater “became my church.”While some churches want to keep their partners’ art wholesome, others believe that showing the underbelly of life can itself be a ministry, DiLossi said. Such is the case with the Church of the Crucifixion, an Episcopal congregation in downtown Philadelphia that rents its former parish house to Luna Theater Company, a group unafraid of pushing the limits. Luna bills this year’s offerings as “Season of Seduction.”
DiLossi believes that church can be an appropriate venue for theater that brings troubling issues into the light. After all, it’s not just the Ladies Auxiliary and the Men’s Group that meet in church basements. So too do groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous -- where real-life drama incorporates all manner of struggle.
Light and dark, comedy and drama
In the theater and in the church, there is room for both light and dark, comedy and drama. And if Luna Theater is at one end of the spectrum, 1812 Productions is at the other. Seated around a script-strewn table in their vintage classroom one recent frigid morning, a half-dozen members of the comedy group make like the schoolchildren whose space they now inhabit.
During a read-through, the 1812 group jokes around like the schoolchildren whose space they now inhabit.
Photo by Sabina Pierce
They laugh. They try out this pitch and that inflection. They tinker incessantly to extract the best of the funny from their latest work, “ To the Moon,” a comedy inspired by the life and work of Jackie Gleason. Again and again they repeat their soft-shoe number, honing the arm angle here and the footwork there, whittling it till it’s sharper, better, funnier, more nearly perfect. When it opens April 16, “To the Moon” will be everything they can possibly make it. Their work, after all, gives people a break from real life’s darker dramas.Her company and her landlord have a lot in common, director Jen Childs observed. “We’re both trying to do good in the world.”
Questions to Consider:
- What “important things” are happening in your church or organization? What would neighbors say, if asked that same question?
- What assets -- space, people, talents or other resources -- are underutilized by your church or organization? How could they be put to better use? Who might benefit from them?
- How do the church-arts partnerships in Philadelphia change your understanding of church? Of the relationship between church and the community?
- What organization or other entity can broker needs and resources in your community? Could your church do that?
- What are your church’s vital signs? In what ways is it most alive to the surrounding community? How is it helping the community thrive?
- How, if at all, are the arts like church? How are they different? What human needs do the arts meet? What do the arts provide that the church can’t?
- How can the church speak more truthfully about both light and dark?
Faith & Leadership: A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke DivinitySituated close to Highway 281’s frenetic northbound lanes, about 30 miles north of downtown San Antonio, Texas, a coffeehouse called The Loft beckons visitors into its cozy interior.
Visitors are enveloped by the warmth of a wood fire and the smell of fresh-ground coffee and cinnamon rolls. Cushy leather sofas frame the stone hearth, and a wooden staircase leads to a loft with work stations.
“Customers might not know that this is a church,” said Tami Piatnik, who works on Saturdays. Indeed, The Loft displays few crosses or other signs of its affiliation with the United Methodist Church.
Though it wears its identity lightly, The Loft coffeehouse is a core ministry of Riverside, a church community in Spring Branch, Texas, (pop. 7,200) planted six years ago by San Antonio’s Alamo Heights United Methodist Church.
Riverside was born of a pastor’s two epiphanies: One by the Jordan River in Israel, and one in a Texas Starbucks.
The church plant began with The Loft coffeehouse, then expanded to include a food bank, thrift store and a resource center for the needy -- all before it held its first Sunday service.
Though Riverside now holds two Sunday services with about 500 worshippers, the community still has no formal membership and owns no church buildings.
“We’re the smallest church you’ll ever meet, because we have zero members,” said the Rev. Scott Heare, Riverside’s pastor. “Or, we’re the largest church you’ll ever see because we believe that all people in our community belong.”
A church in transition
The Rev. David McNitzky is the popular and erudite pastor of Alamo Heights, a 5,000-plus member “high-Methodist” congregation. It is the second-largest United Methodist Church in the Southwest Texas Conference, founded in 1909.
McNitzky joined the Alamo Heights staff in 1995, soon after the church moved to its 13-acre hilltop campus dominated by a soaring sanctuary. Locals have dubbed it “the Methodome,” a not-especially-welcome reference to San Antonio’s Alamodome.
Though clearly a successful leader of a venerable church community, McNitzky found that Alamo Heights was not immune to the national trend of declining attendance.
“Those who used to come every Sunday came for three weeks, those who used to come three Sundays came two, and so on,” McNitzky said. “If people could drop away from worship so quickly, what were we really doing? Were we really helping them? Were we really growing them?”
The trend caused McNitzky to reevaluate, and now he is piloting what he describes as a traditional church undergoing a transition. Alamo Heights has been renewed and challenged by its leaders’ conviction that the future of Christianity lies in actions that advance God’s kingdom.
And his willingness to empower other pastors and lay leaders to experiment has helped bring about that transition.
“It takes some courage to try and do something in a brand new way,” said Robert Scott, a longtime member and former trustee of Alamo Heights. “David is very permission-giving.”
Being Missional
The Rev. Heare is a young and energetic minister, a graduate of Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. After arriving at Alamo Heights, Heare found in McNitzky a “spiritual father,” mentor and close friend.
Alternately, McNitzky said that his younger partner has challenged and surprised him over the years. When together, their easy-going enjoyment of each others’ company is tangible.
Both pastors share a keen interest in the Jewish roots of Christianity, in particular the teachings of the Rev. Ray Vander Laan, who advocates that Christians draw lessons from the Hebrew culture of Jesus’ day.
They also share a commitment to the missional church, which McNitzky defines as “simply meaning you’re there for others, to be in the world, not trying to gather people into the building.”
Soon after arriving, Heare pioneered a contemporary worship service that draws younger families, and McNitzky realized his associate had a gift for innovation. “When Scott first came, he was obviously talented and gifted. I got a sense from God, in a way, that I was David and he was Solomon, and the next big building is his, not mine.”
Neither pastor knew that “the next big building” would not be a building at all.
A lesson at the Jordan River
In 2002, McNitzky initiated a strategic planning process for the church. The planning group’s method was to read and discuss books on church growth. “After several months, we weren’t getting anything,” he said.
Turning to prayer, McNitzky changed the process to “strategic listening” in order to discern where God was leading the church.
The approach yielded a clear message -- three committee members, almost on the same weekend, got the same sense from God that they were supposed to start a second campus, McNitzky said.
That direction became even clearer after Heare had a pair of epiphanies.
The first came in the summer of 2003, when Heare visited the Jordan River on a study tour of Israel.
“The river was rushing and loud,” Heare said. “And the lesson was about while we present our lives as the calm water, the reality was our lives looked more like the white water. It’s God’s job to go into that chaos and to pull us out. The job of community is to be on the riverside with wet feet remembering that we’ve come from that -- and pulling others out.”
Heare was deeply moved by twin images of calm and chaos depicted in the story of Jesus’ baptism.
“I’m sitting in the Jordan River,” Heare said, “wondering what such a community would look like. It dawns on me, I’m supposed to be the one who goes and plants the church, and it’s supposed to be called Riverside.”
‘Create community’
Alamo Heights now had clear direction to create a new worshipping community and the choice of a pastor, but where would the church be planted and what would it look like?
This time the answer was to be found in a more mundane location: a San Antonio Starbucks.
A few months after returning from Israel, Heare was sitting in a coffeeshop, mulling over the step-by-step training he’d received in starting a new church, while taking in the scene around him. That day, the customers at the Starbucks included a group of sales reps and a women’s Bible study. On the window was a sticker that said, “Create Community.”
“Suddenly, it was brightly clear to me, and I burst out laughing,” Heare said. It occurred to him that he was sitting in the place he’d been seeking -- a meeting ground for the churched and unchurched. “I was sitting in the shephelah.”
Drawing from what he’d learned in Israel, Heare likened the Starbucks to an ancient region in Judea referred to as a shephelah, a term he used metaphorically to mean a meeting place among people of different faiths.
Grabbing his milk-and-sugar-laden coffee, Heare got in his car and started driving north.
All fall, Heare had been searching for a location to plant a new church, but nothing seemed right. On this day, fueled by caffeine and prayer, he drove past San Antonio’s suburban sprawl.
Pulling off the road, he saw a two-story ranch house with a “for rent” sign. The building owner happened to pull up, and soon Heare was touring the grounds, talking real estate. It had a barn and storage unit in the back, and a woman was painting the back porch -- getting the place ready for the next tenant.
“It was clear to me that this could work, and it freaked me out,” Heare said.
Then he faced the next step: Taking his idea to McNitzky and Alamo Heights’ leadership.
Questions to consider:
- Are you “permission-giving” as a leader?
- Can you share new ideas with organizational stakeholders in a way that is respectful and effective?
- In what ways does your organization embrace both its commitment to identity and commitment to mission?
- How can you deepen your capacity to employ “strategic listening” to God and others?
- How do you develop relationships with people outside of the traditional structure of your organization?
The birthing of Riverside was not without labor pains.
When the finance committee of the church heard that their long-studied new building was, first of all, a coffee shop and, secondly, located in Spring Branch, they initially balked.
“They formed a task force to do due diligence and came to the conclusion that we can’t afford a coffee shop, it will not make money, the rent’s too high,” Heare said. They said: “We’ll support your worshipping community. We will not support your coffee shop.”
The church wasn’t going to stop them, but they initially wanted the group to rent a cheaper place nearby.
They did have supporters, including Scott. “Our business model -- build it and they will come -- is no longer working. Riverside is an example of how you engage the culture rather than waiting for the culture to engage you,” Scott said.
Undaunted, the leaders of the nascent church began looking for ways to move ahead with limited resources. Church members learned about an auction of a foreclosed coffee shop, and with a small donation of $3,000, decided to attend. They bid and won equipment valued at $30,000.
“That weekend, all the people interested in Riverside filled their cars with [coffeehouse] equipment and drove it out to The Loft,” Heare said.
Heare also decided that to form a community, he needed to live in the community. He and his wife and children moved to Spring Branch, which was a disappointment to the contemporary worship community he had led at Alamo Heights.
Eventually the differences were resolved and the church began supporting Riverside. McNitzky is philosophical now about the hurt feelings the project created.
“I think a number of us felt like it was the thing to do, but we didn’t educate the congregation well enough about why we’re doing it,” he said. “The challenge is to be true to the message…and travel at the speed of life. We were so passionate, but we had to go at a level that the church could stay with us.”
Serving God -- and coffee
The Loft coffeehouse opened in early 2004, providing a place for the community to gather, for Bible study and for a core group of Riverside founders to meet. Most importantly, The Loft provided a place “for the unchurched and the churched” to meet in Spring Branch.
An extrovert, Heare set out to meet people in the community, getting to know the area better, and inviting them to Riverside. The Loft soon became a popular local hangout, becoming the shephelah he had envisioned.
Jenny Rudd, The Loft’s manager, tacked a note by the cash register that said, “You may be the only Bible someone ever reads.”
About six months after the coffeehouse opened, Pam Barquest, the woman Heare had encountered painting the porch on his first visit, started the Hope Center, a combination food pantry, thrift store and social service resource referral service. She had become a dedicated member of Alamo Heights and Riverside, and wanted to draw on her experience of being unemployed to help others.
The following spring, Riverside held its first Wednesday-night services in local homes, and later held them in the barn area behind The Loft.
“We were doing worship out there in 103 degrees,” Heare said. “We did not have a certificate of occupancy, no working bathrooms. We had something like 50 people…They were leaders. They were hungry. They were interesting. They were heavy prayer people.”
It would be more than a year after the founding of Riverside’s coffeehouse and Hope Center before they would start Sunday services, which now draw 500 people.
“What we’ve found is what works best is a more organic way of life, where things are birthed spontaneously within the community,” said Linda Marceau, a prayer leader at Riverside. “We’re a very close-knit community, very familial.”
Experimentation and stability
A few years ago, Heare participated in a worship service with McNitzky at Alamo Heights in which he apologized to the community for any immaturity in leadership or hurt feelings he had caused. The congregation was moved by this humble stance.
Today, Riverside and Alamo Heights are increasingly sharing resources and ideas, each bringing gifts to the larger congregation.
Pam Barquest of Riverside has started a Hope Center at Alamo Heights. The two communities are starting a speaker exchange, and the two ministers have founded something called “The Kingdom Leadership School” for training lay people.
“They’re almost like a laboratory,” McNitzky said of Riverside. “They teach us a lot, and we offer stability and encouragement and some resources.”
Those resources have increasingly come from Riverside itself. It has gradually become more financially independent. At first fully supported by Alamo Heights, it has become self-sustaining. Heare’s salary was shifted over a five-year period, and this year Riverside has 100 percent responsibility for the senior pastor’s salary.
Although Riverside technically has no membership structure , it collects offerings and pays expenses through offerings, donations and earnings from the Thrift Store and The Loft. Each quarter, Riverside reports to Alamo Heights’ general Finance Committee, and last year began contributing to the Methodist apportionment. Riverside is officially a campus of Alamo Heights, and Heare is on the staff of the mother church. If the members officially belonged to a church, it would be Alamo Heights, but people who inquire about membership are instead directed to participation in the community in other ways, such as Riverside's extensive home group network. McNitzky said they are still working out some details of this unconventional church.
In October 2009, 119 individuals and about 50 families received food through the Hope Center. Riverside also supports an orphanage in Uganda and a mission in Mexico, and plans are in the works to open a health clinic in Spring Branch.
The whole setup, said McNitzky, “speaks to our point that accountability is through relationship more than rules and policies.”
Today, Riverside thrives by walking out the biblical narrative in its own unconventional way. As its leader, Heare sees a lesson for the church more broadly.
“There’s a longing here for transition for the church as a whole. From traditional, to contemporary Bible churches, to all these structures that are an organic way of doing church...
“What David has shown me,” Heare said, “is how to lead during a dramatic transition in the church’s history. How do you lead from the ideas of the traditional church that are so comfortable into an entirely new way of being churched?”
Read more about The Loft »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
The Turnaround Church is the story of Wollaston Congregational Church United Church of Christ, a 130-year-old congregation that once was thriving in ministry, membership, mission, music, and money. For half a century, however, the church had slowly declined and was considering closing its doors. The two dozen remaining members knew they had to change, but did not know how. They had very little money left, but they were willing to risk it all.
With few resources, members hired Mary Louise Gifford, a new seminary graduate, to be their full-time minister. Wollaston is now a vibrant, Spirit-filled faith community -- a turnaround church. Changes in worship, stewardship, and priorities, combined with the congregation's resilience and Gifford's optimistic leadership, have transformed this church. Gifford tells us how.
Addressing a wide audience, Gifford shows church leaders they have options and reason for hope. People in dying churches will find assurance that they are still a part of the body of Christ. Clergy serving these struggling churches will discover tools and resources to help them guide change. Judicatory leaders will appreciate an inspiring story they can tell about a church that turned around in spite of the odds. The Turnaround Church, while not a prescription for all churches, is a call to make long-lasting, life-sustaining changes.
Learn more and order the book »
With few resources, members hired Mary Louise Gifford, a new seminary graduate, to be their full-time minister. Wollaston is now a vibrant, Spirit-filled faith community -- a turnaround church. Changes in worship, stewardship, and priorities, combined with the congregation's resilience and Gifford's optimistic leadership, have transformed this church. Gifford tells us how.
Addressing a wide audience, Gifford shows church leaders they have options and reason for hope. People in dying churches will find assurance that they are still a part of the body of Christ. Clergy serving these struggling churches will discover tools and resources to help them guide change. Judicatory leaders will appreciate an inspiring story they can tell about a church that turned around in spite of the odds. The Turnaround Church, while not a prescription for all churches, is a call to make long-lasting, life-sustaining changes.
Learn more and order the book »
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