understanding the real value of your sacred space to your wider community – Transcript
Jim Latimer
Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministers, best practices and quick help from interims for interims – wisdom from the field. I’m your host, Reverend Jim Latimer. Today we have the good fortune of having with us, Reverend Dr. Shelley Stackhouse. And I learned from Shelley that her PhD is actually in liturgical studies – worship and preaching. But she’s also learned a lot along the way that clearly wasn’t in the PhD classroom around physical buildings, and what we do with these buildings, that comes from her long experience of working in urban areas with congregations that have large buildings. And she’s also done a variety of shapes of transitional ministry. So, she’s in a perfect place, from my point of view, to help add to this conversation of, What do we do with our buildings? And so, this is a follow on to a previous conversation that ended with the challenge of trying to figure out what to do with the building. It’s not an either / or. There are a number of shades of grey. The richness is in between. That takes discernment. And also takes resources to support that conversation. So, Shelly, if you would, say more about that please.
Shelly Stackhouse
I will. And I’m saying more about this from experience as a pastor, but also, I am currently working part-time for an organization called Partners for Sacred Places. Partners for Sacred Places – some of you may have worked with them. They do capital campaign work, feasibility studies, and they also administer the National Fund, which makes grants to historic congregations for work on their buildings. And I know a number of Connecticut congregations have received national funds, grants or worked with Partners.
One of the things that we do with partners is exactly this: helping congregations find resources that will allow them to do a variety of things – perhaps fix up a building. But also make the kinds of connections in their communities that can help them learn about various ways of sharing space. And I said in the last piece we did that one of the greatest resources I think we’ve got is the book of Acts. I think it is so fabulous to consider that the first congregations shared space. They were in homes. And it was the homeowner, it was the outside group, that was sharing space with the congregation. And that’s a model. Well, I mean, there are house churches – but that may be a model that some folks would want to go to.
But the model of sharing space is a very, very old one. You mentioned the PhD. I’m an historian. So, when you learn about the history of worship, you learn about church buildings. And you learn about all the different things that happened in church buildings over the many centuries that we have had designated buildings that are used for worship and as a center for mission. So, in New England, what do we call many of our buildings? Meeting Houses! That was the original intent, not just the meeting for Sunday worship, or the meetings of church leaders. But they were the places where the town met, where people met to discuss issues to deal with conflicts, sometimes to have court cases, for better or worse. And these buildings were sometimes also during the Revolution uses armories. So, I mean, there was a storage component to buildings. Now, not all of that was necessarily a good thing. But the model – a good model – is that this is not just your space, it is the community’s space. And when we get into ownership, I mean, not just technical fiscal ownership, but emotional, theological, mental ownership over a space, sometimes folk get leery about sharing. And especially leery about making changes in the building in order to share.
So, one of the resources is to do theological work. But the other resource is to reach out into the community to find who needs space. Partners is one of many resources out there that can help congregations with methods to do this sort of thing. We do what’s called the Discovery Study that helps connect congregation with partnerships. We do what’s called a Halo Study, which surfaces what is the value of this congregation to the community – in dollars. So, there’s a formula. And not just your building. It’s more than that. It’s volunteer time. It’s giving. It’s lots of things. And the average congregation in this country gives more than a million dollars a year in benefit to a community – to any given community. And most of us don’t know that. And we don’t think about how those partnerships might be grown and leverage. So, for example, the Episcopal Cathedral in Hartford, has just removed the pews in its sanctuary, which is a quite a beautiful place. If anybody’s ever been in there. It’s quite a striking building, right downtown.
Since they entered into that project, they have entered into contracts with several interesting organizations to do some space sharing, which allows them to do some work on the building. One of them is UConn, because several UConn graduate programs are now located in downtown Hartford. So, they now have a flexible space where they can do lectures, forums, and events. There’s a dance troupe that is going to make its home in that space. In fact, Partners has a staff person who works with congregations all over the country on how their space can be a home and an incubator, and a patron for the arts of all kinds.
Now, if you learn anything about the history of church buildings, you know that since medieval times, one of the functions of congregations and of their buildings has been as a patron of arts – an incubator of Visual Arts, of Musical Arts, of dance, of theater. So, it’s right in line with who we’ve been for a very long time. There are untapped resources out there in many places that could be possible partners for congregations that have issues with buildings and the need to support them.
Now another one is to sell the building. Go ahead. But sell it to someone who is going to use it in line with your mission. There’s a group I know that’s looking at a church building as a possible space. They’re looking at grant funding to create a not-for-profit incubator space in this building. And the congregation will lease back space. So, they can continue to inhabit this space that’s been helpful to them and a loving part of their lives, while having partners that are actually going to either own the building or do complete leases on the building. There’s a lot of different ways you can do that. And you want to get a real estate attorney before you do any of this. Seriously. You have to get legal help in any of this sort of stuff to make sure it’s done right and done well. And you have to also have a tax conversation with your town, or village or city or whatever. So, for example, a lot of congregations have cell phone towers in their steeples, which is great. And that’s a great partnership, and it generates an amount of dollars. But, it’s also not in any way in line with the mission of the congregation. Unless you loosely try to claim communication, and you will lose. So, you’re going to have to pay taxes on that – nine times out of 10 on that space – on that particular space. So, you have to do the math to figure out, Okay, if we pay this much in taxes, is it worth it to us to rent it to a for-profit corporation?
Jim Latimer
Sure. Well, that’s a really nice add-on to the previous conversation. I appreciate so much of what you’re saying – the historian that you are – of linking what you said in the previous podcast around helping the congregation to go deeply into discerning, What’s our relationship with a community around us whom we are already in partnership with but maybe we don’t know why? There all kinds of things that pop up. And I love the Partners for Sacred Places that you have an association with, and their discovery study – their Halo study. This is not an intentional advertisement, but that is great! The Halo Study in particular is wonderful. And that’s probably where this “million dollar” benefit that the community gets from a church. Those are all things that most congregants would go, What? I have no idea! And this long history as a patron of the arts and all kinds of good things like.
Shelly Stackhouse
Do we have a minute? Are we done?
Jim Latimer
Yes! We have a minute. Go ahead.
Shelly Stackhouse
So, there’s also a social justice piece to this. I was on a long webinar yesterday with an organization that works all over the country with congregations that have land or property – either they want to sell their building and they’re talking to developers, or they have land that is empty. There are all kinds of grants and programs out there. There is government funding for congregations who want to develop housing – affordable housing. We heard about a project in Wisconsin that has student housing, in an area where there are lots of universities – affordable student housing. So, you can potentially serve under-served communities with your space, maybe not even the church that you’re worshipping in, but the land that you have, or a building that’s adjacent. So, there are all kinds of ways to build in a social justice component and reflect that piece of our mission and values.
Jim Latimer
And as you say, another word for that is “underserved communities” – underserved groups of people as a way to describe “social justice.” Well, let’s conclude this here, Shelly, that’s really rich, really helpful. I appreciate also what you said toward the end there, that if you decide to sell the building, if at all possible, do so with a group that aligns with the mission that you’ve historically had. And there are a lot of groups around like that that do align. They may not be officially Christian, but they align with basic values that you’ve had. So, thank you so much, Shelley, for your wisdom and your time and your spirit and your enthusiasm. It’s great.
Shelly Stackhouse
Thank you, Jim, for all this. Thank you.
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