PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS

A downtown church forges a new path when it decides to tear down two decaying buildings

BAPTIST CHURCH HOPES SMALLER FOOTPRINT WILL REVITALIZE MINISTRY

More than 50 years ago, a church member with a love of children badgered the Rev. Randall Lolley about the congregation's underused space: "We can't have these rooms sitting empty," Mitzi Moore told him. "I think we should start a school."

Scattered among the church's three large buildings that cover an entire city block in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, were 49 Sunday school classrooms.

In those days, First Baptist Church on Fifth, one of the city's most stately and historic congregations, had more than 2,000 members and had grown to encompass 114,000 square feet of space, including a gym and a chapel. Yet even then, classrooms stood empty during the week.

Lolley, one of the most forward-looking pastors of the era, agreed with Moore, and the church founded the county's first racially integrated day care for children ages 8 weeks to pre-K (plus an after-school program for children through age 12).

This month, the five-star center will close as the church prepares to tear down two of its buildings in a revitalization effort aimed at pushing a now much smaller congregation into the 21st century.

After months of investigating options for keeping the center open or moving it to a new location, the church could find no viable solution for its signature ministry, which it subsidizes with $100,000 a year.

FAITH & LEADERSHIP PODCAST: CAN THESE BONES

Our colleagues at Faith & Leadership are launching a podcast that asks a fresh set of questions about leadership and the future of the church. The Rev. Bill Lamar and the Rev. Laura Everett talk with people of faith inside and outside the church -- conversations that breathe life into leaders struggling in their own valley of dry bones.

In the premiere episode of "Can These Bones," co-host Bill Lamar talks with Amy Butler, the senior minister of The Riverside Church in the City of New York, about her experience in that historic pulpit.

Read more about the first episode and listen here Â»

IDEAS THAT IMPACT:

WHAT TO DO WITH BUILDINGS & GROUNDS?

Leaking gutters and sacred spaces: Practical tips for facility repair

In this Congregations magazine story from 2006, two experts from the Indianapolis Center for Congregations offer their best advice for dealing with one of the questions they receive most often -- how to handle church buildings in need of repair.

A Detroit pastor and her church are building something big with tiny homes

As both pastor and nonprofit executive director, the Rev. Faith Fowler is known for her outreach to the poor. Her latest effort: a village of tiny homes that will allow people to become stakeholders in their neighborhood and in their city.

FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY

Greening Spaces for Worship and Ministry: Congregations, Their Buildings, and Creation Care

by Mark Torgerson

Greening Spaces for Worship and Ministry is a comprehensive guide for congregational leaders considering construction of new buildings, renovating existing structures and providing ecologically-wise preservation for historic properties. Site development, material choices, energy generation and consumption, water use, interior air quality, green cleaning programs, and beauty are discussed.

The book provides a rationale, strategies, and resources for fulfilling environmental stewardship through the land and buildings of Christian and Jewish congregations.

To illustrate his argument, Torgerson uses the stories of ten congregations from across the United States and Canada as examples of excellence in creation care in and through their built environments.

Learn more and order the book Â»

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