On Church Buildings

I currently serve at the Diocese of Chicago's third oldest parish, which was founded in 1851. If you were to pass in front of the building, you might not think it was a church at all, and certainly not one of such great longevity. Grace is now at its sixth location in a converted commercial building in the South Loop's Printer's Row. It houses not only an Episcopal congregation on Sunday, but a number of not-for-profit organizations, a Lutheran satellite campus, a Korean congregation, the South Loop campus ministry (Lutheran/Episcopal), a weekly community breakfast for 200 homeless men and women, yoga, Alcoholics Anonymous, and a number of other activities that vary from week to week. The building is almost always FULL.

For many congregations, though, their buildings are perceived as a burden, rather than an asset. After several years on the diocesan Congregations Commission, I came to appreciate how pivotal a building can be to a congregation's survival and vitality. Many are faced with huge obstacles posed by deferred maintenance: a roof that needs to be replaced, a parking lot that needs to be resurfaced, tuckpointing to preserve a crumbling facade, foundation or other work to stem flooding, electrical upgrades, plumbing repairs, a new boiler or water heater. The list goes on and on. In every congregation where I have been a leader, both as a layperson and as a priest, there have been major physical plant challenges. As a result, some have argued that we need to get out of our expensive Gothic or Romanesque buildings and relocate to spaces that are more economical and better suited to the kind of work our congregations want to do. They're bleeding us dry, people complain.

A community meeting on the 1st floor meeting space.

While that may be true in many cases, the larger question for me is: what does your building make possible? There is no doubt that Grace, a parish that numbers a steady 65 on Sundays, is able to do disproportionately more than other congregations its size because of its extraordinary building. I know you'll indulge me and allow me to brag a little that the parish has a reach and a reputation in the community that most congregations would envy. But even a contemporary building ideally suited to ministry in the wider community has a variety of associated costs. Tenants provide a steady revenue stream, but they also generate costs. Additional wear and tear on the building from increased usage; staffing to provide building security, custodial services, and setup/break-down of the various meeting spaces; infrastructure repairs and upgrades to the physical plant; and legal fees incurred to negotiate contracts and occupancy agreements can also be part of the equation. There is no doubt in my mind that these expenses are worthwhile; and the relationships the parish builds with its community and ministry partners are inestimable. But they can add up to a sizable fiscal note. So, a parish needs to be informed about what's involved and smart about managing it all.

Saturday's community breakfast.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges posed by church buildings. Moving out of an historic Gothic building might be more cost-effective, but relocating to a converted printing warehouse might not support the ethos and aesthetic of the traditional liturgy that is central to a particular parish's identity and reputation. On the other hand, it might be just the thing that allows that parish to grow into a more vibrant and stable version of itself. It might encourage the parish to think of itself in new ways, as its members discover what the new building makes possible. In either case, the parish needs to act strategically to ensure that it has the right leadership, resources, and infrastructure to support its mission. As a priest that spends about half of his time doing administration and management, I value the experience and skills sets I developed as a not-for-profit executive. I couldn't do my job without them. I am aware, however, that if we imagine new ways of being church, including the types of buildings we use, seminaries will have to train clergy differently and congregations will need to recruit particular types of expertise to fill leadership roles on vestries, building committees, and other bodies. Church buildings can be a invaluable asset if we honestly evaluate what they make possible, and what they don't, and what they need from us to make them work.

Blessings,
Fr. Ethan+

A Terrifying Leap of Faith

Zip-lining at Loterie Farm in St. Maarten.

I am terrified of heights, a phobia I trace back to the first grade, when I fell off the monkey bars on the playground and landed on my head. Since then, I have largely avoided high places. On occasion, however, I have tried to set aside this fear and taken a leap of faith. I have climbed to the top of Cologne Cathedral on a rickety, rusty ladder in the dead of winter; I have stood 1,353 feet above Chicago on the Sears Tower's clear, plexiglass Ledge; and even now, I live rather counter-intuitively on the fifty-second floor of an urban high-rise. The view from my living room still makes me a bit woozy. No experience, however, has been more terrifying for me than extreme ziplining in St. Maarten this past New Year's Day.

Working my way to the next platform.

The group of tourists and I piled into the back of a pick-up
truck, which clambered up the side of the mountain through virgin rainforest. The most extreme zipline, we were told, was 930 feet long and a dizzying 120 feet above the ground. The view was spectacular, to be sure, but as we climbed higher and higher into the rainforest's canopy, I felt my anxiety rise, too. After some initial instruction on how to use the harness and navigate safely from platform to platform, I clumsily made my first attempt, whizzing diffidently to the next platform. Interestingly, the zipping itself was pretty effortless, once I had gotten the hang of it. What terrified me was the movement between the platforms, which got higher and higher. Most of them were connected by reasonably sturdy bridges made of rope and wooden planks, although I worried that my foot might inadvertently slip between the rungs. At one point, however, I faced--incredulous--nothing more than a thin, steel wire between two platforms--essentially a tight-rope. My only lifeline was a wire above me to which I could attach my harness, and two thin wires on either side to guide me forward. There was no turning back. I had to either walk the tight-rope or be airlifted out.

At the end of the course, bathed in terror-sweat.

In a moment of supreme self-mastery, I mustered up the courage to tread carefully over the wire, slowly guiding myself meticulously step by step over the wire, while I struggled desperately not to focus on the fact that I was hovering a hundred feet above the ground. I slid my hands over the wires in a death-grip as I plodded carefully forward, placing my feet precisely on the wire. After I got about half-way, I began to believe that I might just make it without slipping from the wire and dangling perilously over the rainforest floor. When my foot made the final step onto the platform, I noticed that my hands were raw and pink where the wires had peeled off layers of skin. I also realized that I was bathed in sweat, my t-shirt sticking heavily to my body. This was not ordinary sweat from exertion or the hot, humid weather, I joked. This was terror-sweat.

Ordained leaders discuss congregations in transition.

Last week, I attended a three-day conference for interim rectors and other transition ministers, like me. Although Episcopalians predominated, there were ordained leaders from several Christian denominations. We studied systems theory, reviewed congregational case studies, and debated a variety of complex issues, ranging from appreciative inquiry and learning styles to the dynamics of congregation size and parish life-cycles. We talked a lot about grief and anxiety in parishes going through transition. One of the most valuable insights of this conference was that congregations, once they have reached a stage of maturity, tend to think that decline is the result of programmatic problems, that if they just developed more and better programs, they would begin to thrive again. George Bullard, however, has noted in his congregational development work that the problem is not usually with programs, but with vision.

As congregations, we often cannot imagine our way forward along a path that seems unsteady, leading to a destination so far away to be almost imperceptible. This path is marked with anxiety, even terror, because we fear that life as we know it may end. Instead of focusing on our strengths, we lose confidence in our ability to adapt to new situations and anticipate the worst-case scenario, fearful that we might slip off of the tight-rope we're walking and plummet to our death. A key to successful transitions, then, is to be visionary, to accept uncertainty as a creative space, as a place to explore a congregation's values, to let go of old dreams, and come up with new ones. The way forward may push us out of our comfort zone for a time, but if we can learn to live with a little anxiety--perhaps even some terror-sweat--we may be surprised by what we're able to achieve.

Abundant blessings,
Fr. Ethan+