TABLE OF CONTENTS
3 Update on Partners; New Dollars/NewPlaces
Partners Success Story; Arts in Sacred
FROM THE PRESIDENT
We’ve known for years that there are growing
numbers of older sacred places that are becoming
vacant, as congregations shrink in size and ultimately
give up their buildings. This is a phenomenon that
is not confined to the Roman Catholic and mainline
Protestant churches; we are finding that independent
churches, many of them Baptist or Pentecostal, with
largely African American memberships, are suffering
the same fate.
Success Story
15
FEATURE STORY:
Strategic Investment in Sacred Places
18
Building Maintenance Feature:
Making the Most of Your Insurance
Coverage
Professional Alliance Spotlight:
Felix Chavez, Inc.
20
22
Professional Alliance Directory
ABOUT PARTNERS
Partners for Sacred Places is the only national,
nonsectarian, nonprofit organization dedicated to
the sound stewardship and active community use
of America’s older religious properties.
Partners’ Programs and
Services Include:
•
Training. New Dollars/New Partners for Your
Sacred Place is an intensive program that gives
congregations with older buildings the skills and
resources to broaden their base of support.
•
Regional Offices. Partners offers training,
workshops, and technical assistance through its
Pennsylvania, Texas, and Chicago Offices.
•
Workshops and Conferences. Partners’ staff
speaks at national and regional conferences on
a variety of topics. Additionally, Partners offers
consulting services on fundraising and adaptive
re-use options for congregations and community
organizations.
•
Information Clearinghouse. This web-based
resource provides information related to the care
and use of older sacred places.
(www. sacredplaces.org/information_center.htm)
•
Advocacy Initiatives. Partners works with civic
leaders, funders, and policymakers, urging them
to adopt policies and practices that provide new
resources to older religious properties.
•
The Economic Halo Effect. Partners documents
and articulates how congregations positively
contribute to the economic health and vitality of
their communities.
•
Making Homes for the Arts in Sacred Places.
Partners pairs historic sacred places and arts
organizations in ways that benefit both groups.
COVER PHOTO: Partners’ Programs and
Administrative Associate, Scott Schnur, who
heads up the Food in Sacred Places program,
discusses a potential location for a community
garden at Solid Rock UMC, in Philadelphia, PA,
with its pastor, Reverend Margaret Powell.
THUMBNAIL PHOTO: Azuka Theatre’s
performance space at First Baptist Church in
Philadelphia, PA, the first alliance secured by
Partners’ Arts in Sacred Places program.
The sheer number of empty sacred places is boggling
our minds. We’ve been working with Hidden City Philadelphia to map out
all vacant, purpose-built churches in Philadelphia (not including the many
hundreds of adapted buildings such as commercial storefronts) and are
concluding that 80 or more are empty, fully 10% of all sacred places! Now,
some will find buyers and will continue a useful existence in service to their
communities, but others are chronically vacant, meaning that they have been
empty for some time and will eventually be demolished. And we are not even
counting many others that are virtually empty, owned by congregations that
use them rarely or only use a small portion of the building.
This flood of small and vulnerable congregations and at-risk properties
is overwhelming the nation’s dioceses, presbyteries, synods, and other
denominational offices. Judicatory staff and trustees often report that they
lack a process or protocol to sort through the parade of requests they receive
for funding to help repair roofs or replace boilers. With so many churches at
risk, they do not have a “sorting mechanism” to identify those congregations
that are a good place to invest denominational resources, nor do they know
which resources would be most useful and effective.
Partners has responded to this challenge by developing and piloting our
Strategic Investment in Sacred Places (SISP) initiative, which uses our successful
Economic Halo Effect research methodology – in addition to a number of other
tools that look at the organizational capacity, physical location, critical mass
of space, and other characteristics of a congregation and its buildings – to
assess the strengths and opportunities of churches and synagogues. Once
that assessment is made, Partners follows up with New Dollars training,
space matching for unused building areas, fundraising assistance, and other
resources that are tailored to those strengths and opportunities.
I’m excited to report that we’ve been asked by the Eastern Pennsylvania
Conference of ѡ