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church property
It’s a weekday afternoon in Parsippany, New Jersey. The bumper-to-bumper morning commute has long been over; the harried evening rush home has yet to begin. Still, the traffic whizzing by Parsippany Presbyterian Church has not let up — nor will it. “Thousands of cars” easily pass by the church daily, the Rev. Donald A. Bragg explains.
Churches are transforming their previously-unused lawns, fields and property into community gardens, food forests and other outdoor sanctuaries.
There are two constants in life: change and Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. In Christ, we live and move and have our being. To be a follower of his is to be forever mindful of the cross, of death’s defeat — and of resurrection power. And, as Wendell Berry wrote in one of his well-known poems, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” we, the church, are to “practice resurrection.”
As congregations change and traditional church buildings age, the question of what to do about buildings and property becomes paramount. Older congregations wonder if they should continue allowing the building to provide a sanctuary for the members who had sustained it. And new church development leaders must decide whether to commit to bricks and mortar or continue renting space even though the weekly setup and cleanup can siphon off energy that could be used in other ways.
Leaders at First Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennesee, had a difficult decision to make. The congregation had existed on a downtown block for more than 200 years. It has had three sanctuaries on the site and the graveyard has tombs for signers of the United States Constitution. Numerically, the historic congregation was holding steady, but its most recent building was old and in decline. Should members invest in costly renovations so that the building could be used for 21st-century ministry? Or should the congregation move to a more modern space closer to where the members live?
