Below, Bishop David Edwards and keynote speaker Randall Goodfellow speak at the Sacred Spaces stewardship workshop on Oct. 18. Read the story here: Church buildings: a help or a hindrance? By Gisele McKnight Randal Goodfellow’s first act as church warden in his rural diocese outside Ottawa was to take his John Deere tractor and push over the church outhouse. “I knocked over an outhouse,” he said. “Tough love.” It was tough love for some in his church who felt nothing could be touched or altered because of history and tradition. But changing nothing means being left behind, he says, and few churches can afford that luxury these days. With dwindling numbers and crumbling buildings, the Anglican Church of Canada is in the same situation as many others — wrestling with the question of how to continue The Great Commission when preoccupied with high heating bills, structural issues, accessibility and needed repairs on century-old buildings — and paying for it. Goodfellow’s message at the Creative Care – Rethinking the Sacred workshop on Oct. 18 at St. John’s Church Parish Centre in Nashwaaksis was simple and repetitive: Does your building help or hinder your mission. By the end of the day, many had answered that question — hindrance. “We’re not here to be museum curators,” he told the crowd of 100 parishioners from all over the province. “If you feel that way, you have about five years left.” Tough love, indeed. Five Marks of Mission Goodfellow relied heavily on the Five Marks of Mission and the Baptismal Covenant to illustrate that sometimes, an old, underused, crumbling, expensive building may be hindering a congregation’s ability to meet its mission to nurture new believers, respond to human need, challenge injustice and safeguard the integrity of creation. Again, the question was asked, is your building hindering your mission, and the answer in many cases among participants was yes. Goodfellow repeated this theme throughout the day: a mission is not a building. It’s a tool that helps or hinders. A church is not a building; it’s a community. During group discussions, the hindrances were heard loud and clear: “We get so tired out raising money to stay alive that we have no energy for missions.” “We have four churches in our parish. One has a bathroom.” “It was the right building in the right place 50 years ago, but now, in our case, we are not in a growth area.” Success stories – St. Luke’s It was not all doom and gloom, however. Goodfellow relayed several good news stories of Anglican churches that had countered their issues with action that proved to be worth the effort and in some cases, the emotional turmoil. At St. Luke’s in Ottawa, they removed most of the pews so that the sanctuary is now a flexible space that hosts church services, plus Christian yoga, meditation, performing arts events, meetings and rentals. “We had to transition those people who were in love with the pews,” said Goodfellow. They put all the important pieces — alter, pulpit, organ — on wheels to allow for flexible space. They used wood from the pews and other pieces to make new furniture — the legs on their new mobile font are from the communion rail. In doing so, they removed physical barriers and improved site lines, making the space more inviting and less imposing and formal. And their congregation of 30 has grown to two Sunday services with 145 total parishioners. “We needed to maximize our ministry per square foot,” said Rev. Gregor Sneddon of St. Luke’s in a video shown at the workshop. St. Luke’s Table feeds 300 people twice a day — a Godly mission by any standard. Success stories – St. Al’s St. Alban’s in Kingston, Ont., affectionately known as St. Al’s, went from an abandoned building and no congregation to a vibrant, contemporary urban church with a coffee shop in the back. They hold tweet services where parishioners are invited to tweet their observations and insights during the service, which appear on-screen. St. Al’s has a unique demographic — younger than the average Anglican, but one who drops more into the offering plate than the average Anglican as well. “They invented together what church was going to be,” said Goodfellow, adding when you create some buzz, it has the power to attract new people. Work to be done When a church comes to terms with what must be done, the work begins, and it often requires outside partnerships to make it happen. Goodfellow suggests whatever the decisions, they take years to complete: • Disposal of building: 2-5 years • Lease it out: 2-3 years • Redevelop or rejuvenate: 8-10 He also cautioned that it should not be the clergy who lead all this change, but lay people. His reasoning makes sense: those not at ease with the changes will need the pastoral care of the clergy throughout the process. The clergy must allow the work to happen without leading it. Goodfellow ended the Saturday workshop by quoting a church in Ottawa that had a difficult time with the various choices it made over buildings and congregations. After some failures, “We realized, finally, that the church was the people, not the building.” Goodfellow also led a Friday evening session for invited representatives of parishes which have concerns about their buildings. His message was the same: the church is a community, not a building, and a building must serve the mission, not hinder it. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// STATS: Keynote speaker Randal Goodfellow presented some sobering statistics at the Creative Care – Rethinking the Sacred workshop held Oct. 18. * The percentage of Canadians claiming no religious affiliation rose from 12.6 per cent in 1991 to 23.9 per cent in 2011. * Non-believers are in a larger population category than all protestant denominations put together, second only to Roman Catholics. * Natural Resources Canada’s building survey of 2009 found the largest category of buildings in Canada, other than private homes, was faith buildings. * There are about 27,600 faith buildings in the country, second only to the Government of Canada’s property holdings in value. (NRC 2009 survey) * Many faith buildings are energy inefficient, with a lack of insulation, poor sealing of doors and windows, inefficient heating systems. They are also under-occupied and unprofessionally managed. * If consolidation were to occur within denominations, probably one-third of all those buildings would not be needed. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Who is Randal Goodfellow? • Member of the parish of Ottawa. • Senior executive in the renewable energy, clean technology and green buildings sectors. • International level conference speaker on the above topics. • Has been CEO/executive director of a number of national-level clean tech business coalitions for periods over the past two decades. • Assists executives with organizations going through major transitions. • Trained process facilitator. • Member of the Outreach Committee of the Diocese of Ottawa. • Parish council member, chair of the parish property committee and a former church warden. • Incoming chair, and first lay chair, of a national not-for-profit group called Faith and the Common Good Foundation greeningsacredspaces.net/. It delivers the Greening of Sacred Spaces program, which churches can access to help upgrade their buildings.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 18:49:45 +0000
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