from P A R T N E R S F O R
SACRED PLACES
I
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 builds the capability of congregational
leadership for building care, shared use, capital fundraising
through training programs, fundraising assistance, and
organizational and facility assessments. In the process,
Partners becomes a trusted resource and guide as
congregations examine and weigh opportunities.
Partners engages with congregations to focus on
critical areas such as:
• Asset–mapping and community engagement—assisting
congregations to develop new relationships with
neighbors and potential community partners
• Strategic partnerships and space sharing—brokering
agreements between sacred places and arts, food justice,
health, education, and social service programs
• Planning for capital campaigns to support repairs and
renovations that preserve significant historic features
and make spaces usable for new community programs
• Collaborative initiatives among unrelated congregations
in a neighborhood to encourage coordinated outreach,
space usage, joint marketing and interpretive events, and
coordinated work with public agencies for lighting,
signage, and streetscape improvements
On the cover:
Rehearsal for Brian Sanders’ Junk dance troupe at Shiloh Baptist
Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy of Jeffrey
Arnold.
2
t’s been said that Partners punches way above its
weight—that we accomplish a great deal more
than our size and budget would suggest!
That became clear when our last major research
project—Sacred Places at Risk—played a key role in
defining and energizing a nascent field of study on the
public value of religious assets and resources,
including the church or synagogue building.
Our work then was influential in the work of the
White House Office of Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives, and informed a generation of other
research and publishing projects across the nation.
Furthermore, our approach was incorporated into
Partners’ capacity-building and training tools, making it
possible for any given congregation to measure and
communicate the public value of the spaces it shares
with programs serving the larger community.
Now, the Halo findings summarized in this special
issue of Sacred Places promises to have the same
import as SPAR, but in an even bigger and more
impactful way.
The overall economic impact of the average
urban church or synagogue is several times
greater than we knew in the 1990s.
This new understanding makes it clearer than ever
that virtually every sector in society—government,
philanthropy, the arts, business, academia—has a
stake in the future of America’s sacred places.
Now these sectors must come together to help us
sustain and make the most of our sacred places and
help congregations tell this story in powerful new
ways.