discernment process, Partners does a site visit and facilitates a conversation between the congregation and community stakeholders. That community conversation has been pivotal for our congregations listening to the needs of neighbors. The congregation then responds by aligning their building use and mission with the expressed needs of the community.”
After the completion of the first year of the program, Partners found the participating churches were better prepared for site visits, having completed part of the Good Futures Accelerator, and the congregations’ social enterprise projects were strengthened by Partners’ in-person insight into the potential of church properties.
In another part of the country, the Thriving Cooperative Parish Initiative( TCPI) demonstrates a different approach. Partners is working with the Good Friday Collaborative and Ministry Incubators for the TCPI, a project of the United Methodist City Society and the New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church to transform geographically linked churches into flourishing cooperative parishes. Over the next five years, Partners will provide training and expertise on space use and mission alignment through site assessments
Heart of Life UMC, the new name of a merged congregation previously known as Grace-Hanson UMC. Heart of Life UMC is in the " Good News " Cooperative Parish( representing Downtown Brooklyn), Long Island West District. Kevin Block and workshops, while the Good Friday Collaborative, a faith-based organization that supports churches in the process of closing, and Ministry Incubators, which works with religious communities to launch projects for community change, will provide a faithbased approach to congregational health and community engagement. The multipronged approach will serve the spatial, spiritual, and missional needs of the cooperative parishes, as each collaborative organization begins its work where the previous left off.
In another example, Partners is working with Plainsong Farm and Ministry, a living laboratory for environmental education and creation care in Western Michigan, to support parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of the Great Lakes that are exploring new uses for their buildings and land through climate resiliency work and sound land stewardship. As a part of the Holy Ground for Whole Communities project, Partners will provide space-sharing training and space asset inventories and facilitate community conversations with stakeholders. Modeled on Partners’ work with the Episcopal Dioceses of Indianapolis and Northern Indiana, the project combines Partners’ expertise on property use and sacred places with Plainsong Farm’ s commitment to integrating practical care for creation and community. Participating congregations will receive a toolkit, hands-on training, site assessments, and access to grant funding. Program partners have the opportunity to learn from each other’ s approaches and provide a richer experience for participating churches.
Across America, historically and socially significant houses of worship with underutilized buildings and property will keep the transitions and adaptive reuse field busy for the foreseeable future. As the field grows with new organizations and resources, Partners is well positioned to meet the needs of individuals, congregations, and judicatories beginning the process of building discernment. Partners provides support for what can be a long but fruitful journey into smart shared use and property transition and is happy to share in the work of helping congregations navigate this wave of change.
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