time collaborator. In 2006, the church participated in
New Dollars/New Partners for Your Sacred Place training.
Subsequently, Partners made a grant of $100,000 to support
repairs to the building’s exterior. Having addressed urgent
structural issues, the congregation moved to develop a
more sustainable organizational model for using its space,
generating revenue while still serving out its mission. At
that point, Partners helped provide guidance through a
neighborhood canvass that led to the development of a
daycare at Shiloh. Most recently, Partners’ Making Homes for
the Arts in Sacred Places program attracted three performing
arts organizations to share over 4,000 square feet of
vacant space at the church. Shiloh is now stable and more
connected with its community.
Learning from Shiloh and other congregations that have
received a cluster of Partners’ tools and resources, SISP
was developed to direct these types of interventions in
a coordinated way. But SISP goes further, informing
denominational policy with a transparent, consistent,
data-oriented system that identifies key opportunities to
strengthen promising congregations.
This approach relies, in part, on a fuller understanding of
the “public value” of sacred places coming from Partners’
Economic Halo Effect research, which has shown the many
roles that congregations play. They are employers and
purchasers of local goods and services; magnets for bringing
in cash, volunteer time, and other resources from outside
the city; builders of social capital; owners of trees and
green space that contribute to environmental/economic
health; influencers of public safety and housing values;
and providers of a critical “invisible safety net” of social
programs, counseling, and other services to individuals.
Each of these functions contributes a quantifiable value
known in total as “the economic halo effect” for its influence
on a congregation’s community. (See “The Halo Effect of
Historic Sacred Places” in the Spring 2011 issue of Sacred
Places for details on the pilot study done in Philadelphia.)
Partners’ SISP assessment goes beyond the scope of
Economic Halo Effect research and considers other factors
such as the building’s space configuration, community
location, cultural importance, physical condition,
neighborhood demographics, economic trends, and
congregational capacity.
SISP findings are a guide to judicatories and funders when
they want to know how to invest resources in the most
effective and promising sacred places, building their vital
role in neighborhoods.
Partnership with the United Methodist Church
Partners is currently piloting the SISP program with the
Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist
Church (EPCUMC). In 2010, EPCUMC retained Partners to
conduct a New Dollars/New Partners training with several of
its Philadelphia congregations. Based partly on that success,
it asked Partners to conduct a SISP assessment to help urban
congregations make the best use of their older buildings.
The project includes twenty-three churches in two regional
clusters: the city of Lancaster and the Broad Street corridor
in Philadelphia. [See list of churches below.] As Reverend
Andrea Brown of Grandview UMC in Lancaster (one of the
participants) expressed, “Lancaster’s churches will benefit
from a deeper and more concrete understanding of their
own worth to their community and the valuable role they play
Southeastern Pennsylvania Conference
of the United Methodist Church
SISP Participants
Lancaster, PA:
Christ United Methodist Church
Community United Methodist Church
Covenant United Methodist Church
El Redentor & St. Paul’s United Methodist Church
First United Methodist Church
Fuente de Amor United Methodist Church
Grandview United Methodist Church
Otterbein United Methodist Church
Pearl Street United Methodist Church
Ross Street United Methodist Church
Philadelphia, PA:
Arch Street United Methodist Church
Bickley’s New Beginning United Methodist Church
Devereux Memorial United Methodist Church
Emmanuel United Methodist Church
Haven Peniel United Methodist Church
Mid-Town Parish United Methodist Church
Mother African Zoar United Methodist Church
Mt. Carmel United Methodist Church
Mt. Zion United Methodist Church
St. Barnabas United Methodist Church
Solid Rock United Methodist Church
Tindley Temple United Methodist Church
Tioga United Methodist Church
Sacred Places • Winter 2013 • 16