The return of the neighborhood church

A mature and well-conceived new urban community can easily pass the “orange juice test.” That is, a resident can send a twelve-year-old son or daughter to the corner store unaccompanied to pick up some juice or other basic supplies. One could similarly construe a whole series of authenticity tests for different demographic groups — the school test, the coffee shop test, even the baseball field test. But what about the church test? What one might discover is that the family piles into the car and drives across town to worship, primarily because there is no neighborhood church within walking distance. This arrangement is a far cry from what many of the settlers of colonial America envisioned. Founders of old towns like Ipswich, Massachusetts, if they didn’t build the church first, certainly conceived of it first, and then aspired to build their homes no more than two miles from the meetinghouse. In 1634, an easy walk to church was literally the governing principle behind the shape of the town. But a lot has happened in this country over the past 370 years or so, and the neighborhood church in 2005 isn’t quite as simple a matter as it was during the Puritan migration. The most obvious change revolves around pluralism. It can no longer be taken for granted that all residents of a community will see a neighborhood church as a significant good. This can make the issue of planning and financing a church more difficult. Even in cases where logistical issues are worked out, it is not necessarily clear which denomination (if any) will own or operate the church. In smaller traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs), a typical scenario calls for the developer to sponsor construction of a multifaith chapel or a meeting hall that can also serve as worship space. This strategy, which often reflects financial concerns, has been adopted in such projects as Seaside and Rosemary Beach, both in Walton County, Florida, and Windsor, in Vero Beach, Florida. As Andres Duany puts it, “the economics of the chapels can be driven by the wedding rentals and so they can come into being sooner than the religious community would have otherwise been able to secure the finances to build them.” problems of multifaith buildings But when economies of scale allow and the developer is interested in including a religious building as an amenity, a multifaith structure is often less than optimal. A generic religious building doesn’t enliven the space nearly as much as one in which a flesh-and-blood congregation makes a significant investment. The multifaith solution also doesn’t so much solve the issue of religious pluralism as put off the problem indefinitely by casting the developer in the role of religious arbitrator. The Celebration Company in Celebration, Florida, had originally intended a multifaith church, but quickly changed strategies after a few initial meetings with local religious leaders. Apparently, the company didn’t want to have to decide which church would meet when, and the company was concerned that each congregation would eventually want its own building anyway. The denomination tends to be less important than the attitude of the congregation and its leadership. Denominational loyalty is at an all-time low. No longer can it be assumed that denominational affiliation will be a significant factor when people are looking for a church. When the Rev. Patrick Wrisley (who describes himself as a postmodern evangelical) began services at Community Presbyterian Church, he knew he had to offer something to the whole community and avoid being seen as insular. “We had a canned food drive the first week and then sponsored a ‘National Day of Prayer’ event with the Jewish and Muslim community,” Wrisley says. As with most churches in TNDs, Community Presbyterian Church is used by community groups throughout the week. The congregation of the Community Presbyterian draws heavily from local neighborhoods, but surprisingly does not include a high percentage of people who had been Presbyterian in years past. This suggests that a neighborhood church may be viable if approached in the right spirit. Even neighbors who belong to other faiths often support a church’s community role. “When I was in New York I prayed in a synagogue and I can pray here as well — any place is God’s place” says Raza Ali — a Sunni Muslim living in Celebration. Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal of the Shaare Torah Conservative Jewish Congregation, which is building a synagogue in Lakelands in Gaithersburg, Maryland, expresses a similar sentiment: “A religious building helps to set a tone for the entire community.” The parking issue Sometimes barriers arise from the needs and expectations of the congregations as much as from the developer or the community. Parking, for example, is generally considered essential for church growth. Although some new urban projects may incorporate churches with more suburban campus-style settings (Christ the King Church in Mashpee Commons in Mashpee, Massachusetts, is an example), many developers expect the church to conform to the pedestrian scale of the TND, just like everything else. “The denominational leaders expected 7 to 8 acres for a viable church-plant and it was an adjustment for them when we offered them 1.3,” says Jim Earnhardt, the project manager for Southern Village in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. But churches are capable of learning about pedestrian scale. Between an adjacent park-and-ride lot and the restored tradition of walking to church, “parking has not been a problem” says Craig Wood, chair of the council for Christ United Methodist Church in Southern Village. And then there is the question of aesthetics. Developers tend to see the church and the worshiping community as an amenity — and they also tend to appreciate the look of a church in a neighborhood or town center. In many cases, it is the developer who has the greater stake in the iconic value of the church— especially if it serves as a focal point terminating an important vista. However, sometimes the congregation goes beyond the developer’s expectation. In Southern Village, Bryan Properties initially envisioned a modest white clapboard structure in the center of town, but the congregation of Christ United Methodist took that vision further. Members built a lovely stone church housing a 350-seat sanctuary. A skeptical church member thought the congregation would never be able to fill a church of that scale, but now it is running four services at full capacity. “It does feel a bit like one of those ‘if you build it, they will come’ scenarios,” says Wood. Although the church was completed in 1999, the congregation was finally able to see its dream to completion with the installment of a 140-foot bell tower just this year. the cost of design and materials Because of aesthetic concerns, church buildings in TNDs tend to be expensive. Not only do iconic elements cost more (bell towers and stained glass windows are not cheap), but the building is often seen from three or more sides — so cutting back on construction materials and details is that much harder. Consequently, well-executed churches in TNDs tend to begin with the congregation meeting in a local elementary school or movie theater until members can raise enough money to build a significant structure. Even then, some of the nicer projects have depended on denominational support or a significant patron to execute the vision. Other congregations are content to meet in a rented facility indefinitely and are in no hurry to build a structure of their own. In Kentlands (Gaithersburg, Maryland), for example, the Rachel Carson Elementary School is home to three local congregations. In some ways, this allows for a greater expression of religious diversity and buys time as some of the building details are ironed out. Despite the hurdles and potential problems, the practice of including a prominent church in a TND seems to be gaining momentum. Many new urban communities currently being planned reserve an important site for a community church. One of the more interesting examples is Meriam Park in Chico, California; its plan includes a baseball stadium (see March 2005 New Urban News) as well as a church on a central plaza that will be the hub of the community. “In order to make a place worth caring about, we felt that the site had to reflect both the sacred and the profane,” says Tom DiGiovanni, a developer of Meriam Park. The issue of what constitutes an appropriate expression of the sacred and the profane in a contemporary North American context will provide ample opportunity for civic exchange as well as the evolution of exciting new practices, such as the Chico example of allowing a church and a stadium to share a plaza. Since passion for issues involving religion shows little sign of abating, these types of questions won’t be going away soon. New urbanists aspiring to an “architecture of community” will be wrestling with the question of how to accommodate religious structures for a long time to come. u Eric O. Jacobsen is author of Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith (Brazos Press, 2003). A Presbyterian pastor and a doctoral student at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, he can be contacted at eric@sidewalksinthekingdom.com