I am so glad to be here.

My name is Curtis Minter Jr.

I am president elect of the Akron Roundtable board of directors.

We have, a great year ahead of us, and we want to welcome you again, all of you, to beautiful downtown Akron, where we have been hosting our signature luncheon for nearly half a century.

I think that deserves a round of applause.

And I would also be remiss if I did not acknowledge our current president, Barry Dunaway, who could not be here today, and our outgoing board members.

So very quickly, if you would, please, let's celebrate them also with a round of applause.

At the Akron Roundtable, we proudly promote community dialog and networking and remain committed to our vision of bringing the world to Akron.

We invite individuals with diverse backgrounds and life experiences to speak on relevant topics to inform, educate, and consider other perspectives and encourage us to take action next year again.

The Akron Roundtable will celebrate our 50th anniversary, and we have a very, very special year planned ahead of us.

At this time, I'd like to invite my dear friend and running mate, Zac Kohl, executive director of the Well Community Development Corporation.

Let's celebrate with him with a round of applause.

So back in September, Paula Chris, was sitting at a meeting and asked me if I would introduce the speaker for this month.

In December.

And of course, I said yes.

I didn't think twice about it.

And then she said, hey, I think the two of you would have a ton in common, and you should try and connect with them before the event.

So I you know, it's one of those comments you don't think a ton about, and you just keep going about your day and a couple weeks later, I read his bio and the similarities absolutely jumped off the screen at me.

So, Mark, is an ordained minister.

Has built his life work around focusing on the intersection of what he would say as money and mission, looking for creative ways to fund projects that also drive place based impact.

Mark has been able to use this philosophy to drive projects for good in his place of Madison, Wisconsin.

He focuses on restoring housing.

He thinks about housing development for students and affordable housing for families, creating economy by repurposing old and underutilized churches and their land to meet the needs of the communities that they're in.

Supporting place dreaming about the creative ways to leverage capital for community benefit and creating wells for people in their neighborhood.

If you know the work of the Well Community Development Corporation, that might sound really, really familiar.

Mark has also authored books, led national convenient and led National Convenings, most recently launching a book called Gone for Good Negotiating the Coming Wave of the Church Property Transition.

Really asking this question of hey, that there's tens of thousands of properties and billions of dollars of real estate in church owned land that is going to be sold or repurposed.

So can we think about those properties to be vehicles for good use, for community impact?

Mark and I, had the opportunity to grab coffee this morning and nerd out a little bit on everything from theology to non extractive investment practices to how we think about utilizing resources and wealth that already exists to drive the change that everyone in this room wants to see in Akron and Summit County, from property redevelopment to community impact funds.

I'm truly excited and honored to introduce Mark Elsdon to us this morning and excited for the challenges, and the encouragement that he has for us in Akron.

So please join me in welcoming Mark Elsdon to Akron Round Table.

Thank you Zac.

That was great.

And it was really a pleasure to, connect this morning and have coffee.

At the well.

And, see all that's going on.

So, I feel, connected to you all, through the stream of sleet and snow that's making its way repeatedly across the upper Midwest in the last few days.

It traveled from Madison through Chicago to here yesterday along with my delayed flights along the way.

So thanks for the opportunity to speak with you today.

It's really a pleasure to be here with you.

I want to start, with a bold claim that I heard on a panel discussion about church property and purpose in San Antonio, Texas.

A couple of years ago.

The amount and location of land owned by churches and other houses of worship could single handedly solve the housing crisis they are facing in San Antonio.

That's right.

A housing expert in that city believes that without any other property, they could solve their housing crisis by developing and engaging church, land and faith based partners.

So my question is this is that also true here in Summit County in Ohio?

If we are intentional, thoughtful and innovative, could we solve affordable housing crisis in Ohio and other states by expanding the use of church owned property and beyond housing?

How else could churches use their buildings and land to address the most pressing issues of our day?

Could church real estate play a role in improving income in disparity, poor educational outcomes, the health care crisis, a lack of living wage jobs, and other really tricky problems.

Now, it isn't necessarily church's responsibility to solve all of these problems on their own, but I invite you to sit with that question.

What role can Church land have in this work?

While I talk about new possibilities for church land today.

now let me begin by setting the stage.

Ten years from now, there will be a lot fewer churches and church buildings in the United States than there are today.

A lot fewer.

Who cares?

Some people may ask, unless you are one of the rapidly declining number of people who still attend church regularly.

And I think there's some of you in the room today, which is fantastic.

Thank you.

But you may not think that it matters much if as many as 100,000 church buildings are gone in the future.

Even though I have lots of criticism of Christian churches in the United States.

In reflecting on this emerging reality, I find that I care.

I care if 40 out of 100 churches in a community become something else.

And I would venture to guess that many more folks will miss those churches and their buildings than they might initially think.

So let me ask you, how many of you have had some connection with a house of worship at some point in your life?

Yeah, most of the room.

Maybe you are a regular churchgoer, or perhaps you've attended a wedding, a book group, a music recital, an AA meeting, or a Girl Scout troop activity in a church.

Maybe you voted in a church building.

I vote in every election in a church building.

As I look back across the years, I realize that churches and their buildings have made me who I am today and change the trajectory of my life many times, even before I was born.

It is likely I got my surname, Elsdon, from a tiny church in a tiny village in the rolling hills of northern England.

The story goes like this.

In the early 18th century, an orphan baby was left on the doorstep of Saint Cuthbert's Church in the village of Elsdon.

The vicar, the pastor, took the baby in and named him Cuthbert Elsdon.

After the seventh century saint who gave the church its namesake and after the village thus started the Elsdon line, my family name was born out of grace in a moment of need.

On the steps of a church a few hundred years later, my parents immigrated from that part of England to the United States, knowing nobody.

One of the first places they went to was church.

One Sunday they decided to make an invitation to new friends.

Would you like to come over next Saturday night to share a joint?

The invitation was met with silence and awkward looks and giggles and laughter.

My parents were confused by the lack of enthusiasm.

Is it us?

Is it our accent?

I mean, who doesn't like a joint?

After a few moments, it dawned on them.

Oh no, not that kind of a joint.

A joint of roast beef.

Would you like to come over for dinner?

Well, those friendships survived.

My parents offer of drugs at church.

And that that congregation became a vital source of community for a young immigrant couple making a new life.

Thousands of miles from home.

I have many more stories.

I avoided going on long runs with my high school track team by hiding in a church gymnasium and playing basketball instead.

I learned about the role that churches play in Taiwanese immigrant communities.

While in graduate school, I met my life partner at church.

My life has been literally touched and touched by literally hundreds of churches and their buildings.

You will notice that I am primarily talking about Christian churches today, because that's the context that I personally am best able to speak from.

And about.

Houses of worship of other faiths are sometimes facing similar changes.

But but others, the situation might be different.

I'd love to hear from folks about what I share today and how that connects in your context.

And if it seems different.

Churches and their buildings play a vital role in the social infrastructure of communities in every corner of the United States.

Even many who never attend a worship service are often directly or indirectly touched by a church building.

Partners for Sacred Places conducted a study looking at what they call the halo effect of churches.

They found almost 3.7 million people visited just 90 churches in one community in a single year.

Only 9% of those visits were for worship.

91% of those visits were for some other educational or community oriented activity, and the churches in that study were also found to generate more than $1.7 million of economic impact each year.

Each church.

Many of us are concerned about the increasing inequality and polarization that is tearing apart our communities, relationships, and personal wellness.

Perhaps more than ever in recent days.

Eric Kleinberg argues that the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact have a direct impact on the quality of our lives and relationships.

He calls these places and organizations social infrastructure and churches are one of those key places, he says, although they vary dramatically by size and resource, churches, mosques and synagogues tend to offer all kinds of social programs in their facilities education and study groups, athletic leagues, childcare, elder support, and the like.

Their significance as social infrastructure is beyond dispute So what happens when churches are gone?

As Eileen Linder explains in the opening chapter of my most recent book, gone for good.

As many as 100,000 buildings and billions of dollars of church owned property could be sold or repurposed throughout the United States the next decade.

That represents a quarter to a third of church property in the country.

If the actual number is even half of this estimate, big changes are coming.

Why is this?

Well, the Pew Research Center predicts that if recent trends continue, Christians will make up fewer than half of the US population by 2070.

There are, of course, new churches starting every year, but as of 2019, we have entered an era where more churches closed every year than are opened.

Christian churches in America are experiencing something similar to what Blockbuster Video rental stores went through in the early 2000.

People changed the way they access movies.

Instead of driving to a physical store to rent a DVD, or maybe even a VHS.

If we recall those days, we started getting our movies sent to us through the mail via Netflix.

Netflix was actually about mail at one time, and then within a few years we just streamed them.

Of course.

We haven't stopped watching movies, though we still want the feeling that watching a movie gives us, but we access that experience very differently.

Churches are going through a similar moment.

Churches are shrinking.

But personally, I don't believe that God is declining.

People still want to experience the transcendent and the divine.

They still crave and thrive and caring community.

They still want to be involved in causes and activities larger than themselves, and change lives for the better.

But the way people are engaging in the practice of faith and encountering God in their lives is changing radically.

The truth is that fewer and fewer people want to experience those things.

In a Sunday morning worship service followed by Sunday school classes, which means there are too many church buildings with too much space, then will be viable or needed in the future.

And the cost of maintaining these aging buildings is rapidly increasing at the very moment that there are fewer people available to fund them.

It is as if we were to tell the manager of a local blockbuster video store that they just needed to try harder, come up with a new sign, carry different movies on the shelf, or hire a new, younger, hipper manager wearing tight jeans to keep the store open.

There's nothing that the video rental store could have done to keep that model working.

The social change that led to their closure was out of their control.

We are facing a massive tsunami of church closure and property reuse.

This transition is happening in every part of the country and across denominational lines and theological lines, and it is a once in a many generation shift right as this property becomes something else.

It will not go back to being a church again in any foreseeable future.

One philanthropic foundation leader has described it as a crisis hidden in plain view, which raises a big question.

After the wave of sale and repurpose of church property crashes upon the shore.

What will we be left with when the water flows back out to sea?

What will our neighborhoods look like?

I do this work day in and day out, because I don't want to look back 20 years from now and regret the huge loss of spiritual and social fabric that churches provide or have missed the opportunity to do new, wonderful things with these properties.

I don't want all the beautiful church spaces that were built for community life to be replaced by privately owned condo buildings making money for already wealthy people, or even worse, to end up standing empty with a fence around them while the stones crumble and community groups have nowhere to meet.

I can imagine us getting together here, maybe even in this room in 20 years.

That would be a 70 year anniversary for this organization.

In 20 years, to talk about how we desperately need more community centers to support neighborhoods.

Well, we have them now.

They're called churches.

There is a significant risk that the wide scale transition of church property will leave us with less support for the most vulnerable.

Greater inequality, fewer spiritual resources, and other deep losses.

Church properties very well could end up gone for good.

Gone forever.

Leaving little social or spiritual good in their place.

But that does not have to be the outcome.

This is also a moment of extraordinary opportunity for new life and a new future.

We have a chance to think about the mission of churches and their property and land in a more expansive manner, and to reimagine how church property can be more deeply support human flourishing in our communities.

That is what excites me about today.

Pause for a moment to think about how many churches you walk or drive by in a typical week, maybe even on your way to this lunch today.

Church properties often fade into the background of our minds and our land use policies.

So you may have to really think about it.

Think and imagine.

Driving.

Walking.

What properties did you pass and how many were churches?

I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of properties owned by churches in your community.

In many parts of my home state of Wisconsin.

There are two institutions that you are guaranteed to find, and even the smallest town.

A bar or three and a church or three.

In our urban areas, Churches own some of the most incredible infill land left, often in the heart of our cities, right on bus lines just where people want to live or access services.

In fact, the Turner Center for Housing and Innovation in Berkeley did a study of church land in the state of California.

They found that there is more than 171,000 acres of developable land owned by houses of worship and nonprofit colleges in California alone.

That is five times the size of the city of Oakland.

Church land provides an incredible opportunity to address one of the most challenging problems facing many of our communities.

Affordable housing.

Churches often share the values and commitments that lead to affordable housing and other community development.

They work on many of the problems that stem from a lack of affordable housing and other systematic challenges hunger, poor educational outcomes, unhealthy living conditions for children, and so on.

Churches want to help.

Given the right location, the right conditions and the right partnership, churches are well situated to partner on solutions and they are doing this.

I'm really fortunate to witness churches all over the country expanding the use of their buildings and land.

In my role as a co-founder of two organizations focused on this work, Rooted good is a national nonprofit that helps churches and denominations use their property in new ways for ministry and to generate revenue and Threshold ... Sacred development turns vision into reality by developing housing and community centers on church, land.

I'll share an example I'm working on right now in Madison.

The story starts in 2020, when two churches, one Moravian and one ELCA Lutheran, began talking about how they could work more closely together to serve the area of town that both churches were located in.

Both churches had wonderful, committed members, but they had shrunk in size and budgets over the years.

Both had aging buildings with millions of dollars of deferred maintenance while working with Rooted Good and other partners.

They began to see an expanded vision for mission in their neighborhood.

It also became clear that they could do more together than separately.

So they decided to merge.

Together, they became common grace church.

After the merger, the Lutheran Church sold their property and Threshold... Sacred Development turned it into the most environmentally sustainable multifamily building ever built in the state of Wisconsin.

This certified passive house 32 unit building opened in May.

Elements of the previous church building were recycled and incorporated into the new building, giving it a unique character and connecting it with the legacy of the church on that land.

The project was 100% equity financed, and some of the contractors who worked on it also owned part of it.

The proceeds that the Lutheran Church received from this sale and this project were brought with them to the new merged church, common Grace.

Then they did some deep listening in their neighborhood and heard repeatedly the need for two things low cost neighborhood center space for nonprofits and community benefit organizations, and a need for more housing in a rapidly growing neighborhood.

As a result of this community engagement, common Grace launched the East Moreland Community Center to significantly expand the programing and ways of engaging the neighborhood beyond traditional church activities.

Our team at Threshold Sacred Development is helping them replace their aging building with a new, more flexible community center that will serve the neighborhood much more effectively.

The old model was flipped upside down.

So instead of inviting community groups into a church space, they are creating a community center that will be home to more than 30 organizations, of which the church will be an anchor user.

We are also adding 26 units of workforce housing to the site.

This project is receiving no tax credit or Tiff subsidy.

It is being financed by an impact investment from a faith based lender.

More than 100 donors and local foundations, and a small zero interest loan from the city of Madison.

The church will continue to own the entire project, and will be able to ensure long term affordability of the housing.

But housing isn't the only option.

Churches are serving young entrepreneurs by converting fellowship halls into co-working spaces, drawing people in the community who would never attend a worship service.

They are organizing co-op grocery stores to address food deserts in their neighborhood in a sustainable way.

They are opening childcare centers for teenage mothers.

They're creating lawn care services, bike shops, music venues and fair trade stores.

This morning it was really, really great to go to the well and have breakfast and coffee and see all of the activity that's going on there, the shared kitchen use and the coffee shop and the repurposing of that church.

One recently closed church near Portland, Oregon, was given back to a coalition of Native American groups so they can build tiny homes for indigenous women and children experiencing homelessness.

What a beautiful act that is of restoration and an amazing use of church land.

The creativity and impact of churches rethinking their relationship with land, buildings and money is inspiring.

About four years ago, Reverend Christy Annin was called to be the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Let's take a trip down to the south where it's a little bit warmer than it is here.

Upon arriving at the church, she learned they had about three years of funding left over, left to operate and cover her salary.

The cost of the building and other overhead was just too much for the congregation.

That had decreased in size over the years.

But Reverend Annin and the congregation were not ready to close and turn over the keys.

They felt called to serve their community in new ways.

They just weren't sure exactly how.

So in 2021, First Presbyterian Church signed up for the Good the Rooted Good Good Futures Accelerator course.

They started down a journey of listening to their community, walking the neighborhood and exploring new uses for their building.

During this journey, they learned that there was a pressing need in their community for office and meeting space for budding entrepreneurs to get started with new businesses.

So they invested a small amount of money into updating their Sunday school classroom wing and created a small business incubator space.

They now have nine small businesses launching out of their church, nine.

They're generating almost $100,000 in revenue for the congregation.

The church has a viable, sustainable budget to continue its ministry.

But more importantly, it has become a central hub of innovation and entrepreneurship in the community.

They've welcomed and connected with many people who never given a second thought to the church.

And in just 18 months, First Presbyterian built a viable social enterprise and centered itself in the community as an asset and a place of welcome.

A building that was mostly empty and weighing down their budget is now mostly full and bringing in significant revenue.

And it isn't just suburban and urban churches that are doing this work.

Churches in rural communities are experimenting with their own interesting approaches to the use of church property.

While it can be challenging in rural settings, they are able to retain and reclaim their role as community hubs in new ways.

Some are partnering with health care systems to use underutilized church space as part time health clinics.

In locations where health care is needed, but building a standalone health center is not viable or necessary.

Others are looking at building small senior living communities on church land so that neighbors can age in place in their home town and not have to move away to find supportive living options.

I've always loved children's tale about Stone soup familiar with the Stone soup story.

There are many versions that approach the story from different cultural perspectives, but in most, the general outline of the story goes like this.

A group of travelers arrive in a village carrying only a cooking pot.

They set the pot on a fire in the middle of the village and fill it with water.

Then they drop in a stone.

They begin cooking the stone soup.

At first, the villagers just peek out of their windows, but then curiosity gets the better of them and they begin emerging to see what is happening.

How can you make a soup with just a stone?

When they find there's only a stone in the soup, they start to offer ingredients to make it taste better.

Because obviously a stone isn't going to taste very good.

So one by one they add something.

One brings an onion, another some greens, another a carrot.

Eventually, almost everyone in the village has brought an ingredient and the soup smells amazing.

What started out as a stone in a pot has become a delectable soup.

Through the collaborative contributions of the diversity of people.

The work of expanding and repurposing the use of church property is like making stone soup.

It requires all of us, all of us to contribute something, not just the church.

People.

And we will all benefit from tasty, nourishing soup in the form of stronger communities and greater human flourishing.

So how do we work on this together?

How do we do this together?

How do we make this soup together?

I'll share three ingredients that I believe will encourage more good to emerge on church land over the next decade.

And I want to encourage you to think about what ingredients you can bring to the soup.

The future of Church Land is in part about real estate, but it is not only or even primarily a real estate question.

It is really a question of imagination and mission.

Someone, after all, had to imagine that dropping a stone into a pot of water would eventually lead to an edible soup.

Too often, churches and leaders first step when considering selling a building is to call a realtor, or when developing property is to find a developer.

Those are important steps in the process.

At the right time.

Most churches need to step back, however, and start with building imagination.

It is vital to start by clarifying the why and the what before the how.

Why do we want to do something different here?

And what is it that would support human flourishing?

Clarity and consensus about mission is always more important than questions of real estate and money.

In every instance I've seen a church launch into a real estate questions before getting mission clarity, they've had to backtrack at some point, sometimes by years, in order to deal with the why question.

This step cannot be skipped if we hope to have good outcomes.

At Rooted Good, we call this pre pre-development.

So the pre-development is understood.

But there's this pre pre-development piece.

Pre pre-development is the process of getting ready to do something new with church property.

Rooted Goods Good Futures Accelerator course is a well designed proven process of pre pre-development.

It starts with a focus on mission understanding the needs and assets in the community around a church, considering business models and demand, and connecting all of that with the passions, gifts, history and values of the church.

This work helps a congregation develop a new imagination for the use of its buildings and land.

Churches that complete the course are much more ready to work on development projects, because they have come to clarity and consensus internally about why they are interested in this work and what they want to see happen on their land.

That step is essential for success and if skipped, leads to a lot of wasted time.

As of this fall, more than 290 churches of all kinds in 42 states have completed are engaged in the good futures Accelerator course.

They are big and small, wealthy and struggling in cities and rural communities, progressive and conservative, and from a huge variety of denominations, racial, racial, ethnic backgrounds and more.

Some cities, like San Antonio, Texas, or denominations like the Presbyterian Church USA have purchased cohorts of the course to offer to churches in their area to kickstart housing and other development on church land.

A second ingredient for making good stone soup is partnership.

Good community development work never happens alone.

It always happens in partnership.

Churches are amazingly self-sufficient.

We cut the grass, we take care of the buildings, we shovel the snow, and more.

But that self-sufficiency can be a liability when developing property.

Churches often fail to engage with neighbors outside their congregants in a meaningful way.

And on the other side of the table, municipalities and universities and nonprofits and foundations and businesses often stand at kind of arm's length from churches.

Sometimes they're even antagonistic to faith communities.

I understand the history and the reasons for this, and I'm certainly not advocating for reducing our very important separation of church and state.

But there are a lot of missed opportunities if we don't work together.

We can be like the skeptics in the story of Stone soup that watched out of their window but never contributed anything.

Or we can step forward and join in the cooking of something good.

Partnership is essential.

Partnership involves listening.

It's important in this work for churches to listen to the neighborhood that they're seeking to serve.

What are the needs in the community?

What are the gifts that people have to offer?

What is happening outside the walls of the church building?

Churches are really good at imagining or suggesting what people need and want, but not very good at actually asking them.

Community development must be connected to actual needs and desires and opportunities in a community, and that starts with listening.

Partnership also involves respect.

Working with churches presents an amazing opportunity for developers and cities to expand affordable housing and other services in many of our communities.

But church land is not there for the taking, so to speak.

Churches have often been present on land for decades, even generations.

Churches have a long view of the land, and that can be at odds with some aspects of traditional property development.

And the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act gives churches a lot more control over their property than some may realize.

While they may be very interested in partnership, ultimately churches determine the future use of their land, and that reality should shape the way we approach partnership.

And partnership can get really practical.

So one way that civic and government leaders specifically can help create more housing on property owned by churches or other projects like that is to build better pathways to development.

Zoning restrictions, parking minimums, planning overlays, financing incentives, and other carrots and sticks that exist in a local setting have an enormous impact on what kinds of development can and cannot be done.

I think you heard from Strong Towns a couple of months ago here at this event, and I'm sure that was a topic of conversation in in that, in that conversation.

Municipalities can add, remove or amend regulations and incentives to encourage the kinds of development on church land that will enhance the community and can discourage the kinds of development that will not support flourishing.

And again, there's really only one chance to do this as these properties transition.

For example, advocates from the group yes, in God's Backyard and other church leaders work to pass a new statewide bill in California called SB four that now allows churches to build affordable housing on their land by right.

A major step forward for California.

My hometown Madison, Wisconsin, recently updated the Citywide Comprehensive Plan to include higher density future land use on church parcels throughout the city.

That's already led to new affordable housing development projects.

And Orange County, Florida actually just called me a couple of weeks ago for input on a county ordinance that would incentivize affordable housing on church land.

Finally, a third ingredient that will make good stone soup is more funding.

It is fantastic when churches that have ample money to think about, to think proactively about how to go deeper and wider with their buildings and property.

That's amazing when that's a possibility.

The reality, though, is that many churches begin these conversations when money is tight.

Many churches are land rich and cash poor.

Grant funding from foundations, donors and government can help with pre-development costs and get projects started.

We just launched an experiment in this direction with a new $1.1 million pre-development grant program in Wisconsin.

We are giving grants up to $40,000 for any church in Wisconsin to complete feasibility and early pre-development work, with the intent to develop property for community benefit.

When a project funded with one of these grants moves forward into construction, the grant will be paid forward so that another church can use the funds.

This million dollar private donation will catalyze an estimated $450 million of development on church land that otherwise might not happen.

We are about to award our first grant this month after pre pre-development work has been done well and a concept is ready to be developed and funded.

Concessionary investment financing can be a game changer.

One of the major factors that limits how creative and good a development project can be is the cost of the financing and the Lutheran church development example I shared earlier, we were able to build a fully passive house certified building on the property because of impact investment funds from faith based investors.

In the case of the common Grace project.

We were able to make that housing affordable with the help of a foundation that is lending the full project cost at 2% below market rate.

Catalytic funding turns bad development projects into good ones and good development projects into great ones.

Let me put a rough dollar amount on this need for catalytic funding.

Based on some research that we've been doing at routed good fun funded by the Duke Endowment.

Let's start with an estimated 350,000 church properties in the United States.

If 5% of them were developed in some way, that would be 15,000 sites.

That represents a possible $450 billion of development potential.

Billion with a B to make these projects serve communities and not just the financial markets.

We might expect each project to need an average 30% subsidy.

That equals $135 billion of subsidy in the form of grants or concessionary investment and lending capital.

That 135 billion is what will make this a story of community development, and not just one of real estate development.

The opportunity and the need for investment is big.

I want to close with one of my favorite stories of church property development that contains these three ingredients that I've mentioned here.

This one comes from Washington, D.C.

Emory fellowship started as a white congregation in 1832 on Vinegar Hill in Washington, D.C.

it has had a long and varied history, including serving as a place of worship and a hospital.

During the Civil War.

Not all the history was positive.

Many of the founding members of the church owned slaves.

By the 1970s, the Brightwood neighborhood around the church, which had prohibited African-Americans from moving in during the 1940s and 50s, had transitioned to becoming a predominantly black neighborhood.

Rapid White Flight left it initially with a deficit of economic resources.

The church began doing what mission focused churches do.

Engaging with their neighbors and building imagination by working with those experiencing hunger and homelessness for a few decades, they grew to really understand the systemic need for affordable housing.

After exploring possible places to purchase land to house people, they came to the realization that they already had land on their own church.

So they set about addressing not just the symptoms of a lack of affordable housing, but the root cause.

Working with a team of development and funding partners.

They designed a $60 million affordable housing project that would wrap around their existing church building.

But the project was stalled and almost derailed by many obstacles along the way.

Their mostly white denomination put up roadblocks for the predominantly black church that was trying to do something innovative and bold.

They ran out of funding for pre-development, and opponents to the project came out of the woodwork, some from thousands of miles away, to claim that the property couldn't be developed due to its Civil War history.

But the church members kept praying and kept pressing ahead.

At the 11th hour, and with the landmark status just about to shut the development down for good.

A new piece of history emerged.

It turned out that Emory Fellowship did not start with white people building a church on the site.

In 1832.

Surprise!

It started with a free black woman named Aunt Betty in 1800, and Betty owned the land prior to any of the history being called upon to block the development.

And guess what?

She used that land for?

She used that land to house free blacks and runaway slaves who had nowhere to live.

The affordable housing project proposed by Emory Fellowship was simply continuing a legacy started by Aunt Betty, 215 years earlier, of housing people in need of a place to lay their head.

The project was approved and after almost ten years of working on it, the Beacon Center was opened.

Today, Emory Fellowship is a vibrant congregation of more than 400 predominantly black working class members, surrounded by 99 units of affordable housing.

They have built upon the land and the legacy of what it really means to be the church in the world.

They are now looking at doing another project in the D.C.

area for good reason.

The wait list at the Beacon Center is full with 800 people on it.

We have opportunities to do this and more to together activate our church owned lands for the good of us all to make a tasty stone soup.

We have everything we need to get started in the form of land, assets and people.

Repurposing church property is a chance to do something new.

It allows us to think differently, see more vividly, listen more deeply, and love more fully.

The transition of church property is indeed a crisis hidden in plain sight.

It is also one of our greatest opportunities.

Yes, churches and property will be gone.

Of this, there is no doubt.

But more than that, I am incredibly hopeful that new and good things will emerge and they will be gone for good.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mark, for your very thought provoking comments.

And as you can imagine, there are many, many questions from the audience and we'll try to get to as many of them as possible.

One of the ones that questions that came in is a lot of people have the misconception that churches are only for their own denomination.

What do you churches need to do to change that mindset in welcoming people from the entire community?

Yeah, I think, Really, it starts in my mind with listening to the neighborhood and to the community and getting outside the walls of the church and connecting with with who is there and who is around and what, what that church is.

I mean, I, you know, denominations are a function to some extent of an institutionalized church that is eroding in many ways in America.

And that's not a terrible thing, because I think it returns us to what it means as communities of faith, to be living that out day to day with each other in our neighborhoods.

Maybe less structured in the sort of institutional sense, but I think it really largely starts with listening.

Listening to the neighborhood.

If a church wants to repurpose its property to generate revenue, what are the tax implications that need to be addressed?

And how best should the church address those?

Yeah.

Good question.

I'm not going to answer in much detail since this is on camera and I'm not a tax, tax expert, but, I'll say a couple things.

So Rooted Good actually has a resource.

What about taxes on our website?

If people want to get a little bit more information about that.

And I will always say you have to talk to tax, lawyers and accountants in any situation.

It does need to be addressed.

But the thing that I would, I guess the message I would want to leave is I have never yet in all this work heard of a beautiful idea being stopped by taxes.

Ever.

Now that question comes up every time I talk just about.

But never have I heard a beautiful idea be stopped by that question or by that issue.

There are lots of different ways to address it.

One of which is simply paying taxes.

So I guess that's what I would leave you with.

Yeah.

Mark, you talked about the course that you, offer at your organization.

Can you talk more about that?

Is it online?

Is it is it in person?

Do you bring it to communities?

Yeah.

I don't want to spend too much time sort of pitching this course, but it is a it's a self-directed, course that actually churches can purchase and order.

They receive a box of materials with leader guides, participant guides, worksheets, games, exercises to use in their neighborhood, and then some online video content.

And they can work through it on their own, at their own pace.

Usually takes about 7 to 9 months to work through it.

It usually involves a small group of about 5 to 7 leaders in the church.

And then these exercises that engage the whole congregation and it gets them at by the end of the course to an idea or a couple of, of ideas, actionable ideas for social enterprise.

So kind of revenue generating mission activity using their building or landing.

Mark, have you faced any resistance to the practices you promote that could be characterized as mission creep or churches not staying in their lane?

How do you counter those attitudes?

Yeah, I'm a big believer in staying in your lane and mission focus.

It's a good question.

I think it sometimes really, gets to what is the mission of the church.

And I think that's a question that we maybe need to be asking ourselves a little bit more deeply, than we have, in my view.

And this is just me speaking as a Christian pastor, when I look at the the New Testament and the and the the Hebrew Scriptures, I see stories of communities of people living out their faith in the places they live.

To me, that includes worship, but it also includes a lot of other things.

It includes community development, includes job creation.

It includes housing.

It includes food.

It includes all of these things that we're talking about.

To me, that is the expression of the Christian faith.

In addition to, the other expressions that we might be, sort of more familiar with.

So I would actually argue that is our lane, and we just need to grow in it a little bit more deeply.

When a church shuts down, what is the most serious but least talked about consequence for the local community?

Yeah, I mean, the most serious, I don't know.

I think there's a number of possibilities there.

I guess I would go back to this idea that I think churches provide a lot more, even in their weakened states.

If they are, than we might realize.

So, you know, a real specific example for my community.

I said, I vote in a church, that's nearby me in my neighborhood.

Well, there's actually now two polling places in that church because the other church that the other polling place used to meet in is no longer.

And so if that continues to happen, I'm not sure what we're going to do.

I mean, there's no more room in that particular church for more polling precincts or in the same building, but we are literally going to have a failure of democracy if we can't figure out spaces.

And that's just a sort of indicative example of the spaces and the things that happen.

Food pantries.

I mean, in the last six months, we've seen this massive problem around food security and insecurity, right?

And churches stepped up in a massive way with their little small food pantries.

They might be small, but they're really important.

There aren't a lot of spaces left in our society that are kind of third spaces that don't require fees, to use.

Right?

Or buying something somewhere.

Libraries and churches are one of the few left.

And, and so that is a big loss.

All the things associated with that are big losses are places where people get together across different, spaces, backgrounds and so on.

There's just not a lot of those spaces left.

And so, you know, if one leaves, two leave.

Fine.

But again, if 40 out of 100 are gone or six out of ten or whatever these are, these are real numbers.

We're going to feel that.

And if we even if we've never set foot in a church and in 20 years, we're going to feel the ripple effects of that throughout our communities as as that happens.

Yeah.

We have time for one last question.

And this is a non building related question.

What shifts cultural, economic or spiritual do you churches need to make now to avoid further decline?

Maybe we should have ended with the last question.

I think I would probably somewhat reiterate some of what I've said here.

I think I think imagination, thinking differently, thinking more holistically, thinking more, in connection to others, more broadly.

I think basically with the idea that, that the church can sort of exist in its own bubble and all of the structures associated with it can exist and just function, that that way of being is sort of is sort of gone or going away.

And so we just really have to think quite radically differently about it.

I mean, you know, I talked about Blockbuster Video stores, right?

And Netflix.

Well, we have YouTube and we have TikTok, and we have all the, you know, there's there's new expressions coming out all the time.

And I think that's the way we really need to think.

And if and if and perhaps even more radically than we might first, believe we need to.

Yeah.

Let's show let's show a warm, thank you to Mark from all of us in Akron.

Mark, again, thank you, for today.

At this moment, I would like to invite our executive director, Joan Lauck, to present you with our Contemplative Sun.

Designed by local Akron artist Don Drumm and sponsored by Gardens Wealth Management.

Give him a round of applause.

I'm To launch our 50th anniversary on January 20th 22nd of 2026, we will have Daniel M rice, President and Chief executive officer of Ohio and Erie Canal Coalition, as he celebrates 30 years as outgoing, CEO of our local OECC and shares about his journey and Akron leadership and service to local nonprofit devoted to conservation, development and interpretation of the natural, historical and recreational resources along the Ohio and Erie Canal.

National heritage from Cleveland to New Philadelphia.

And this event will be held here at Quaker Station.

You can read more about this month's speaker, future Akron Roundtable speakers and individuals and organizations who support our mission by referring to your brochures at your table.

Thanks to a gift from Lyle M. Buckingham fund at the Akron Community Foundation.

And as always, single tickets for any Akron roundtable program or season subscriptions can be purchased at Akron roundtable.org.

And please, please be sure to visit the Learned Owl Book Shop just outside of our entrance to purchase Mark's book, Gone For Good.

With that to you all, have a great afternoon, safe travels and we wish you a very happy holiday.

Thank you all.

This has been a production of Akron Roundtable, PBS Western Reserve, the University of Akron, and IdeaStream Public media.