With a final flurry of tours and community meetings at Episcopal churches all over the state of Indiana, the Church Buildings for Collaborative Partnerships (CBCP) project reached a major milestone at the beginning of May. Teams from congregations, diocesan staff, Indiana Landmarks, and Partners for Sacred Places have now visited and documented the shareable spaces of every Episcopal church building in the state of Indiana.
The goal of the project, funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc. through its Thriving Congregations initiative, is to encourage congregations to open their buildings deliberately, seeing them as assets to be shared with the wider community. The site visits were the culmination of a process that helped congregational teams invite community leaders into their buildings to think creatively about how they can fill gaps in each church’s geography.
The tenor of the visits was as varied as the buildings themselves. At St. Paul’s, New Albany, the CBCP team invited more than 20 civic leaders to a luncheon around a long table in the ornate mansion that houses the church office. The idea was to center the conversation around the work each guest is doing in New Albany, with the potential use of the church building as a backdrop.
A site visit at St. Stephen’s, New Harmony the same day was more intimate but no less productive. New Harmony’s unique architecture and idyllic location make it especially popular during wedding season. St. Stephen’s central location led visitors to contemplate the church’s utility as a backup location for rained-out outdoor weddings. Its large kitchen also lends the church to hosting catered events. Another unique attribute of the church is that it stays unlocked 24 hours a day. One guest described coming in late at night just to listen and think, while another recounted healing evening visits as he grieved a loved one.
At the Episcopal Parish Network conference in March, Canon Brendan O’Sullivan-Hale was invited to present on the CBCP project as part of a curated series of presentations on using church properties to advance mission. His presentation was placed at the front end, “discernment.” In other words, key outcomes of this phase of the project have been the articulation of church missions in ways that resonate with secular stakeholders, and identifying who natural space-sharing partners might be.
The next phase of the project will offer congregations practical tools to make it easier for congregations and potential space sharers to connect. The dioceses of Indianapolis and Northern Indiana are partnering with Venuely, a non-profit provider of calendar, reservation, and payment services that makes it easy for churches to let potential users know what spaces are available and when. The CBCP partnership will be the first time Venuely has offered its services outside the New York metro region. The service will be offered to all congregations at no charge, beginning with a pilot group of nine churches.
Recently, CBCP attracted national media attention. In a Slate.com article about the growing problem of empty and abandoned churches, CBCP offered a counterpoint to a fatalistic view about the future of church-owned properties. “We owe a debt to our ancestors,” Canon Brendan is quoted as saying, “The church did a good job of acquiring prime real estate, and there’s value to communities in real estate being controlled by an organization without a profit motive.”
