Susan Yowell, Partnership for Sacred Places

from sacredplacestexas.blogspot.com

Partnership for Sacred Places is an organization that assists historic churches to provide usable space for the community. Susan Yowell talked at length about PSP programs that promote more sustainable practices for the community.

One program is called space sharing partnerships, where churches lease space to area organizations. Of course, this has always been done on a small scale (churches allowing civic organizations to hold meetings in their church Sunday school classrooms, for example); however, PSP tries to employ this strategy on a larger scale to help churches secure necessary funding to keep afloat. Ms. Yowell used the First Christian Church of Fort Worth as an example. Before PSP got involved, this congregation in downtown had fallen to only 80 members or so. The church seriously faced having to close its doors until PSP was able to help them lease their second floor to a community eye clinic. In addition to helping their finances, the church's membership has risen by over 40 percent in the last year. While this project was successful, it was not easy to convince the congregation that this lease was in their best interest.

To see the economic value that churches bring to a community, the PSP can conduct economic valuation studies for churches. They use 50 factors such as parking lot space, recreational space, and spinoff services (think Salvation Army) to see the true dollar value of a church. Their findings consistently show that churches create a lot more economic value to communities than people tend to give them credit for.  For example, Saint Mary of the Assumption in Fort Worth creates about $2 million in value to the community per year even though it only brings in about $500,000 from the offering plate.

For abandoned churches, the organization tries to find new uses for them. They have successfully converted abandoned churches into recreation centers and business centers. If such reuse is not possible, the organization documents the church in a database so that it will not be forgotten by history before it is destroyed.

I never really thought about the economic value that a church brings to a community before. I with Ms. Yowell that churches take on a lot of social services that government simply cannot handle, or cannot handle as efficiently.