Berks foundation helps churches
As we’ve discussed in recent columns, older mainline Christian denominations such as Lutheran, Methodist, and United Church of Christ have been losing congregants in ever-increasing numbers since their boom years in the 1950s.
America is becoming a more secular society. Prosperous church congregations are now more likely to be found in the suburbs.
In Pottstown, several congregations have already merged and repurposed or put up for sale church buildings they no longer can support for worship.
Historic churches are usually the most prominent and beautiful buildings in traditional towns like Pottstown, but they are also the most expensive to maintain. The contribution churches make to a community’s quality of life is often taken for granted until it’s too late to keep them going.
Five years ago, the Berks County Community Foundation launched a “sacred places” project to catalogue Reading’s churches.
The Foundation turned to Partners for Sacred Places, a national nonprofit organization based in Philadelphia that helps congregations and civic leaders preserve churches, synagogues, and other sacred places, both as brick and mortar buildings and as centers of community service.
The foundation hired Partners to train several Foundation interns to catalogue Reading’s church buildings and interview church leaders about the health of their congregations.
The interns catalogued 97 houses of worship and spoke with 42 congregational leaders. They detailed the history, architectural style and physical condition of each building. By speaking to parish leaders, they assessed the health of the congregations and listed the programs they offer.
Although the interns found several thriving congregations, many had lost enough members to endanger their viability.
Even churches with healthy endowments had dwindling memberships.
A lack of parking was a major issue, as Reading’s churches were built in densely populated areas at a time when people walked for most of their activities.
Partners will begin training Reading congregations to advocate for their buildings and their missions, to learn how to tap into funding organizations, and to organize capital campaigns.
The obvious candidate to bring Partners to Pottstown is the Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation, which last year transitioned from a private foundation to a community foundation like Berks County’s.