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The Property with a Purpose Breakfast, hosted by the Presbyterian Mission Agency, on July 3, included a panel discussion with (left to right) the Rev. Mark Elsdon, the Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena, the Rev. Sharon Core, Commissioned Pastor Kevin Riley, and the Rev. Dr. Winterbourne Harrison-Jones. Photo by Kristen Gaydos
If anything can succeed in generating a solid crowd at 6:45 a.m. during the already rigorous demands of a General Assembly, it’s the promise that God is doing a new thing.
And, just maybe, a speaker like the Rev. Mark Elsdon.
Elsdon, a Presbyterian pastor and author, energized the early morning gathering not only through his remarks but also as moderator of a panel whose powerful stories of using church property to advance their mission was punctuated with frequent applause.
Following a lively welcome from Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall, the PMA’s deputy executive for Vision and Innovation, the event opened with greetings from a wealth of PC(USA) leaders, including the Rev. Dr. Diane Moffett, PMA president and executive director; GA Co-Moderators the Revs. CeCe Armstrong and Tony Larson; the Rev. Dr. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk; the Rev. Bronwen Boswell, Acting Stated Clerk; and Paul Grier, vice president for Project Regeneration for the Presbyterian Foundation.
Elsdon, who also co-founded Rooted Good to help churches “generate new forms of income, reimagine the use of [their] buildings and land, and fulfill [their] mission and purpose in [their] community,” introduced the gathering to such resources as its self-guided Good Futures Accelerator before presenting the morning’s panelists.
Asking the panel where they are seeing God at work in the question of property, land and building use, Elsdon opened a floodgate of inspiring testimonies from four PC(USA) innovators.
“We are resurrection people,” Elsdon reminded the gathering. “And because there’s a lot to mourn, we should recognize the sadness, but know that there is also rebirth, resurrection and new opportunities.”
Just such a story of rebirth was shared by the Rev. Sharon Core, general presbyter for the Presbytery of the Western Reserve, who was first to speak. Prior to assuming her current position, Core led the Arlington (Virginia) Presbyterian Church to partner with a development company to provide 173 units of affordable housing with a perpetual presence for the church as part of it.
Core said she knew that “something needed to shift” because church leaders recognized that the building was taking up too much of the budget. Yet after the church’s session, which had become excited about the idea of affordable housing, presented a proposal to the congregation, Core said that “it crashed and burned in fiery balls.”
“It should have failed, and it did because we didn’t know why we were doing it,” said Core. “All we knew was we had this albatross of a building.”
It was only when the church’s spiritual leaders took a step back to “exercise [their] spiritual muscles” to help lead the congregation in following God’s call that the project was able to move forward.
“The sexy part of this was the affordable housing,” Core said. “The really important work is the leadership that it took to get there.”
With story after story, panelists emphasized the importance of courageous leadership and listening to the needs of the community.
The Rev. Dr. Winterbourne Harrison-Jones, pastor of Witherspoon Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, spoke about the power of prayer in transforming the community, while at the same time acknowledging that “faith is not the only thing required to be faithful.”
“Yes, I’m seminary trained, but my principal skill set is community development,” Harrison-Jones said. “You need all of these tools in addition to prayer in order to be faithful.”
Commissioned Pastor Kevin Riley of the Mount Baker Presbyterian Church in Concrete, Washington, spoke of how transformation is possible even with limited funds, a building and only a handful of people by listening to — and partnering with — the community.
“Just go for it,” Riley told the gathering. “Why can’t your rural congregation be a hub for that community? We knew the suffering in our community was more than we could do on our own but by building trust with that community, now we are the heart and soul.”
The Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena, chief imagination officer of the Presbytery of Tropical Florida and the Vibrant Together Development Corporation, said that every church that he has watched die was not behaving as a neighborhood church.
“We are hyper focused on how to turn the church around, but that’s the wrong question,” Bultena said. “The question is how do we get involved in the neighborhood and then the church follows it?”
As the program came to a close, Core said that she wanted to name “that sometimes we can treat our buildings as idols.”
“And while it is lovely to have a place to physically gather,” she said, “we worship the God who has set us loose in the neighborhood.”