As church attendance declines across the country, many congregations are facing a dilemma — let their church fall into disrepair or close up shop altogether — a lose-lose situation.
For one church — Grace Episcopal Church in northern Michigan — this dilemma has become a reality as the rising costs of maintaining the church and the loss of donations has taken its toll.
Church is community, and the community has a great love for this beautiful building,” the Rev. Ginny Graybill, a priest who serves at Grace Episcopal, said in a diocesan news release. “Like so many parishes nationwide, Grace has experienced a decline in active members over the years and with that maintaining our building became a great financial problem.”
To address the situation, however, Grace Episcopal Church decided to rethink their sense of “traditional” worship and reinvent themselves with some outside-the-box ideas.
And, as luck would have it, that “reinventing” just so happened to come in the form of draft beer as a neighboring brewery desperately needed a new landlord.
The needs and missions of the church and brewery happened to align with each other, said the Rev. Lydia Kelsey Bucklin, the Diocese of Northern Michigan’s canon to the ordinary for discipleship and vitality. “It just ended up being a really good time and good movement of the Spirit that we started talking to each other,” Bucklin told Episcopal News Service.
But what makes this story even more unique is that the agreement doesn’t just merge the church and brewery, but it also builds a community hub, as both both organizations are committed to providing a space for the general public.
In the Pub Is the Hub movement, Clancy said, “you’re sort of encouraged to have community events there, meetings, fundraising activities, to turn it into a place where people can enjoy a beer … but the other focus is building community relationships, just becoming a center of activity.”
Full Story: Northern Michigan congregation partners with brewery to redevelop church as community hub by author David Paulsen; originally published on Episcopal News Service on October 20, 2021.
