Posted on 04/09/2007 10:04:02 AM PDT by PAR35
A 174-year-old Episcopal congregation in New England is selling its historic building and merging with another church, the two institutions announced recently.
St. George's Episcopal Church in Newport, R.I., chose to close its doors because the building was too large for the congregation, The Providence Journal reported April 5. Maintenance costs were the primary factor in the decision, the church said in a statement.
"During the past five years, St. George's community waged a valiant effort to remain at 14 Rhode Island Ave. in the face of the changing island demographics," the statement reads. "Although it has grown considerably, the spiritually strong community of approximately 125 souls finds itself in a house that seats 275, obviously too big and expensive to maintain."
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The Rev. Pamela Mott, rector of St. Mary's ....
Final approvals of the merger, including that of the Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island....
The Rev. Marsue Harris, rector of St. George's....
(Excerpt) Read more at layman.org ...
Ping?
Why are they not out trying to fill the empty seats?
The continuing collapse of the Episcopal Cult.
The bishop can get more from the real estate than they can from the annual assessments. And what kind of membership do you think that they would attract.
I remember this church. It’s beautiful, but even with a larger congregation, the upkeep costs would be hugh.
We attended a Congregational church when we lived in Newport, which owned a big old stone church on Thames Street. They’d built a functional, modern building outside of town, and opened the old church a few times a year for special occasions.
"Functional" depends on how the denomination views the role of the church.
They'd still have all their fixed costs. They must have had a few old members who they were trying to placate until they died off and left their money to the church.
These three women clergy must have been counting on the homo-lesbo influx of new members into the inclusive Episcopal Church.
Not the heating cost, nor regular cleaning.
Probably true, though, that they were waiting for some elderly congregants with megabucks to pass on.
It was Congregational. The congregation was “the church,” and the space in which they met absolutely irrelevant, according to their traditional theology.
This was the last Congregational church my family attended. After 1977, Mom found that every Congregational/United Church of Christ had gone totally around the bend. The Newport congregation was behind the times; most of the denomination was on Planet Zongo before that.
If you drained the pipes and winterized the place after each use, I suppose. I grew up in the deep south, where if you don't either keep a place air conditioned or well ventilated, you'd have significant mildew problems. Perhaps that isn't an issue up there.
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In Rhode Island they could just turn the heat down to 55 year-round and clean monthly and be O.K. I wouldn’t turn the heat off completely.
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