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A PATHOLOGY OF THREATS (from Religious Properties Preservation: A Boston Casebook)
A pathology of threats jeopardizes many of Boston's
historic churches and synagogues. These threats, discovered while compiling this casebook
of twenty-eight properties and summarized below, also threaten the physical, emotional,
social, and spiritual life of entire neighborhoods. This summary helps explain the
problems facing those who care for religious properties.
1. Occupants and owners of Boston's historic religious properties often wait
until a crisis occurs before carrying out maintenance and repairs.
•
Crisis management can be seen in at least five of the casebook properties that have ambitious programs and yet still defer maintenance. •
Nine properties have drastically reduced maintenance staff compared with the staff in past decades. First Church in Roxbury has a sexton that works only about fifty hours per month on an enormous building that requires at least that amount of time just to clean and would require much more time to carry out adequate maintenance. •
Representatives from fourteen properties admit that maintenance and repair are low priorities.
2. The lack of effective strategic planning and aggressive financial management allows buildings to deteriorate and repair costs to spiral upwards, while opportunities to infuse money and talent are overlooked.
• Prolonged indecision characterizes the management style affecting at least ten of the properties studied. The Church of the Blessed Sacrament stood empty for five years because the owners were deciding whether the building merits repair. Several churches, such as Allston Congregational Church, have been struggling for over ten years with the question of whether to stay in their historic buildings. • High repair and energy costs force users to abandon repairs and not heat their buildings. • Nearly all casebook property owners are operating at a deficit. • About half of the properties are dependent on subsidies for annual operation. • At least eighteen properties are grossly under-utilized.
3. Suburbanization and demographic and cultural changes to the social and economic character of Boston's neighborhoods often have an adverse impact upon entities owning historic religious properties.
• The number of adherents in the Baptist, Congregational, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic and Unitarian Universalist churches has dropped by over 90,000 in the last fifty years, according to the Emmanuel Gospel Center Research Department. There has also been a similar decline in the number of members of Jewish synagogues in Boston in the same time period. The religious organizations which are growing in Boston rarely own historic religious properties. • A dozen of the congregations and parishes now have fewer than fifty people attending weekend worship services. • Due to changing demographics and the subsequent need to commute, at least one church experiences some conflict with the surrounding neighborhood because many members double park on Sundays.
4. The membership of religious organizations in historic buildings is aging.
• Seven of the casebook properties are used by organizations that have very few younger members. • When questioned about the reasons for the recent decision to close her historic church, one long-time member responded that all the members were either "dying or going to nursing homes." • At least one property has experienced a severe conflict between the old and the new guards.
5. Managing the maintenance of a complex building frequently places an unreasonable burden on the already overextended schedule of the clergy.
• The burden of caring for these demanding properties encourages clergy to leave their congregations or parishes. • The leadership of many historic religious properties lacks continuity. Half of the properties in this casebook do not have a full-time clergy person. • At least two properties have congregations experiencing a leadership vacuum created by the departure of a long-time leader, without a plan for succession.
6. Some properties lack a constituency of users to support building maintenance, with the consequence that specific properties compete for limited funds from organizations controlling many sites and carrying out many activities.
• At Saint Stephen's Church in the North End, neither the Saint James Society which holds Mass at the church nor the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, which allows the Saint James Society to use the church, has yet to address the implications of long-term property management in the absence of adequate financial support from those who use the property. • At the First Church in Roxbury, a worshiping community uses the worship space on Sundays, but the Urban Ministry of the Benevolent Fraternity of Unitarian Universalists, which manages the property, views this site as just one of its competing priorities.
7. Sometimes the neglect of historic religious buildings takes the form of abuse, although it is not always deliberate.
• While well thought out repairs can save money and avoid damage to the building, counter-productive repairs and changes drain the resources of religious organizations, some of which have annual operating budgets under $30,000. • Repainting plaster instead of fixing the leaks that cause the stains wastes money and happens frequently. • One church reports that a lack of maintenance expertise ruined an expensive new boiler only two years after its installation. • Few of the casebook property users have access to information on the historic, artistic, and architectural significance of their buildings. • Some churches, such as Emmanuel Church in the Back Bay, have for decades, as a matter of policy, not allocated money for building repairs.
Fortunately, and in stark contrast to many other cities, there are few major, closed historic houses of worship in Boston at this writing. We hope that careful planning will precede precipitous action when the accumulation of threats suggests closing and abandoning historic buildings.