Repair Cafe: Legacy and Decline

Repair Cafe is a newsletter in which Jodi Spargur, director of Red Clover, goes deeper into themes of reparations, theology, and all that is beautiful and broken — through short essays and engagement with reader responses. 

Once a month, we’ll offer excerpts from Jodi’s writing here on the Red Clover blog, but do consider subscribing and engaging Jodi’s work on Substack. She also posts on Medium. 

Legacy and Decline

On holding on vs letting it go

(Photo by Abner Campos on Unsplash)

Could these congregational tombs we call buildings, if we surrendered them to black and brown communities to whom, by right, they’re owed? Could they become places of resurrection? What would happen if we sold these assets and gave the money, as once Jesus counselled a rich young man, to the very people we have impoverished?⁠

(Peter Jarrett-Schell in Reparations)

This question is posed in the context of reparation work in the inner city of Philadelphia. It can also be asked in the context of the relationship between the church in Canada and Indigenous communities. What would it look like to willingly surrender church properties for the benefit of communities impacted by legacies of harm and dispossession?

In 2019, the CBC reported that 9,000 churches were estimated to close in Canada by 2029⁠. At the time no one could have anticipated the impact of Covid19 on these closures. While I have not seen updated numbers I am certain that the overall numbers and the speed of closures have likely been accelerated.

Which raises a number of questions, including, what will be done with these properties? What could be done with these properties? And what should be done with these properties? 

The church is perhaps one of the only institutions in Western society that has an excess of land, but also a mandate to seek the well-being of the community.⁠

(Rev. Jason McKinney in the Anglican Journal article, “Fewer Members, Abundant Wealth”)

There is need for a theological vision that extends beyond the overly simplistic concept of “being good stewards” of resources (which usually means maximizing profits and reducing expenditures). Without such a vision decision-making often capitulates to the dictates and priorities of the market. Anglican priest Jason McKinney argues for a recovery of a theology of land to fuel a more theologically drenched imagination.

There is loss and grief in the numbers around church decline. There is also opportunity.

We are focussed at Repair Cafe in the idea of repairing the relationship between the church and Indigenous communities. If empty church properties are abundant, is this not an excellent time to ask how this situation could aid the repair process? What possibilities stand before us? The Scriptures say, “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone.” Is there an invitation for the church here?

Excerpted from Jodi’s March 12, 2023 newsletter. Read the full post here.