Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

When St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Waco, Texas closed their school in 2006, it impacted both the congregation and the community. Students and families needed to find new schools. School faculty and staff were unemployed. The empty school building provided a visible reminder of all that was lost.

Today, Spanish and English voices fill the halls at the former school. Now known as the St. Alban’s Outreach Center, the building is home to the Central Texas String Academy, Waco Children’s Theatre, Camp Fire USA, and Avance Waco. Jeff Fisher, priest at St. Alban’s shares, “we serve four times as many people in the community than we did when we operated a school. We have four outreach partners each paying rent to the parish. The parish has also grown by leaps and bounds; average Sunday attendance is up over 60% from 2005. We now have parishioners who do not remember us ever operating a school. A new day of resurrection has truly dawned.”

Earlier this week I learned of a study that measured the ‘halo effect’ – the economic impact that religious groups have on their community. The result? The 12 Philadelphia congregations studied contributed $50,577,098 in annual economic benefits. "Equipped with such measurements," the report said, "a congregation could produce hard numbers to show community organizations, policy makers, and potential funders the value of its local presence."

One church in the study planned $300,000 in necessary structural repairs, rebuilding the church tower and replacing the slate roof. With an operating budget of $265,000 and, like St. Alban’s in Waco, an array of community organizations sharing its physical plant, this church was determined to have a ‘halo’ of $1.47 million in 2010.

In another part of Philadelphia, the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary church runs a school and a community center that is home to dozens of sports teams and civic groups. On Sundays, many congregants stay in the neighborhood after Mass, patronizing local stores and restaurants. Visitation’s estimated ‘halo effect:’ $22,440,382.

Visitation’s priest Bruce Lewandowski said the study changed his perception of his parish, "You might think of your church as an employer but not as an engine driving the neighborhood economy."

Have you given thought to the economic worth of your congregation? Is your church part of the engine driving the economy of your community? And if so, how might we use this awareness to articulate value to our communities, broaden our constituencies, and like St. Alban’s in Waco, Texas, experience a ‘resurrection.’