NEWS FEATURE: Public Schools Provide Homes for Fledgling Churches

c. 2005 Religion News Service PEABODY, Mass. _ As a single mother, Carol Eldridge wants to make sure her 4-year-old son, Aaron, develops a relationship with God. That’s why they spend Sunday mornings inside Samuel Brown Elementary School rather than inside a traditional church building. “I’ve tried Sunday school. He won’t leave me,” Eldridge says. […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

PEABODY, Mass. _ As a single mother, Carol Eldridge wants to make sure her 4-year-old son, Aaron, develops a relationship with God. That’s why they spend Sunday mornings inside Samuel Brown Elementary School rather than inside a traditional church building.

“I’ve tried Sunday school. He won’t leave me,” Eldridge says. “I could never take him and sit in a pew somewhere. Here you can walk around, he can play a little bit, and I get more out of it.”


Aaron’s not the only one comfortable worshipping at the public school, where an assembly space decorated with kindergarteners’ artwork transforms into a house of God once a week. Others gathered in the maroon plastic chairs here say this temporary arrangement for the year-old Living Hope Church of the Nazarene is a situation that works for them _ both economically and spiritually.

It’s a model that also seems to work for tens of thousands of nascent churches using public schools for worship across the country. Still, like any church building project, there are headaches to consider.

On an organizational level, the terms are tough to beat. Living Hope Church, for instance, pays just $200 per week _ $50 for space in the school’s assembly area and $150 for the janitor. Parking is abundant, and everyone in this city of 48,000 seems to know where it’s located. With such advantages, 105 worshipers assembled on opening day in March 2004 thanks to nothing more than word-of-mouth advertising and 40,000 pre-recorded calls to households within a seven-mile radius.

Still, the biggest advantages of being in a school building for the first few years of a church’s life might be the kind that can’t be measured with numbers, according to Youth Pastor J.R. Polson.

“You have that issue in other places _ people love the church building instead of the body of believers,” Polson says. “But it’s about relationships with God and the people, not the building. … A new church needs relationships between the people, and this (setting) helps facilitate that.”

Exact numbers are unknown, but observers say the school-based church has undoubtedly become a common model for new congregations. About 15,000 U.S. congregations worship in a school setting, according to Mark Chaves, a University of Arizona sociologist of religion and author of “Congregations in America” (Harvard University Press, 2004). Sociologist Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research puts the number of public school-based congregations at between 10,500 and 17,500 of the nation’s 350,000 congregations. In the Southern Baptist Convention alone, about 600 of its 1,800 new church starts in 2004 are worshipping in public schools.

“It’s less confrontational than the red brick (traditional church) buildings we have across the land,” says Tom Cheyney, manager of strategic resourcing for the Southern Baptists’ Church Planting Group. “It’s a little more disarming for (newcomers) to come in through this environment.”


School rents may be cheap, but the journey of school-based churches has hardly been a free ride. The City of Peabody displaced Living Hope Church last year on the grounds that worship in a public school might violate the constitutional separation of church and state. The city settled out of court, agreeing to pay damages and legal fees, but the issue continues to get attention. One example: New York City is seeking court permission to argue it is unconstitutional to allow the 20-plus churches that currently worship in its public schools.

So far, school-based churches have consistently prevailed as federal courts have held that worship is allowed as long as all religious groups have equal opportunity to rent the facilities. But that doesn’t mean legal challenges will disappear, according to Vincent McCarthy, senior counsel for the Northeast region of the American Center for Law & Justice.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg” in terms of challenges to school-based churches, McCarthy says. “We get so many people, especially in the Northeast, who just don’t want it. They lose, but they don’t mind losing. (Should they ever win), it would have an effect on other churches that worship in public schools.”

Staying in a public school is hardly a long-term goal for Living Hope or other school-based congregations. Pastor Gene Hebert says Living Hope needs its own building eventually to establish “a permanent presence in the city.” For now, the prospect of paying $2,800 in monthly rent for a full-time location seems formidable when compared to $800 per month at the school.

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In the meantime, some in attendance are finding a school setting to be just right for what their souls need.

Bobina Ugah is one of them. In his native Nigeria, he says, churches routinely use schools for worship. After receiving the prerecorded invitation at his home in Lynn, he gambled that a cab driver could probably find such a prominent building. Now, it’s the only public place he feels comfortable enough to wear his “gaftan,” a thin brown gown that reminds him of Africa.


“When I come in the midst of people who worship and know God, I feel at home,” Ugah says.

Theresa Stentiford of Marblehead comes because her son, Ryan, was “a little hyperactive when he was younger, and they were very accepting.” Now she feels the school setting actually enhances their religious education.

“They’re taught from an early age that we, the people, make up the church. (It’s) not the structure,” Stentiford says.

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Renting school space has its drawbacks, leaders say. Weekday meetings require a seven-mile trip to the mother church, Beverly Church of the Nazarene, w1hich spun off the Living Hope community. Problems with the landlord can be nearly catastrophic, as the church discovered when average worship attendance fell from 74 to 37 over its two months of transience during the legal dispute.

And setting up for worship every week requires a good bit more than taping the lavender “Living Hope Church” banner in the window at the school entrance. For saxophonist Paul Saunders, it means carting around speakers, instruments and other musical equipment all week in his car. “It’d be nice to get my trunk back,” Saunders says with a smile.

Still, in Hebert’s opinion, the advantages far outweigh the drawbacks _ at least for now. And dreams for the future know no limits.


“We can grow here,” Hebert says. “What if we grow from 50 to 150? It’s a school! There’s plenty of room.”

KRE/JL END RNS

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