Sacred Sites as Real Estate and Real Estate as Sacred Site

“… States?How can we be great stewards of sacred experiences and sacred sites while simultaneously affirming a sense of the pragmatic and instrumental? ”

Team Members/Contributors

Donna Eleanor Schaper Judson Memorial Church Contact Me

About this pastoral study project

My project is a Theological Reimagining of Sacred Sites and Real Estate. I also need time to write a planning grant for a larger study to implement the theology. The possibilities, theologically and practically, are as potent as the problems. The majority of today’s congregations face issues around their buildings and an inability to maintain them. My study will offer them practical and spiritual hope.

I want to articulate a simple theology of holy space that is incarnational, avoids the binaries of spiritualism and materialism and holds the sacred and the material together in a practical poetics of sacred space.

At Judson Church, we have long innovated practical and spiritual redesigns of sacred spaces. We removed our pews in 1959, an act that encouraged multiple artistic partnerships, incubated the development of modern dance in New York City, as well as Off-Off Broadway, and also encouraged liturgical innovation. Today we house a theater, modern dance companies and bring 8000 people per week through our buildings–-and worship with around 200 people per Sunday in a growing congregation that has tipped to people under 40 years of age. I want to reflect on these innovations and begin to organize best practices in a larger study. Thus my project is fundamentally theological reflection and secondarily the development of a larger proposal.

The planning grant will address

1. Flexible air rights polices for urban congregations

2. Multi uses of sacred space

3. Partnership development: Partners for Sacred Places and denominations.

4. Production of an interactive, regularly updated Web Site, perhaps RemovethePews, org, a pamphlet and blog.

5. Seminary course curriculum.

6. C-3: Should congregations have “arts and missions” corporations? What are the advantages of public funding compared to loss in self-governance?

7. Develop markets for renewables in sacred sites.

8. Examine the impact of virtual worship on sacred spaces.

9. Write a book on these subjects.