aving pace Historic Kalamazoo church finds new life as a community asset BY KATIE HOUSTON photos by
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BRIAN K. POWERS
Brian Powers
cross the country, many church congregations and their buildings are becoming casualties of a society that is increasingly sidelining organized religion. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that the number of American adults who describe themselves as Christian was down 12 percent over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population was at 26 percent, up from 17 percent in 2009. As a result, scores of churches close each year due to dwindling numbers and finances, leaving buildings abandoned, demolished or languishing on the real estate market. Sometimes former churches are repurposed into restaurants, breweries, wineries or unique housing. When Kalamazoo’s First Baptist Church began seeing the writing on the wall, it took a bold and unusual step: turning its building into a cooperative space for community organizations. The church, at 314 W. Michigan Ave., now has just over 100 members, down from a high of 500 in the 1960s. The building, completed in 1855, is the city’s oldest church and remains one of the few buildings that Abraham Lincoln would have seen when he spoke in Bronson Park in 1856. With 22,000 square feet, the imposing white structure includes offices, event and meeting rooms, studios and workshop areas, much of which was not being used to its full capacity. 20 | ENCORE JANUARY 2021
The church sought to change that, as well as head off the potential dissolution of one of the oldest congregations in the city, by making use of the building in a way that was in line with the congregation’s values and would also benefit the community. In March 2017 a group of artists, musicians, church staff, community members and community activists met, and the result was the creation of the Kalamazoo Nonprofit Advocacy Coalition (KNAC) and a plan to make the church into an affordable cooperative-use space for nonprofit organizations dedicated to the arts or to alleviating poverty and discrimination in the community. Now, three years after its creation, KNAC is its own nonprofit organization and the future owner of the church building, which has more than 20 tenants, ranging from bakers and artisans to arts and community service organizations. “I want to see it (the building) used completely all day every day,” says KNAC board President Dann Sytsma as he shows a visitor the building’s spaces, including the health-department-approved kitchen and the tiny fourth floor chapel, where leaded glass windows let in tinted sunlight.
‘A good solution’ For lifelong First Baptist congregant Joyce Standish, the new venture at the church “seems like a good solution to the challenges” of the building. “It needs a lot of things that we just were no longer able to do,” she says.
From left, First Congregational Church Pastor Nathan Dannison, KNAC Board President Dann Sytsma and First Baptist Church Pastor David Nichols talk in the First Baptist Church sanctuary, which doubles as a performing arts venue.
