BETHLEHEM, Pa. — First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem tonight will share results of a survey that will shape its plans to build housing on its nearly 32-acre campus at 2344 Center St.
Building Community is First Presbyterian’s initiative to build new mixed-income housing on church grounds. Very little is set in stone about the project, as church leaders seek input from the community to shape the final product.
“It's not like we've got all this laid out and then we're saying, ‘Here's a plan, we hope you like it,’" First Presbyterian pastor the Rev. J.C. Austin said.
"We're really starting with, ‘We want to do something together. What is going to be a benefit and blessing to the community as a whole?’
“The first question we started asking when we got our leadership team together is what does it mean for people to live flourishing lives? And then how can we contribute to building that up in our communities?”
“There's no church and neighborhood, there's no us and them — there's only us."First Presbyterian pastor the Rev. J.C. Austin
A related second project, called Creating Partnership, aims to convert part of the church building into program and office space for a local nonprofit.
Church leaders are in talks to offer office and program space to an undisclosed organization offering support services to people without adequate housing.
A feasibility study now underway will determine whether space in the church building set for reuse meets the nonprofit’s needs.
Architects working on the study are on pace to wrap up by early 2024, said the Rev. Lindsey Altvater Clifton, First Presbyterian’s associate pastor for Justice and Community Impact.
The church is approaching both projects, but particularly Building Community, as collaborations with the community as a whole that can only materialize through a shared process.
“There's no church and neighborhood, there's no us and them — there's only us," Austin said.
"And the whole point of doing this is for the church to be in, and with, and for the community. That means we’ve got to start there at the very beginning.”
'A monster of a building’
Founded in 1875, First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem first moved to its campus on Center Street in the mid-1950s. In the years since, the massive church building has grown to cover about 124,000 square feet on a nearly 32-acre campus, according to church leaders.
"It was built aspirationally, at a time when you could basically put up a church in a growing suburban area and people would start filling it.”First Presbyterian pastor the Rev. J.C. Austin
“It’s a monster of a building," Austin said. "And, you know, in an objective sense, I think it was probably bigger than the church ever had a need for.
“But it was built aspirationally, at a time when you could basically put up a church in a growing suburban area and people would start filling it.”
The path to reimaging the campus’ use began in 2015, when Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the national denomination to which First Presbyterian Bethlehem belonged, expanded its definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.
The decision, together with a 2011 move to allow people in same-sex relationships to become ministers and church elders, was something of a last straw for many in the congregation who saw PCUSA shifting away from their beliefs for decades.
A few months later, First Presbyterian of Bethlehem leaders voted to begin the process of leaving PCUSA for a more conservative denomination, ECO Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
After about a year of agonizing soul searching, about 60% of the congregation voted to separate. Church leaders made plans to sell the campus on Center Street and use the proceeds for a new building elsewhere.
In response, PCUSA filed a lawsuit, saying that under its bylaws, the national denomination, not the local congregation, legally owned the property.
Members opposed to separation formed their own congregation. For a time, there were effectively two First Presbyterian Churches in Bethlehem, both meeting on Center Street.
The lawsuit would decide which could stay.
'None of this would have happened’
In 2017, a Northampton County judge ruled in PCUSA’s favor. The more conservative faction struck out on their own, becoming Grace Church Bethlehem, while the smaller, more progressive congregation kept the Center Street campus and the First Presbyterian name.
“It was a pretty awful experience, I think for everybody," Austin said. "Coming out of that, there was a lot of pain and there was a lot of trauma.
“And there was also a sense of, 'OK, now that we're here, who are we going to be moving forward?'
“You see that from the very beginning of this new era of the church: a willingness to be uncertain and to live faithfully in the uncertainty, trusting that God will lead us where we need to go."First Presbyterian pastor the Rev. J.C. Austin
“For a lot of us, we began to realize that even coming to church on Sunday morning was not fulfilling,” said Don Robertson, a church member and co-chair of the steering committee overseeing the campus projects.
“We began to reflect on that, I think aided by having two new ministers coming in and having a very open mind about the need to do not just what's right for us, First Presbyterian Church Bethlehem,… but what’s right for the community.”
That reflection bore new documents laying out the church’s mission and values, reflecting the congregation’s new sense of self. Less concretely, the congregation grew more comfortable with the idea of reimagining itself.
“You see that from the very beginning of this new era of the church: a willingness to be uncertain and to live faithfully in the uncertainty, trusting that God will lead us where we need to go,” Austin said.
Robertson said, “None of this would have happened if the split had not taken place. It's opened the door for us trying some things that would have probably not been tried.”
A source of critical need
If the First Presbyterian building’s size was “aspirational” from the beginning, it was cavernous for its new, smaller flock.
Ideas for ways to better use the building started to surface not long after the split, Clifton said, but nothing really seemed to stick at first.
“As we got away from, like, ‘How do we make this building more financially viable?’ — which was the sort of natural question because it was just costing so much money — and started saying, ‘Well, how do we as a congregation use this in a way that fulfills what we think God wants us to do?’ That is now opening up possibilities."First Presbyterian pastor the Rev. J.C. Austin
“As we got away from, like, ‘How do we make this building more financially viable?’ — which was the sort of natural question because it was just costing so much money — and started saying, ‘Well, how do we as a congregation use this in a way that fulfills what we think God wants us to do?’ That is now opening up possibilities,” Austin said.
When Bethlehem embarked on a housing project of its own, Clifton said, it galvanized the congregation to form a steering committee, co-chaired by Roberts and Donna Taggart.
Their first assignment was to go through every needs assessment from local governments and nonprofits they could get their hands on.
“It didn't take long in that hundreds of pages of homework to realize that things like affordable housing; affordable, accessible child care; and other kinds of related services and supports were really just a source of critical need,” Clifton said.
From there, they looked for ways their building and grounds could meet those needs.
Austin emphasized that the church doesn’t know exactly what it wants to build on the campus, in order to make room for meaningful public input.
‘Getting right with Jesus’
Clifton said she and other church leaders know a few things about what they want to materialize on Center Street in a few years’ time: a mixed-use development including mixed-income housing and green space supporting a vibrant multi-generational community.
The structures likely will be mid-size multifamily housing, potentially ranging from duplexes to small apartment buildings.
Whatever it looks like, First Presbyterian will be an integral part as “a hub and a spoke” in the project, Clifton said.
“For me, this identity shift is about getting right with Jesus. It's about using our resources as the kind of stewards that we've been saying that we have been, but have been falling short of for a really long time."The Rev. Lindsey Altvater Clifton, First Presbyterian’s Associate Pastor for Justice and Community Impact
The church will retain at least partial ownership of whatever is ultimately built, in order to keep some control over its future.
“For me, this identity shift is about getting right with Jesus," Clifton said. "It's about using our resources as the kind of stewards that we've been saying that we have been, but have been falling short of for a really long time."
Austin said the project is more than an effort to find new uses for their campus.
“This is living out what we really believe in terms of what our identity is, and what our calling is, and what our purpose is to be a community of faith in this place,” he said.
Taggart, who co-chairs the steering committee overseeing the projects, said some members of First Presbyterian of Bethlehem feel becoming the congregation they are now is worth the pain of the schism it took to get there.
“I've heard some of them say, ‘Maybe this is why [the schism] happened,’” she said. “Now we're here, and they feel very good about where we are.”
