Update on The Collegiate Church & Call to Congregational Meeting
Beloved of West End Church,
As you know, the Collegiate Church of the City of New York is a very different church today than it was even one year ago. A year ago, we were five ministries, four of which were churches with both congregations and buildings. There were five senior ministers and a larger central staff all managing through pandemic as best anyone could and keeping all of us together. Much of that work remains the same, though our church today is very different.
Of all the change that has occurred, three specific events stand out. First, on December 5th, 2020, the sanctuary and campus of our sister Middle Collegiate Church was destroyed by a fire that began in an adjacent building. The insurance proceeds are nowhere close to what would be required to rebuild that building as it was. Second, the real estate project that the Ministers, Elders, and Deacons of Collegiate Church authorized many years ago near Marble Church collapsed. This has resulted in damage to our historic endowment of nearly 100 million dollars both already sustained and currently liable. This project also destroyed the administrative and programming building for Marble Church commonly known as the Bancroft Building that not only housed staff and programs, but also vital infrastructure most notably the boiler for the Marble sanctuary. Finally, last spring, the Ministers, Elders, and Deacons of the Collegiate Church voted to close Intersections International and dissolve the call of my colleague the Rev. Julie Johnson Staples. We are a church changed. And we are a church that will need to continue to change.
Last Saturday, the Executive Committee spent nearly five hours in retreat to hear everything that is currently on the table. West End’s delegation to this retreat included Elders Nathan Stilwell, Chair of our local consistory; Katherine Charapko, Chair of Collegiate’s HR Committee; Marilyn Flood, Chair of Collegiate’s Audit Committee; and me. I want you to know that your interests—historic, current, and future—could not have been better represented. Following that retreat, the remainder of our local consistory joined Nathan, Katherine, Marilyn and me on Monday night for a read out of that retreat and some frank conversation. On Tuesday night, the Executive Committee came together again for its stated meeting, during which we debriefed the retreat and set some work that needs to be done before the Full Consistory meets on Monday, December 6th.
Here at West End, we have a called Congregational Meeting for Sunday, December 5th immediately after worship both online and in the sanctuary; I encourage you all to be present. At that meeting, you will hear more of the back story, the finances, the challenges, and also the opportunities we have in this moment. The Consistory of the Collegiate Church includes 53 voting members—53 Elders, Deacons, and Ministers that are charged to lead the ministry of our singular church and respond to the most pressing needs of our people, city, and world. Of these 53 members, 11 come from West End Church, our ministry that has ministered to the Upper West Side since 1892 when the Ministers, Elders, and Deacons of the then Consistory built this campus as a combined church and school to serve our neighborhood. That same year, that same Consistory, also voted to build the building destroyed by fire less than a year ago on 2nd Avenue and 6th Street. At Collegiate, there is always a witness to our God who scripture tells is always doing a new thing. At Collegiate, there is always change.
Friends, many of you have already noted that change is in the air. It is. Last Saturday’s retreat, the meetings that have happened since and the ones that are being planned even now, are testament to this. Our church is about to change. We don’t yet know how or when, but the tragic events of this past year at Collegiate, of the ongoing pandemic, and our responsibility to steward this church so that it may exist for our children and their children are some of the why. At the retreat, Nathan, Marilyn, Katherine, and I heard the options currently on the table for how we may right this ship. We have now shared those ideas with the rest of our consistory—Madie Ivy Head, Cambridge Ridley Lynch, Carmita Padilia, Narvie Rundlet, Steve Cambor, Rich Bohart, Doug Hood, and Esau Reyes-Pesante. Wanting to be as transparent as possible, Nathan and I want to share with you in advance of our congregational meeting in two weeks the options currently being discussed. At this moment, in this new reality, and with an eye to sustainability and vibrancy for our future, Collegiate is considering significant reorganization, including the possibilities of: dissolving Collegiate, our centrally held assets and debt, and the remaining three building, and allowing each of the existing congregations to reform as their own entity; the possibility of merging two or more of the current congregations; the options for rebuilding a sanctuary for Middle Church on the existing site, of selling that site and building somewhere else, or of selling that site and partnering and moving in with one of the other Collegiate ministries; there is also the possibility of either redeveloping or selling additional Collegiate buildings meaning Marble Church, Ft. Washington Church, or our own West End Church.
I want you to hear and to hear from me that none of these are foregone conclusions and that all of these are on the table. We will discuss in more detail when we meet as the West End congregation in two weeks. I will continue to share, as I always do, as much information as I can in as timely a manner as I can. For now, I encourage you to plan to attend our meeting on December 5th. I ask for your prayers for our elders and deacons, and for our church. Humbly, I ask for your prayers for me. My colleague the Rev. Dr. Damaris Whittaker, currently the president of our Collegiate Church, writing to her own congregation at Ft. Washington offers the hope that we “may find God in the unexpected places.” Damaris writes that “we are being called to let go of our self-perceptions and embrace a new way of being.” To you, beloved West End, heaven alone knows where we are going, but friends we must go, and however we must change, we will do so together, and together with God.
With Impossible Hope,
The Rev. William Critzman
Senior Minister
