Churches seek salvation

BACK STORY: Religious groups do what they can to keep the faith downtown

By Peter Korn

The Portland Tribune, Nov 14, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

DENISE FARWELL / PORTLAND TRIBUNE

The empty seats for a service Sunday at St. James Lutheran Church point to the significantly lower number of parishioners attending downtown churches compared to three or four decades ago. Religious leaders attribute the decline to worshippers’ flight to the suburbs and an age-old central-city concern: parking.

On a rainy Sunday morning in November the competition for parking spaces in downtown Portland is just beginning.

Along the South Park Blocks and at the western edge of downtown, where most of the large historic churches stand, metered spaces fill first and the few church parking lots soon thereafter. The hunt for Sunday parking spots is a long-standing downtown church tradition.

In the 1200 block of Southwest Alder Street, an area of downtown with more than its share of the homeless, Dudley Weaver, pastor at the First Presbyterian Church, looks up at the congregation filing into his sanctuary and knows about 400 people will come for services.

The gathering is far smaller than the 800 or so who routinely attended services a few decades ago at the historic church.

Just a few blocks away at First Baptist Church, 909 S.W. 11th Ave., about 350 congregants are in attendance. In the 1940s and 1950s more than 1,000 people would be present most Sundays, according to recently retired Senior Pastor Keith Madsen.

But Madsen knows there are two ways to view the attendance figures. Those 350 congregants at First Baptist are divided among four services — two in English, one in Cambodian and one in Spanish.

The Cambodians were introduced to the church through an effort to resettle refugees. Now they are full-fledged church members.

Without the two non-English services, Madsen says, Sunday attendance would be much less, more like the 150 or so at Sunday services at other downtown churches, including First Congregational Church on the South Park Blocks.

“I’ve been told in the ’50s you had to come early to get a seat,” says Pat Ross, senior minister at First Congregational.

The change in downtown Portland has come fast, and some of the city’s oldest institutions — its downtown churches — are struggling to stay true to their missions.

Low- and middle-income housing is being supplanted by new residential towers, most containing expensive condominiums. Parking lots have disappeared as MAX and the streetcar were installed. Businesses have relocated to the suburbs; social services agencies have come and gone.

The downtown churches, buffeted on one side by suburban megachurches that measure Sunday attendance in the thousands, and on the other by small nondenominational emerging churches, have had to rethink their places in a vibrant downtown that sometimes appears to have left them behind.

The churches’ leaders believe strongly that they make a substantial difference in the life of the city by staying downtown, and they believe, almost as strongly, that the city too often fails to acknowledge their contribution, or listen to their voices on issues affecting downtown.

“Many times I hear from pastors there’s a feeling of disenfranchisement,” says David Leslie, executive director of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, an association of churches that works on social and political issues. “As city business leaders and politicians do their vision, churches feel like they’re not invited to those meetings.”

The list of social services provided by downtown churches is long — from free meals at First Baptist to low-cost housing subsidized by First Presbyterian. St. James Lutheran Church gives nearly $100,000 a year to various social ministries and runs a twice-weekly foot care clinic. First Unitarian helps support Outside In, a social agency that serves homeless youths.

When a mentally ill Portland man died in police custody Sept. 17, shortly after being arrested in the Pearl District, First Congregational held a victim’s memorial service attended by more than 500 people.

Some churches pick up slack

Madsen says he wonders if anybody in city government notices all the good works.

“Sometimes the churches that are doing a lot for the homeless feel like they’re not always appreciated by the city, even though they’re doing services, that, if we weren’t doing them, the city would have to,” he says. “If there weren’t a shelter at First Methodist, if there wasn’t a feeding program at First Baptist, that would put a lot of pressure on the city.”

Just being a downtown church brings with it an assumed level of social service, according to Ross of First Congregational.

“Several times a week homeless people knock on our door and come inside,” she says. “They might use the bathroom or get a cup of coffee in the kitchen and sometimes they just want to sit for a while and be quiet and pray.” If they’re hungry, Ross says, the church staff dispenses coupons for free food at the Sisters of the Road Cafe.

Nearly all the downtown churches support public lectures, art displays and musical concerts. “We’re providing a service but also bringing about 400 people a week into downtown. And when they’re here they eat at restaurants and they’re shopping,” says Rex Loy, senior minister at First Christian Church, 1315 S.W. Broadway.

Leslie says downtown churches face an uphill battle in trying to hold on to congregants who increasingly live farther away from the central city.

“There’s a saying that for every member that joins a downtown congregation, to get there on Sunday morning they have to pass five to 10 of their own denominational congregations,” Leslie says.

Move to suburbs considered

Each one of the downtown churches at some point in its past faced the decision, Leslie says, of whether to leave downtown for the potentially greener pastures of the suburbs.

Suzan Farley, pastor at St. James, said that decision was not easily made at her church. “There was a time when the church was looking to move, to sell the property and go into the suburbs,” she says. “It split the congregation.”

The congregation voted to stay. It also voted, in 1990, to demolish a parking lot and replace it with low-income subsidized housing, Farley says.

Madsen says the common element for downtown churches is they must be involved in the neighborhood if they are to survive.

“They have to be involved in helping in a unique way,” he says. “If they’re just trying to do Sunday school and worship and do what the suburban churches do, then there’s no reason for (people) to come downtown, to go past churches that oftentimes have more people.”

But downtown ministers say the city has, in some cases, made it harder for them to attract and hold on to congregants. Parking is often the first issue they bring up, aware that city policies emphasize public transit, not driving downtown.

“If people can’t find parking downtown at churches they attend, pretty soon they’re not going to attend,” Madsen says.

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