Late last month, two days before Christmas, the Rev. Dr. Katrina D. Foster, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, was showing off her church’s recent renovations. The neo-Gothic church was built in 1891, and the original blue, vaulted ceiling; wooden pews; stained glass windows; And the Jardine & Sunpipe organ all sounded relatively new.
“We had a huge redemption service on Dec. 7. It was the same day as Notre Dame,” said Pastor Foster, 56.
Since 1994, when Pastor Foster was ordained, she has become known for her work in turning around churches whose physical buildings and congregations are on the brink of collapse. She does this by organizing the community and generating financial support for the church among churchgoers and the wider neighborhood.
“He is often entrusted with congregations that are struggling financially,” said the Rev. John Fleck, pastor of Our Savior’s Redeemer Lutheran Church in Manhattan. “She’s been able to do some pretty amazing things to not only keep them alive and keep them going, but to keep them thriving.”
He has helped most of the churches he has led as a pastor. But other parties have also recruited him as an adviser. “I have been invited to visit congregations to talk about fiscal responsibility, evangelism, discipleship and building houses,” he said.
In November, Pastor Foster met with Our Savior’s leadership team, where, Pastor Fleck said, he stressed the importance of showing congregations that even small contributions can make an impact.
“If you’re not able to give that much – say you can give 50 and someone else can give 5,000 – that $50 weighs more than the weight of 5,000 because it shows that people who are struggling are Still investing”. he said.
When Pastor Foster arrived in Greenpoint in 2015, the Gilded Age building was crumbling. There were holes in the walls, plaster falling from the ceiling and loose chips of paint everywhere.
“The interior of the building was an evangelistic issue,” he explained. “How do you tell the good news of Jesus when people are looking at paint falling off, and it looks horrible, and people don’t want to put their kids here because they don’t want them to eat lead paint?”
In fact, the congregation was dwindling. “We had 15 members,” Pastor Foster said. (He said the state of disrepair was also robbing him of potential income. For example, two television shows wanted to film in the church but backed out once the lead was discovered.)
It took Pastor Foster nine years, but he was finally able to raise the millions of dollars needed to renovate the bathrooms, replace the plumbing and electrical systems and, most recently, restore the interior of the church. Done. Funding came from members – there are now 80 – and from the wider community.
“There are people who live on the streets who don’t go to church who bring us checks every year because they see what we’re doing,” she said.
St. John’s Lutheran Church is now a hub for the neighborhood, hosting Boy Scouts meetings, a community meal that feeds about 500 people a week and 12-step programs. (Pastor Foster, a recovering addict, has been in recovery for 34 years.) In 2017, “Beardo,” an Off-Broadway play, rehearsed and performed at the church.
“They wanted a place with a falling look,” explained the priest with a laugh. “It was like, ‘Here you go’.”
Lack of business skills
Keeping churches open today is no easy task, said Richie Morton, owner of Church Financial Group, a company that advises churches and faith-based nonprofits on their finances.
He explained that there are fewer people going to church. “The demand is not there,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is the culture we live in. In a post-Christian society, very few people go to church, and even fewer people go to church.”
“There are going to be more and more churches that are going to have to make some tough decisions,” he said. Indeed, some The researchers Tens of thousands of churches across America are predicted to close over the next decade.
It doesn’t help, he added, that the leaders tasked with keeping churches open — pastors — don’t always have the business skills or passion.
“A lot of pastors don’t even want to learn the business side,” Mr. Morton said. “They didn’t get into this profession for that. They have this wonderful dream, this calling, to feed the hungry in the city and write great sermons. But they need money to do those things. They need money in the community. You have to find supporters and find ways to help.”
Pastor Foster, who said he was called to the job at age 4 when he served as an acolyte and sang pastoral parts at his family’s church in North Florida, believes his Pass has a solution: make people feel spiritually connected to the church or congregation, and the resources will flow.
“I always say we don’t have a money problem,” she said. “We have faith issues that show up in our finances.”
Pastor Foster learned this lesson at age 26 when she was stationed at Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx, a small and then mostly Caribbean-born congregation.
“I was young, I was Southern, and members were deeply suspicious of me, and rightfully so,” she said. “Buildings were collapsing, there were less than 20 people in them, and I was like, ‘OK, what do I do now?'”
His conclusion: Follow in the footsteps of Jesus. “Jesus organized people, resources and power,” he explained.
She went door to door in the community, asking people what they needed and how she could help. When a school needed budget to drill a hole in the fence, he helped call a news conference where he carried clean bags of used condoms and needles collected from the school yard. When children were being hit by speeding cars, she called the Bronx Department of Transportation commissioner directly and begged them to install speed bumps.
Swetha Ramdhani, 51, who works as a social worker in the Bronx and was a member of the church, recalled being shocked by the pastor’s willingness to get his hands dirty.
“I don’t know if I was inspired or I was like, ‘You’re going to kill yourself,'” she said. “I was like: ‘Listen, this isn’t where you’re from. This is the Bronx. You can’t be chasing people or talking to drug dealers late at night.’ But she will do it.”
When congregants raised concerns for his safety, the priest would “remind us about his belt in karate,” Ms. Ramadhani said.
The more community members saw value in the church, the more they invested in it. Pastor Foster increased the church membership from 20 to 120. Annual giving grew from $8,000 to $72,000, helping them invest in three new roofs, three new boilers, a home for girls in foster care and a tutoring program.
However, his time at Fordham was not without its controversy. In 2007, when he revealed that he had married a woman in a religious ceremony (same-sex marriage was not legal at the time); And that the two were raising a child together, Pastor Foster, along with other gay and lesbian priests, The prospect of defrocking was faced by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The country’s largest Lutheran denomination, it then allowed openly gay priests to serve but forbade them to be in same-sex relationships. (Eventually, Pastor Foster was allowed to stay in the church; he and his partner are now legally married. The church itself has since closed.)
In 2008, Pastor Foster was asked by then-Bishop Robert Rambo to move to Hampton, on the east end of Long Island, where he took charge of two churches on the brink of closure: Hampton Lutheran; Parish of the Incarnation Lutheran Bridgehampton and St. Michael in Amaginsett.
“The Incarnation had some money but no people,” Pastor Foster said. St. Michael’s had some people but no money.
To build community support for the churches, he started a television show in which he interviewed local politicians (he interviewed Lee Zilden, then a representative, on his votes for House appropriations bills. pressed) and advertised for the church on a local radio station. (In one commercial, he declared that when people come to church, the questions they always have are, “Is the church full of hypocrites?” “Yes, it is,” he replied. “And there’s always room for one more. We’ll give you a score sheet so you can keep track of the sins of others.”)
By the end of his tenure he had gathered enough community support and resources to build a 40-unit, low-income senior housing project and community center, and expanded Immigration Legal Services of Long Island, an organization that Helped people fleeing gangs. who survived human and sex trafficking.
Not just on Sundays.
Brad Anderson remembers the mood at St. John’s when Pastor Foster arrived in 2015. “We were getting ready to sell our church and close it, and people were really, really upset,” he said.
Mr. Anderson, 63, who now serves as the church’s vice president, recalled the change in mood as his new pastor arrived. “Her sermons were electrifying and exciting, and she delivered them not from the pulpit but from the church floor, and people noticed she was different almost immediately.”
While the doors of the church were usually only open for prayer on Sundays, Pastor Foster insisted that they would be open at all times. In addition to providing a meeting place for community groups like AA and the Scouts, it also has a fund to help people with funeral expenses, rent, food, heat, electricity bills and other expenses, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. A discretionary fund was also created. He even started a financial literacy class through Dave Ramsey. Financial Peace Universitywhich helped congregations learn how to budget, save, and build wealth.
Every time someone stepped foot in the building—whether it was to a play or to attend an AA meeting—he told that person about the church’s renovation efforts. (Latest fundraising campaign launched. GoFundMe in May 2024).
Mr Anderson said the approach was refreshing. “I don’t think anyone has ever asked people in the community to give,” he said. “It was very unusual like, ‘This is our group, and this is what we do’, ‘Let’s try and expand our group.’
At St. John’s, Pastor Foster now displays blown-up photos of what the church looked like before it was renovated over the summer. He said it was to remind the congregation of how far it has come and the work it still wants to do.
“Our goal is to ultimately raise $233,000,” she said. “God is always calling us to do something.”