St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was sold to a local developer and property manager, but the congregation has leased back space in the nave to continue holding services there. Photo: Audrey Scanlan, via Facebook

(Bishops’ News Service) On Sundays, worshipers gather in the nave of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Altoona, Pennsylvania, just as they always have, and there’s no reason to notice anything different – despite a major change that went into effect there three weeks ago.

The pews and altar are the same. The same organ accompanies the hymns. The service schedule still alternates between Eucharist and Morning Prayer, depending on whether substitute pastors are available. And the worshipers are largely the same, usually around 12 to 15 familiar faces, some of whom have been attending St. Luke’s for many years.

The difference is that the parish is now a tenant, rather than an owner, of its building in downtown Altoona, a city of about 44,000 in the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania. On July 26, the parish completed the sale of its property to Chris Cook, a local developer and property manager whose family businesses specialize in historic preservation. Cook, the new owner, agreed to lease the sanctuary to St. Luke as well as other spaces used for St. Luke’s food distribution, ensuring the church will remain open after years of budget cuts.

Improved financial health is another big change for the parish, which has been unable to afford a full-time priest for over a decade, Assistant Church Elder Woody Pyeatt told Episcopal News Service. The parish had drained its savings to cover the cost of maintaining the building, raising fears that the church would eventually have to close. The small but active congregation was not ready to give up.

“We just felt like God hadn’t separated from us,” Pyeatt said.

Cook’s firm was already familiar with the property, having previously been hired to do maintenance and renovations on the church. The cost of such improvements was becoming a growing burden for St. Luke’s, which still owed money to the diocese on a loan that funded upgrades to the building to make it more accessible to people with disabilities. The parish also paid more than $10,000 a year for heating and other utilities, Pyeatt said.

“It was clear that a new roof or replacing the heating system or something like that would be the end. … We would be out of money,” he said.

A little over a year ago, Cook proposed purchasing the property and leasing back the space so the congregation could continue to hold services there. Cook’s vision was to transform the campus’s various buildings into a community center of sorts and to rent the sanctuary to the public for weddings, banquets and other events — during times when St. Luke’s wasn’t using it for worship.

“From the beginning, this church has held a special place in my heart,” Cook said in a July 26 Facebook post announcing the completion of his purchase. “We used the theater space as a rehearsal space for numerous productions throughout high school,” he said, and although he is not a member of St. Luke’s, he recalled his family attending “several services” there and having “our fair share of pancake and sausage celebrations on Shrove Tuesday.”

St. Luke’s will remain a lay-led parish for now, under an agreement with Bishop Audrey Scanlan of central Pennsylvania, who has asked the parish to commit to celebrating Holy Eucharist at least twice a month. The parish organizes substitute pastors on those Sundays, and members lead morning prayer on the other Sundays.

The congregation also committed to considering ways to restore a permanent clergy position over the next two to three years, possibly by sharing a full-time or part-time priest with one or more other Episcopalian churches in the area.

The sale of the land and the new lease will buy the congregation some time, Greg Williams, another assistant church elder, told ENS. With $140,000 in proceeds from the land sale, St. Luke’s was able to pay off its loan to the diocese and use the rest to build up its savings. The congregation now pays $800 a month for the space it uses, which also covers utilities.

“It gives us more freedom, more time to see if we can find new opportunities and new approaches, and we’re exploring those pretty intensively,” Williams said. The lay leadership model has “flourished” in the meantime, he said, but “having a pastor would be a wonderful thing.”

St. Luke’s already partners with Holy Trinity Episcopal Church about 15 minutes south in Hollidaysburg as part of a diocesan initiative called Shaped by Faith. The two churches received a grant to collaborate on joint events and worship services. The partnership currently has no connection to clergy leadership, but Pyeatt and Williams said the experience could open doors for exploring other collaborative models.

The sale of the St. Luke’s property is also an opportunity to make better use of the church’s facilities. Under Cook’s new ownership, he has renamed the campus the St. Luke’s Cultural Center and made it the headquarters of a newly formed nonprofit, the Cooks Family Foundation. A Head Start program, one of the first new tenants on the property, is preparing to move into the classrooms for the fall semester. Other facilities available for rent include the fellowship hall, a gymnasium, a kitchen and the former rectory, the oldest brick house in Altoona, dating to the 1850s, shortly after the parish was founded. The sanctuary was built in the 1880s and the fellowship hall was completed in 1917.

“We are extremely grateful for the opportunity and are committed to preserving this beautiful complex while modernizing it and making it even more user-friendly and inviting, while maintaining the integrity of the historic building,” Cook said in his announcement.

The parish’s lease also underscores the importance of its food ministry. By retaining storage space for the food distribution, it can continue to serve about 100 families per month. The ministry is supported by dozens of volunteers, some of whom are not members and have no other connection to St. Luke’s other than their work in the food distribution.

“I would say it’s indispensable,” Pyeatt said, both as a member-focused activity and as an example of the outsized influence of this small congregation in its community.

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor at the Wisconsin-based Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at [email protected].