Economy Puts Brakes on Church Expansions

Parker Memorial Baptist Church began to outgrow its downtown Silver Spring house of worship in the mid-1990s, so the then 500-member congregation decided to purchase 12.5 acres to the east on which to build a new home. The church spent more than $2 million to buy land.

After numerous delays, which included selling the land initially purchased and buying other land, Parker Memorial still has no home. The church ran out of money.

And it's not alone.

Metropolitan Baptist Church in Northwest Washington began work on a facility in Largo in 2006. The church has been unable to obtain the loans it needs to complete the work.

An upturn in the economy during the first half of the decade allowed several churches to try to build new sanctuaries for their growing congregations. Then the recession hit.

Worshipers started to lose their jobs. Offerings started to decline. Demands on churches to provide services to parishioners began to increase.

And money started to dry up.

"This process has been devastating for us," said the Rev. Guy Williams, pastor of Parker Memorial. "It has been demoralizing."

The church has been leasing space from Southern Asian Seventh-day Adventist Church, costing $500 to $1,000 a week, Williams said. Southern Asian Seventh-day Adventist is in Silver Spring, not far from the site that Parker Memorial had once planned to call home.

Some of churches have had a decline in membership. Metropolitan, once one of the District's largest churches with about 4,000 members, held a recent "homecoming rally" at the Largo site. About 1,500 people showed up. At Wednesday night Bible study, about 50 members were present.

The pastors say they have used their struggles to get their churches built as a lesson in perseverance and faith for their flocks.

"We don't have our heads hanging down," said the Rev. H. Beecher Hicks, Metropolitan's pastor. The church is holding services in the auditorium of the Dorothy I. Height Community Charter School in Northwest, which Metropolitan has renovated.