There is a great deal of history in the Christ's Church in Saxton’s River.
The pipe organ is circa 1893. The original building goes back another 50 years.
“This is a great big church,” says church council chair Jane Cook as she stands between the long rows of pews that march toward the front of the gleaming white nave.
It’s easy to imagine the pews filled and 200 voices rising with the organ. But that’s not the case anymore.
“The people who worship here on a Sunday are about a dozen. The membership is about 45,” says Cook, who is also the church secretary and organist.
Cook says her tiny congregation is at a crossroads. As an aging group with dwindling numbers, they realize they can’t continue to maintain the building at a cost of $40,000 to $50,000 annually, even with the help of an endowment that pays about half that cost.
Church members are considering several options, including selling the building to whoever would buy it or giving it to a low income advocacy group to convert into housing.
Either way, it would mean the end of the church - not just as a place of worship, but for its mission, which includes housing a day care center downstairs and serving free meals to those in need.
There is another idea, though, which at this point Cook says “is more of a dream.”
It would involve local residents forming a non-profit to take over the building, continue and expand the programs and still provide space for the congregation to meet and worship.
The church membership has some difficult decisions to make about which direction to take, but it’s getting help and advice from the Reverend Jim Thomas from the church’s home office, the Vermont Conference of United Church of Christ in Randolph.
“What generally happens is we work with a church that is willing to be honest about its future - there are some that are not - to make sure that they end well,” says Thomas.
Once a congregation drops to a small number, Thomas says maintaining the building takes an increasing amount of the members' time and energy.
“They tend to become building preservation societies rather than places of worship,” he says.
The Vermont Conference is the largest Protestant denomination in Vermont and has more churches than any other denomination.
The number of UCC churches in Vermont peaked at 217 one hundred years ago. There are now 139.
What is now the UCC was originally formed in Vermont in 1795 and Thomas says there have always been ebbs and flows in church membership, but a long steady decline in membership that started in the 1950s continues unabated today.
Shrinking congregations are not unique to the United Church of Christ.
For many years, Ann Cousins of the Preservation Trust of Vermont has worked with churches of many denominations to help them plan for the future. Cousins often works in conjunction with a national group, Partners for Sacred Places.
“In Vermont I think it’s a big problem that are being supported by a declining number of members,” she says.
"When you start thinking about how these buildings are used within the community, you can appreciate what they contribute back to the community, and what is the financial value of that." - Ann Cousins, Preservation Trust of Vermont
Cousins says churches are finding creative ways to solve that problem and there are examples of success from Putney to Island Pond.
The good news is that most historical churches remain in use.
In some cases, the solution involves disbanding the congregation and giving the church to another group like the local historical society.
But Church members have also found success keeping their buildings and appealing for financial help.
That appeal is based on the recognition that the church is often central to community life.
Day care centers, food shelves, community dinners, AA meetings are all community needs that have often found homes in local churches.
“When you start thinking about how these buildings are used within the community, you can appreciate what they contribute back to the community, and what is the financial value of that,” Cousins says.
Churches are also broadening their missions to include providing space for visual and performance arts.
Cousins says the solutions are often unique to the community where a church is located and that even though some cease being churches, nearly all of Vermont’s historic churches remain in use.
They may no longer be places of worship, but they remain true to their mission of serving their communities.
