Baptist

Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, which had 8,000 members when it moved to its 19-acre campus in 1988, has listed the property for $28.5 million as membership falls to about 600.

Four Baptist churches in and around Washington sold land, shared space, ground-leased sites to developers and sold air rights for homes, showing the different ways a congregation can put its property to work.

First Baptist Church of Riverhead, New York, won $1 million in state funding for Northville Commons, 80 affordable rentals and eight condos on its 12 acres, but still needed a rezoning after a 2013 plan was rejected.

St Vincent’s Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves pledged government help to repair the country’s 60 to 75 Spiritual Baptist churches “one by one, two by two” at the first national Spiritual Baptist holiday service in Kingstown.

Shiloh Baptist Church in Tacoma, Washington, opened 60 affordable apartments across from its sanctuary, a nearly $34 million project backed by tax credits and public grants that fulfils its late pastor’s vision.

A planned $8 million sale of Covenant Baptist Church in DeKalb County, Georgia, fell through after a lender’s $2.5 million in bridge funding was used to pay off the church’s mortgage. A judge ruled the church owed the money; it appealed.

A Savannah Baptist church sold a vacant lot beside its historic building for $75,000 to a local group planning four affordable homes and the renovation of a shotgun house, keeping the church itself.

Belize City’s Queen Street Baptist Church, built in 1822 and linked to the first emancipation celebrations in 1838, was completely destroyed by an early-morning fire suspected to have started in the neighbouring school.

The Sunday Gleaner found traditional rural churches down to a handful of worshippers, with one Moravian building overrun by bats and too costly to fix, and a Baptist leader asking whether Jamaica’s 1,600 churches mean the island is over-churched.

Buff Bay Independent Baptist Church, founded by enslaved converts in 1824, marked 200 years in a 1909 stone sanctuary it has re-roofed and extended, after building six homes for needy families and a school, and now plans a new parsonage.

Toronto’s Danforth Baptist Church is being converted into an eight-storey building with 50 supportive homes for seniors, keeping its towers and facade, funded by federal and city programmes and a $4 million Sprott Foundation gift.

In Boston, a closed Baptist church in Allston, a Catholic church in Jamaica Plain and a South Boston convent are being converted into 140 affordable homes for older adults, as seniors face waits of more than five years for subsidised housing.

Miami’s historic St John Institutional Missionary Baptist Church nearly lost three buildings after its ex-pastor secretly took out mortgages of almost US$2.5 million, until a redevelopment agency paid US$3.9 million three days before a foreclosure auction.

Baptist and Methodist missionaries faced persecution and property losses after the 1831 rebellion, then took Jamaica’s case against slavery to London, where Knibb vowed to see it “destroyed root and branch” and emancipation followed in 1833.

East Queen Street Baptist Church, located in Kingston, Jamaica, represents a cornerstone of the island’s historical and spiritual landscape. Established…