By Alex Soloducha

St. Paul’s church has new hope

Mar 18, 2014 | 5:00 PM

The future of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church is now a little clearer.

The church’s congregation gathered on Monday night to discuss what would be done with their church.

In the end, they decided to put the building up for sale.

The church is a 100-year-old building and the roof has major structural issues. Because of this, last year it was deemed unsafe for the congregation to worship in. They have instead been attending church services at Wesley United Church.

“The buildings in the situation where we cannot keep it as is, we have to do something with it,” said session clerk Norman Hill.

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When it came time to take action, they put it to a vote. There were four possible courses of action. A temporary repair to support the roof would cost $300,000. A permanent repair would include a new support structure in the attic as well as strengthening the outside walls which would cost at least $1.5 million.

Their absolute last resort, according to Hill, would’ve been to completely demolish the building, at a cost of $500,000.

In the end, they voted that the best option would be to put the building up for sale. The church will be on the market until April 30.

“After much discussion with the members, they decided that we’d put the building up for sale and look for a buyer that would look at it and we’d be able to rent it from them so we could continue worshipping there,” said Hill.

Through all of the recent hardships, there have been around 40 to 50 members of the St. Paul’s congregations attending service at Wesley United every week. Hill said he hopes that they can keep up their numbers if they are able to reunite in their own church again. He said that over 60 members came to the meeting to vote.

Hill said they already have their ideal buyer in mind.

“Someone who would want to use the building for a purpose that would not alter it enough that would make it available to us so that we could still worship there and hold our programs that we have as well, like Sunday school and that sort of thing,” said Hill.

The congregation also decided that if they church gets sold and they’re able to rent back the space, they’ll want to hire an interim minister on a two-year contract. As of now, they don’t have a minister to lead worship.

Hill is optimistic.

“We would want to have an interim minister who would work with us over a period of a couple years to try and help us rebuild our membership.”

news@panow.com

On Twitter: @alex_soloducha