Sunday, December 13, 2009

Church for sale

I passed by 87th a couple of weeks ago, but finally was able to take some photos.

The New Calvary Missionary Baptist Church is for sale. It is located on 120 E. 87th Street.

There are approximately 35 parking spaces (including 2 handicap designated), plus some yard space in the back.

It looks like a church van might be included in the deal. The letters for the sign are strewn around it, so you might need to update that.


My personal opinion on churches in our community: i think we have too many of them. Within a 1 mile radius of 79th & King Drive, Mapquest says there are 80 churches. Now, other parts of our community are actually devoid of church buildings such as a 1 mile by 1/2 mile section , bounded by St. Laurence to Indiana, 95th to 87th.

Now, i am not to the point of calling for a ban on churches, as others are calling for with dollar stores.

But rather, i would challenge the pastors of these churches to really pray about whether they. Is the reason why they are a pastor truly because they are called to the ministry (which is possible), or is it because they are too prideful to be held accountable by someone?


And as for this church building -- it seems like a great spot to have a youth community center (which could be run by a church, but should be a church in the community). The parking lot can be used for basketball when needed, or utilize all the spaces for special events.

Anyone have any background on this church?


3 comments:

  1. I always thought that in a previous life it was once a gas station or an auto repair shop. It was an unusual spot for a church.

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  2. This is an interesting property. As I understand it was a gas station at one point which leaves the questions are the tanks still there or not. I'm inclined to believe that they are still there and this is one reason they are selling.

    This church and the residents of the 86th Indiana block have not seen eye to eye for quite a while. The controversy centers around the church attempting to have the block named after their founder without consulting the residents. Several meetings took place with both sides making ugly statements about each other. Because no compromise could be reached the Alderman rejected the application.

    Before anything is built or considered to be built they need to talk to the residents and get their approval or we just may see east 87th become like west 95th(Ashland to Western) where you cannot have a church.

    Lastly, the number of churches is a number I don't dispute but I believe most are in name only and are not free standing buildings and are former store front churches that are long gone because of the city ordinance on storefront churches. But I do believe that some discussions need to take place between residents and churches because most churches in our community are not "community churches" anymore and merely property owners who could care less about what is going on in our community because they believe the church is above the community and littering, double parking, reckless driving by their members is permissable,so as long as it doesn't affect their church.

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  3. New Calvary MemberJuly 9, 2010 at 2:47 PM

    I grew up in this church. My mother is still an evangelist in the church. I got married here in 2003 by Paster Ware and this is a family Church. Generations and Generations of families have come up in this church. We've been together so long were all sort of related by marriage in some way. My cousin Rev. J.C. Smith used to paster this church but he died a while back. It is for sale and I wish the church a lot of love and luck. It will be missed. I've spent many hours as a child playing in this parking lot.

    ReplyDelete

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