Late last month, two days before Christmas, the Rev. Dr. Katrina D. Foster, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, was showing off the church’s recent renovations. The neo-Gothic church was built in 1891, and the original blue, vaulted ceiling; wooden pews; stained-glass windows; and Jardine & Son pipe organ all looked relatively new.
On Dec. 7, the church had a huge rededication service, which coincided with the day Notre-Dame had theirs. Since 1994, when Pastor Foster was ordained, she has gained a reputation for turning around churches whose physical buildings and congregations are on the verge of collapse. She does it by community organizing and building financial support for the church among churchgoers and the wider neighborhood.
She has mostly helped churches that she has led as a pastor. But other congregations have also recruited her as a consultant. “I have been invited to meet with congregations to talk about financial stewardship, evangelism, discipleship, and building housing,” she said.
In November, Pastor Foster met with the leadership team of Our Savior’s, where she stressed the importance of showing the congregants that even small contributions could make an impact. “If you are not able to give that much — say you can give $50 and someone else can give $5,000 — the weight of that $50 is even greater than the weight of the $5,000 because it shows that people who are struggling are still investing,” he said.
When Pastor Foster arrived in Greenpoint in 2015, the Gilded Age building was crumbling. There were holes in the walls, plaster falling from the ceiling, and loose paint chips everywhere. “The interior of the building was an evangelism issue,” she explained. “How do you share the good news of Jesus when people are looking around at falling paint, and it looks terrible, and people don’t want their kids here because they don’t want them eating lead paint?”
Indeed, the congregation was dwindling. “We had 15 members,” she said. (The state of disrepair was also stripping them of potential revenue, she said. For example, two TV shows wanted to film in the church but backed away once lead was discovered.)
It took Pastor Foster nine years, but she eventually was able to renovate the bathrooms, replace the plumbing and electrical systems, and, most recently, raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to restore the church’s interior. The funds came from members — there are now 80 — and from the wider community.
Rodney Morton, the owner of the Church Financial Group, a company that advises churches and religious nonprofit organizations on their finances, said keeping churches open today is not an easy task. “Fewer people are going to church,” he explained. “The demand is not there,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is the culture we live in. In the post-Christian society, fewer people are going to church, and even churchgoers are going less often.”
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