Late last month, two days before Christmas, the Rev. Katrina D. Foster, pastor of St. John's Lutheran Church in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was showing off the church's recent renovations. The neo-Gothic church was built in 1891 and retains its original blue vaulted ceiling. wooden chair. stained glass window. All of the Jardine & Son pipe organs appeared to be relatively new.
“On Dec. 7, we had a big rededication ceremony,” said Pastor Foster, 56, smiling as he walked around the church with quick, nimble steps. “It was the same day Notre Dame Cathedral was opened.”
Since Pastor Foster's ordination in 1994, she has become known for her work rebuilding churches whose physical buildings and congregations were on the brink of collapse. She does it by organizing the community and building financial support for the church among parishioners and neighbors.
“She is often put in charge of financially struggling congregations,” said the Rev. John Flack, pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Manhattan. “She was able to do some pretty amazing things to keep them alive and to not only continue, but even thrive.”
She has primarily supported the church she led as a pastor. But other congregations also hired her as a consultant. “I have been invited to meet with congregations to talk about financial management, evangelism, discipleship, and home building,” she said.
In November, Foster met with the Redeemer leadership team, where Flack said he stressed the importance of showing the congregation that even small contributions can have an impact.
“If you can't give that much, for example, if you can give $50 and someone else can give $5,000, the weight of that $50 is even greater than the weight of $5,000. Because… “Because it shows that people who are struggling are still invested,” 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 peeling paint everywhere.
“The interior of the building was a matter of evangelism,” she explained. “When people are walking around looking at paint falling and they don't want to bring their kids here because it's horrible and they don't want their kids to eat lead paint. How do we share the good news of Jesus?”
In fact, the congregation was dwindling. “We had 15 members,” Pastor Foster said. (The dilapidated conditions also robbed her of potential income, she said. Two television shows, for example, wanted to film in the church but backed out after lead was discovered.)
It took Pastor Foster nine years, but he was eventually able to renovate the bathrooms, replace the plumbing and electrical systems, and recently raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to restore the church's interior. . Funding was provided by our members (currently 80) and the wider community.
“There are people who live down the street and don’t go to church, but they come to us with a check every year because they know what we’re doing,” she said.
St. John's Lutheran Church is now a community hub, hosting scout meetings, community meals that feed nearly 500 people a week, and a 12-step program. (Rev. Foster, a recovering addict, has been in recovery for 34 years.) In 2017, the off-Broadway play “Baird” rehearsed and performed at the church.
“They wanted a place where they could fall down,” the pastor explained with a laugh. “It was like, 'Here you go.'”
lack of business skills
Richie Morton, owner of Church Financial Group, a firm that provides financial advice to churches and religious nonprofits, said keeping churches open today is no 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 a post-Christian society, fewer people go to church, fewer people even go to church.”
“More and more churches will be forced to make tough decisions,” he said. In fact, some researchers predict that tens of thousands of churches will close across the United States over the next decade.
It doesn't help that the leaders tasked with keeping churches open, the pastors, don't necessarily have business skills or passion, he added.
“A lot of pastors don't even try to learn the business side of things,” Morton said. “They didn't go into this profession for that. They have great dreams and missions to feed the hungry in their towns and write great sermons. But to do these things… , the money needs to come in. They have to find supporters in the community and find ways to support them.”
Pastor Foster said he was called to the job when he was 4 years old, serving as an acolyte at his family's church in North Florida and singing the pastor's part, but he believed he had the solution. There is. Make people feel spiritually connected to the church, or the resources will arrive.
“I always say it's really not about the money,” she said. “We have faith issues and it shows in our finances.”
Pastor Foster learned this lesson when he was 26 years old when he was assigned to Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx, then a small congregation mostly of Caribbean origin.
“Because I was young and a Southerner, the members were deeply suspicious of me, which was understandable,” she said. “The building collapsed, there were less than 20 people, and I thought, 'Okay, what do I do now?'”
Her conclusion was, “Follow in the footsteps of Jesus.” “Jesus organized people, resources, and power,” she explained.
She went door to door in her community, asking people what they needed and how she could help. When the school needed money to fix holes in its fence, she helped call a press conference and held up a clear bag containing used condoms and needles collected from the schoolyard. When her children were hit by speeding cars, she called the Bronx Commissioner of Transportation directly and begged him to install speed bumps.
Savita Ramdani, 51, a social worker and church member in the Bronx, recalled being shocked by the pastor's willingness to get his hands dirty.
“I don't know if I was impressed or if I thought, 'You're going to kill yourself,'” she said. “I said, 'Listen, this isn't where you're from. This is the Bronx. You can't chase people late at night or talk to drug dealers.'” But she would do something like that. ”
When members of the congregation expressed concern for her safety, the pastor “reminded us about the karate belt,” Ramdani said.
The more community members saw value in the church, the more they invested. Pastor Foster grew the church's membership from 20 to 120 people. Annual donations increased from $8,000 to $72,000, which helped invest in three new roofs, three new boilers, a home for girls who had been in foster care, and a tutoring program.
But her time at Fordham was not without controversy. In 2007, after she revealed that she had married a woman in a religious ceremony (gay marriage was not legal at the time) and that they were raising a child together, Pastor Foster He faced that possibility with the clergy. About Unlocked by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The country's largest Lutheran denomination allowed openly gay pastors to serve, but prohibited them from having same-sex relationships. (Eventually, Pastor Foster was allowed to stay at the church; she and her partner are now legally married; the church itself has since closed.)
In 2008, Foster was asked by then-Bishop Robert Limbaugh to move to the Hamptons on the eastern tip of Long Island, where he was in charge of two churches on the verge of closure: Hamptons Lutheran Parish and Lutheran Bridgehampton. and St. Michael's in Amagansett.
“The Incarnation had money, but no people,” Pastor Foster said. “St. Michael had some people, but no money.”
To build community support for the church, she started a television show interviewing local politicians (she pressed then-Congressman Lee Zeldin about voting on a House appropriations bill) and appeared on local radio. I advertised the church on the station. (In one commercial, she announced that when people come to church, they always ask questions like, “Are churches full of hypocrites?” “Yes, they are,” she replied.) And there's always room for one more hypocrite. In fact, I'll give you a score sheet so you can keep track of the sins of others.”
By the end of her term, she had gathered enough community support and resources to build a 40-unit low-income senior housing project and community center, an organization that helps people fleeing gangs and organizations. One Long Island immigration legal service expanded. Survivors of human and sex trafficking.
Not just Sunday
Brad Anderson remembers the atmosphere at St. John's when Pastor Foster arrived in 2015. “We were getting ready to sell the church and close it down, and people were really, really upset,” he said.
Anderson, 63, who is now the church's vice president, recalls the mood immediately changing when the new pastor arrived. “Her sermons were exciting and interesting, and because she preached from the church floor rather than the pulpit, people immediately noticed that she was different,” he said.
The church's doors were normally only open on Sundays for prayer, but Pastor Foster insisted that they remain open at all times. In addition to providing meeting space for community groups such as AA and Scouts, she also helps people with funeral costs, rent, food, utilities, electricity and other expenses, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. A discretionary fund has also been established for the purpose of She started financial literacy classes through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University to help believers learn how to budget, save, and build wealth.
Every time someone stepped into the building, whether it was to attend a play or an AA meeting, she told them about the church's renovation efforts. (The latest financial campaign debuted on GoFundMe in May 2024.)
The approach was refreshing, Anderson said. “I don't think anyone has ever asked the community for donations before,” he says. “It was very closed-minded, like, ‘This is our group and this is what we do,’ rather than, ‘Let’s expand our group.’”
At St. John's Church, Pastor Foster currently has an enlarged photo on the wall showing what the church looked like before it was renovated over the summer. She said this is to remind the congregation of how far they have come and the work they still want to do.
“Our goal is to ultimately raise $233,000,” she said. “God is always calling us to do something.”
