Old churches in Pine Island, Elba resurrected as gathering spaces

Nov. 11—PINE ISLAND, Minn. — When summer camp students gathered at Miss Angie's new home, they painted the rock foundation lining the sidewalk with words like "joy," "peace" and "happy" and footprints in blues, greens and purples leading up to the door.

The feelings are ones founder Angie Severson hopes each child and adult experiences at Miss Angie's Place in Pine Island. People enter the nonprofit space through the pink doors of the former Good News Evangelical Free Church.

As some church structures in Southeast Minnesota are repurposed as new businesses, it's fitting for them to become community gathering places. The buildings' transitions are impacted by decades of declining church attendance, leaving some congregations closing or looking for a new home. In towns like Elba and St. Charles, a celebration space and a bridal shop share the beauty of the former Catholic Church buildings.

Miss Angie's Place has stations for play and learning, giving children and adults space to grow together. Severson guides young kids and encourages adults to play again. They talk about diversity, how to draw, having a growth mindset while learning new skills, mental and physical health and elements of nature. The community needs this, the families remarked.

The mission has stayed no matter what doors people are coming through: "I really just try to make sure that everyone feels welcome."

Severson said the new location, just up the street from her first location, "is a lot, lot bigger than our other one" with the former sanctuary space, basement and kitchen.

"This space feels like home, and people have said that ... it's very warm and it's very welcoming and it feels like my house," Severson said of the location they moved to in summer 2023. "I'm pretty lucky I get to come to work at my house every day."

In the

149-year-old church building,

the space lacks ADA-accessible elements, including an entrance without stairs and a bathroom on the main floor. While she received a $50,000 gift from a family foundation to purchase the building, Severson said they're fundraising to add accessible elements.

The neighboring church, Pine Island United Methodist, was built in 1900 when the church grew by 50 members. The church and Miss Angie's Place will work together on events and programs. Rev. Tony Fink said "what she's doing is consistent with how we want to make the community a better place too."

Good News Evangelical Church Rev. Eric Johnson said the church congregation enjoys their new space to worship, though they will "fondly" remember the "very nice, reverential building." The congregation moved about a quarter mile up the road to "make (it) easier" for the congregation without exterior steps on the building.

"Our church family that moved with us is significantly more enjoying and loving the space, and it's been a good thing for the people we have. With Miss Angie's Place, we're glad she bought that building, (and she's) able to use that," Johnson said. "We have a lot of older individuals in our congregation, the building is great but the steps can be a little bit difficult and so we're happy we can bless the older members of our congregation."

In sharing the news on social media, Severson remarked, "We bought a church!" Still, she visualizes an old cabin with art, nature, community and movement as the four pillars. The foundation is built on education and mentorship is the overhanging roof. Religion is not part of the programming.

Florence Boland, 3, ambled onto the former altar with a question: "What are you doing, Miss Angie?" She laid out pieces of paper to create a giant tree for gratitude leaves and showed her students how the pieces worked together. While creating their own joyful noise from laughter, families talking and children playing, family members said they come for the programs and to support Severson.

"Up until me purchasing this church they did use it for a church so this was their altar," Severson said while looking at the space set with cozy seats and her Coat of Many Colors wall. "Then this summer we had all of our summer camps and we did a musical ("Footloose") so the kids performed right up here."

Next to one of the last remaining stained glass windows, commemorating the Girls Guild, Severson hopes to add paper-cut dolls of female leaders such as Parton, Taylor Swift and Oprah Winfrey. The sanctuary's stained glass windows were shared with Grace Episcopal Church family members.

Severson

opened Miss Angie's Place in 2021

and hopes to faithfully grow the program offerings in the future. The church building will also be available for event rentals.

"This larger space has tripled the number of people that we can have in a program but now we need to get those people in the programs," Severson said.

Throughout Southeast Minnesota, churches have weathered congregational declines like others across the United States. A 2014 Pew Research Religious Landscape Study placed 34% of Minnesotans in religious services at least once a week, 36% once or twice a month/few times a year and 29% seldom/never. The "slow decline" in church attendance is a trend the United Methodist denomination, and most denominations, have witnessed for the past several decades, Fink said. He has been a pastor since 1986.

In South Troy, the

Wesleyan Church reopened in 2012 after a 12-year closure

with about 30 to 40 people attending the church services. In Zumbrota, the Congregational United Church of Christ will likely host its last services by the end of 2023. In Potsdam, the

Immanuel Lutheran Church marked 150 years

this summer.

As a Minnesota megachurch with nine church locations,

Eagle Brook Church is set to build a permanent location in Rochester

in 2024. The church of about 700 people gathers at the Mayo Civic Center, though the COVID-19 pandemic "put a damper on our momentum," Steve Whicker, senior pastor of the Rochester campus, said.

Good News Church Pastor Johnson said the pandemic and response led to churches temporarily closing their doors for online worship and people moving churches. A

2023 study by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research,

collected from January to May, notes attendance changes between 2020 to 2023 as 9% below pre-pandemic levels, 33% have increased and more than 50% have decreased attendance for in-person and virtual services.

"There's been a lot of transitionary kind of church I think movement when it comes to people who go from one church to another, and I think that's hurt church attendance overall, though," Johnson said. "It's another step away from the centrality of gathering as a local church in ... our culture broadly but even in our neck of the woods here in southeast Minnesota."

A 2022 Gallup survey noted 46% of Americans say religion is very important. Another survey question noted 53% as not members of a church or synagogue and 46% as members.

"We're seeing the switch ... of how do we increase engagement so even if they're not here Sunday morning, they're doing something to serve the community but also they're doing something to build their own soul up, too," Fink said of people also joining Bible studies and serving with ministries in the community.

Pine Island isn't the only city in the region to have a church repurposed into space for a business.

In Elba, Morgan Hammel is thankful to reopen the town's tallest building, the former St. Aloysius Catholic Church. It's a recognizable, "most beautiful, breathtaking sight," she said, near Whitewater State Park. And she's excited to renovate the church into a celebration space.

"It's heartbreaking to see a church close, especially when you have members that are like consistent members that attend a church, and I know a lot of people were really hurt by it," Hammel said. She and her family were parish members, the last Mass was in 2017. "I think a lot of people appreciated that they could use it still for these special celebrations, like weddings and funerals."

The stained glass windows and blessed statues were decommissioned in 2023. The bell and statute will be placed in the cemetery.

In the middle of demolition, the dismantled granite altar uncovers layers of brown paint, the pews scrunch together in the back of the sanctuary and sawdust coats the floor. A portion of the balcony floor ripped out from the organ leaves behind the previous choral praise and people's Mass books. Hammel hopes to flatten the balcony to one level as another space to bring people together.

"I'm so fortunate and I'm so excited to continue to bring this building back to life," Hammel said. She worked with Fr. Tim Biren on the purchase of the building, which will become Bluff View Chapel.

As one of the hallmarks of historic church structures, two stained glass windows remain in the "transformed" space. Hammel said the stained glass windows and chapel name "(leave) that little piece, I don't want to completely remove all the history."

With no services and no bell toll, the St. Aloysius building sat largely empty for years, except for occasional weddings and funerals.

"Me and my family always say, too, 'buildings need people,'" Hammel said. "If nobody's taking care of them, nobody's maintaining them, they'll start to fall apart."

Hammel plans to open the celebration space by May 1, 2024, and she already has two weddings booked.

The

West Concord Bell Tower Center,

the former West Concord United Methodist Church, also opened as an event center in spring 2023.

"I want people to walk in here and just be happy," Hammel said, "whether that be a celebration for a wedding, a celebration for a graduation, a celebration of life, anything that really brings people in these walls to celebrate."

With the structure's peaceful undertones, Hammel said "the parish members took such great care of this space."

The parish members combined with the St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, which opened a new location on U.S. Highway 14. While some customers still wonder if the former downtown location operates as a church, White Rose Bridal and Formal Wear owner Sandy Anderson loves caring for brides in the church atmosphere. She said simply "it's wonderful."

"It's a nice atmosphere. We left it looking like a church as much as we possibly could. It's really beautiful in there," Anderson described of the building she purchased around 2011.

She welcomes customers rather than church attendees with her business philosophy: "we treat our brides like our best friends." She sees the space as a no-rush, no-pressure environment where brides explore the rows of wedding dresses and practice their journey down the aisle.

While about 10 minutes from her family's dairy farm, the Elba church "symbolized home," Hammel said of returning to town from vacations as a kid. She hopes to share the warm feeling of the historic church with generations of gatherings filling the space.

"It always felt like the home church. When you walk into a church and you just feel welcome, like that's what it was here," Hammel said. "I love that people walk in here and they get that same impression, like immediately. I'm not like trying to sell the building they're just like, no I love it."