"I just love your church!"

I have heard that a lot over the past several months. I thought, how nice to be appreciated in the place where we live, but, I soon realized that what was meant by the statement, "I just love your church!," is really "I love the building at 1120 Washington St."

What about the people in the building?

"Well, we can do without them," with their cars and parking, those noisy children and the clutter of families and singles, that bell and the singing. Funerals and weddings, where does it end? Noise and busyness, it's all too much."

Is it a sin to exist as a religious community, worshiping and serving in the town where most of us live and work? For years, our church building has been too small to accommodate our congregation's needs. Yes, there is room for the worship service, but not enough to provide accessible restrooms, or room enough to sit at tables to eat a meal together comfortably, or to accommodate our youth groups or to allow everyone, old and young, to have access to all our activity spaces.

When the Benedetto family decided to put the property next door to our church up for sale, their desire was that our church should buy and use the property for our religious activity. We took this as an act of God, because rarely in New England does property adjacent to a church become available for the church's use. At the time we thought, what a blessing to be able to address not only our space needs but also some of our parking issues. Like most churches on the Cape, we park on the street, a vexation to some in Lanesville.

The old Benedetto homestead proved to be a help at first, housing our Sunday schools and Bible studies, prayer meetings and fellowship. For a time we were able to provide some housing for our missionaries and interns from the seminary. On two occasions we were blessed by being able to provide for folks who had become homeless, yes, even in Lanesville.

But the old house proved to have been left without maintenance for too long. It was far from solid, as some have said. Its rooms too small; its stair too steep and egress insufficient. We thought about renovation, but that would have cost a fortune just to fix all the rot, mold, lead paint and wear and tear, let alone bring it up to code.

In the end, we would still be left with a structure that, at best, fell short of supplying us remedies to our facility needs. We were saddened by the difficulties presented by our old house; after all it did its best to help us out. We had hoped to move it, but no one was interested in receiving the old place. We offered to pay for half the move but still no takers. We waited six months, but nothing, no offers, no interest, no nothing. In the end we saved bits and pieces of the old house to become part of the new structure as testimony to the Benedettos' kindness.

The building we have purposed has a steel frame, a custom one, and like the timbers of the Victorian age when our meetinghouse was built, the most suitable material for a purpose-built structure. We have tried to design it with the input of our neighbors, who didn't like the first design - or the second. So, we made it smaller and incorporated some architectural elements of the church building and the Benedetto house. Our neighbors did have meaningful input, and we value their suggestions.

We will roof it with shingles like the ones on everyone else's houses, and side it with clapboards, like everyone else's, it has double-hung widows like everyone else's; we have tried to make it fit. The historical architect we consulted, at the behest of the Gloucester Historical Commission, said our plans were fine and he couldn't understand why some neighbors were so upset. He suggested some changes that, once again, we adopted. It is far from "an enormous economy steel building disguised by some sort of clapboards" as some depict it.

The building is large, like many of the churches on or near Washington Street, it is roomy like the Grange used to be and like the Annisquam Village Hall complex is. But it is much, much smaller than O'Maley, Beeman and Plum Cove schools. It is similar in size to the fire station in Bay View or the old Annisquam Auto Body garage.

In Lanesville, Washington Street is the thoroughfare where public buildings find their place. The old Plum Cove School stood there, and there used to be four churches - now down to two - with shops, a post office, bowling ally, restaurant, pub, grocery store, barbershop, dairy farm and, long ago, industrial quarrying. I submit the problem is not a new ecclesiastical building on Washington Street but the continued gentrification of a real working and living community.

I have heard many things said about our project, much of it exaggerated and some just plain fabricated. The simple truth is that our church, a 178-year-old living community of believers, is trying to improve our facility to be more accessible, better suited to ministry in the 21st century and, as the congregation did in 1865, built in order to make a better place in which to worship and serve. Choose if you will, to believe the gossip and the rhetoric or come, see and talk to us. Bill Plante's writing on Joe Garland's great speech for Mayor Kirk's inauguration said, "Understanding the difference between supporting change that nourishes and destructive opportunism requires more than knee-jerk rejection out of fear for any change."

There are many in Lanesville who support our plan and think it's a good idea. We thank them very much for their support and encouragement. In an age when many churches are closing and becoming condos or parking lots, this church is still alive. We live and work here too, and we enjoy supporting life in the community.



The Rev. Floyd B. Grace is the pastor/teacher of the Orthodox Congregational Church of Lanesville and a resident of Gloucester. Midweek Musings is a column that rotates among Cape Ann clergy.