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Priceless Memories

Tribune photo by Kelvin Ma

Members of First Christian Church decided to sell their historic sanctuary and start anew elsewhere.

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By MICHELLE BEARDEN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 19, 2008

TAMPA - Oh, he's got stories. Lots of them. That's what happens when you grow up and grow old in just one church.

There's the time a calf was born on Christmas morning - in the middle of First Christian's living Nativity. Another year, a couple of cows escaped the manger scene and went running down Bayshore Boulevard.

"Now that was something to see," Bob Larmon, 80, says with a chuckle.

But Larmon never saw this coming.

His beloved church, once a thriving cornerstone of a bustling new city, has withered. Gone are the days of an overflowing sanctuary, when as many as 2,000 worshippers crowded into a Sunday service, their praise lit by the sun beaming through massive Tiffany stained-glass windows. These days, it's a good turnout when 120 or so gather in the venerable English Gothic red-brick building on Hyde Park Avenue, just steps from Bayshore.

He has volunteered for jobs at the church his whole life. Now Larmon, retired from the steel fabrication business, has the most difficult one of all: As chairman of the First Christian property sale committee, he must guide his spiritual home through the process of closing down a lifetime of memories.

"Times change, congregations change," Larmon says. "Really, what's important here is knowing that the church is the people, not the buildings."

It's a matter of survival.

That's how the Rev. Betsy Goehrig, First Christian Church's pastor of three years, sees it.

"We're cash-poor and property rich," she says.

In November, this Disciples of Christ congregation made the near-unanimous decision to sell its prime property, which consists of two buildings totaling 3,600 square feet of space and 1.7 acres of land. The members also decided to make a new start, with a reborn mission and a new location, site to be determined.

They have deep historical ties to downtown Tampa. First Christian was founded in 1900 by 14 charter members, 11 of them women. In the first 27 years, the church moved several times. It came to a rest here, in a $250,000 sanctuary dedicated in January 1927. It housed a glorious state-of-the-art Midmer-Losh organ valued at $10,000 and was touted as the "largest and most modernly equipped Christian Church in the South."

Now in its golden years, the aging beauty costs more to maintain than members can pay.

"We've been told we could spend $1 million and still have an outdated building," says Virginia Mikell, 84, who heads the stewardship committee. With the church bringing in only $8,000 to $10,000 a month, it's a struggle just to pay salaries and operating costs.

Mikell doesn't like the idea of moving, not one bit. But she's pragmatic about it. "We need to be focusing on community outreach, not housekeeping. What good are you if you're just spending money on yourself?"

They've got some challenges. Because the church is located in the Hyde Park Historic District, the buyers can't come in and tear down the buildings. They can gut the interiors, but the exteriors must remain intact.

First Christian could have voted to completely shut down. That has happened to four Disciples of Christ churches in the past eight years in Florida alone. Like many mainline Protestant denominations, Disciples of Christ suffers from dwindling numbers. Churches based in downtown areas also suffered with the exodus to the suburbs.

"If you've got an old building and not enough members to sustain it, you've got some serious choices to make," says the Rev. William Morrison, Disciples of Christ's regional minister. "In church strategy, we like to say there's a 40-year life cycle for a congregation. You've got to find new ways of doing things if you're going to survive."

This month, First Christian began that process.

Every Wednesday at the potluck dinner, the few dozen members who show up talk about the future. They call it their "visioning" process. Congregants are being asked to visit other churches in search of ideas and to give input on every aspect of the rebirth, from where they want to move, to what kinds of outreach they want to focus on and what duties they're willing to undertake.

"There's a fine line between fear and excitement," Goehrig concedes. But there's an upside to the massive upheaval, one that has caught her by surprise. She's seeing a renewed energy and passion among her congregants, even the older ones.

"It's been something of a vitamin injection for us, a spiritual vitamin," she says.

And, of all things, a dozen new members have joined in the past few months.

Maria Freeman, 37, is one of them. She came as a guest a few years ago and never left.

"I knew partway through the first service that I would be staying," says the Seffner woman, who wasn't raised in the denomination. "The building is beautiful and all, but what I like best are the people and the straightforward teaching you get here. They don't tell you how to act; they tell you to read the Bible and learn from it."

Every milestone in Bob Larmon's life is connected to First Christian Church.

He was born one month after the new sanctuary was dedicated, making him one of the first babies on the cradle roll. He was baptized here. So were his three children. He was married twice here - with a funeral in between for his first wife.

Fellow members celebrated with him and comforted him, shared his most joyous moments and his most difficult trials. A friend once suggested to Larmon that he set up a cot in the sanctuary since he spent so much time at the church.

How do you put a price tag on that?

"You don't," he says simply. "I couldn't begin to tell you what this place is worth. To me, it's priceless. This is my second home."

His committee isn't setting a selling price. Members have chosen to sell through a bid process. Potential buyers are working with appraisers now to get a ballpark price of the property's worth. It's not the highest price that will necessarily win the bid. It's the buyer who comes to the table with a purpose that gives the congregants peace of mind.

Commercial real estate broker Robin Bishop of Bishop & Associates knows the area well. She hesitates to put a price tag on the property because "the value of the land is all driven by what you can do with it." Limited options affect value.

Still, the Hyde Park-Bayshore area is one of Tampa Bay's hottest leasing markets, even with the waning economy and glut of available office space.

"It's still an excellent location," Bishop says. "Rental rates in that area are some of the highest around. If it's converted into office space, that's a very attractive place to work."

But, as Larmon says, a church is its people, not a building. And nothing illustrates that better than how members have rallied round Harold Aubel.

A schoolteacher, Aubel was one of First Christian's most active volunteers. He sang in the choir, taught Sunday school, chaired an elder group and cleaned up after the Wednesday potluck dinners.

Last Memorial Day weekend, a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. Now he lives in a Wauchula rehabilitation center. But he remains a part of the church family. Members send him cards, visit regularly and so far have raised thousands of dollars to help him with expenses. For the day when he is able to leave the facility, they pitched in and bought a $2,300 modified van, so he could be driven places.

Last Sunday, through a videotaped message aired at the service, Aubel expressed his thanks.

"I have come to see Christ in every single one of you," he said. "You don't know how much it means to someone who can only move his head, how much it means to have that connection with home and through Christ. You do it to me every day."

One day, members will have to face the inevitable: Their sanctuary will serve another purpose.

They have no idea where they're going, only that they want to stay in Hillsborough County. They know they will continue their community outreach programs, both local and abroad. They've accomplished so much: feeding the homeless, sending members to Haiti on mission trips, providing disaster response teams to hurricane-ravaged areas, collecting shoeboxes of toiletries and school supplies for Operation Christmas Child.

Mary Napoli, 87, came to First Christian in 1964 when her late husband joined the choir as a tenor. She makes the 20-mile round trip from Carrollwood at least twice a week, passing several churches on the way downtown.

She once belonged to a group of young married couples, numbering as many as 150. She has grown older with them, though many have died or moved on. Now the 30 or so who remain call themselves The Golden Band. They get together the fourth Friday of every month for a noon meal.

Time moves on. They redefined their mission and activities. And now, so will the church that binds them together.

She was sad at first about selling. But now, she's used to the idea. "We're going to be just fine," Napoli says.

The weight of the future lies on the shoulders of the younger members, like Bob Park, 37.

Some of the older members still regale him with stories of his late grandfather, who played the organ here. He likes the coziness and the connection that comes with belonging to a smaller church.

"I know I could go somewhere else, where it's bigger and flashier," says Park, a volunteer youth leader. "But I don't want to get lost in the crowd. I'm not one to just come to church, turn around and go home. I'm here, and I'm part of it."

First Christian blends the old and the new at its Sunday service. Park likes the massive sound of the pipe organ and the melodious clanging of the English hand bells. He enjoys hearing the teenagers singing contemporary Christian songs to the guitar, drums and piano. He thinks he gets the best of both worlds.

It really doesn't matter where the church relocates, he says. He will drive any distance to get there, to be part of its new mission, whatever that is. He says there's an anticipation among his peers and the youth of the church. They have a wealth of history and experience to draw upon for a future that holds so much promise.

"We already know what we've been," he says. "Now there's the excitement of what we could become."

Members reflect on First Christian Church in Michelle Bearden's "Keeping the Faith" segment at 9 a.m. Sunday on WFLA-TV. She can be reached at mbearden@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7613.

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