St. Mark's Church gives itself to a startup Philadelphia church

Looking back on a long decline from 1,000 active members a century ago to about 20 today, the lay leader of St. Mark's Church in Bustleton understands now why it died.

"We didn't really share well" with outsiders, Curt Welty said.

Set on a grassy campus off Welsh Road, St. Mark's served its close-knit congregation well, Welty said, but "we did not do a good job of getting new people in."

And so, on Sunday, St. Mark's will ring its big bronze bell for the last time and dissolve itself the next day, after 134 years.

But like a supernova that explodes with light just before it dies, St. Mark's will end by sharing itself in an uncommonly generous way: Instead of selling off its chapel, school, parsonage and land, the congregation is giving everything to a start-up church, for free.

"Churches close all the time," marveled the Rev. Ajay Thomas, pastor of little Seven Mile Road Church, which will inherit the property. "Here they are giving us six acres so that the gospel can continue."

Thomas, 29, sees a Christ-like quality to St. Mark's gift. "Jesus gives up his life, but in his death and resurrection we receive new life," he said as he gave a tour of the six-acre campus. "That's what we love about this story."

The name of his year-old congregation alludes to the gospel story of Jesus' post-Resurrection encounter with two followers on the road to Emmaus, seven miles outside Jerusalem.

In July, after meeting for about half a year in private homes, Seven Mile Road began holding Sunday services in St. Mark's boxy stone-faced school. It draws about 75 people, most in their 20s and 30s and many with young children.

St. Mark's began life in Kensington in 1876 as the German Evangelical Reformed St. Mark's Church of Philadelphia. It relocated to Bustleton in 1962 after selling its property to St. Christopher's Hospital, which needed the land to expand its parking lot.

A 2008 appraisal of the current property, at 525 Welsh Rd., valued it at $2 million if sold for residential development, according to Thomas.

"We didn't earn it," he said. "So the only thing we can do is receive it humbly, and with great gratitude."

Culturally, his ethnically diverse church comes off as far hipper than St. Mark's. Seven Mile Road uses guitar instead of organ, boasts a gritty, urban-looking website, and hosts theological debates at a nearby Starbucks.

Welty jokes that "the last time we [St. Mark's] changed our worship was when we went from German to English" nearly a century ago. Although he joined the church in 1989, he remains "one of our newer members" and, at 47, is its second-youngest adult.

Theologically, both congregations are conservative and evangelical. They are affiliated with the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, a 310-church denomination based in Minnesota.

"New churches are typically the most effective way to reach the next generation with the gospel," according to the Rev. Ron Hamilton, the denomination's director of church redevelopment.

Because new congregations tend to be so dynamic, Hamilton said, his denomination hopes to see by 2020 at least half its member congregations founded in this century. "New churches," he said, " . . . try things old churches don't do."

Like Thomas, about 60 percent of members are second-generation Indian, many of whom live in the Northeast.

"But we're much more centered on the gospel than on ethnicity," said Thomas, a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston.

The Rev. David Williams, St. Mark's pastor from 2005 to 2009, invited Thomas to visit the church in 2008 when he learned Thomas was looking to "plant" a congregation in Philadelphia.

"I said, 'How would you like seven acres and three buildings?' " Williams recalled last week. "I was just kidding, but I sensed a possibility."

Since Williams' retirement 16 months ago, Thomas has been preaching the 10 a.m. service at St. Mark's chapel - a converted wood barn - and then strolling across the parking lot at 11 a.m. to preach in the church hall to Seven Mile's flock.

On Sunday morning, he will preside over a joint service of the two congregations, which will be followed by a long supper in the church hall. St. Mark's two previous pastors will participate.

Then, on Monday, St. Mark's will sign title to its property to Seven Mile Road. "It's hard," said Jane Kennedy, 50, a lifelong member of St. Mark's whose parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were christened, confirmed or married in the parish.

"Counting my nieces and nephews, we're five generations," Kennedy said. She described St. Mark's as a "tight" congregation "bound by family," but one where a newcomer might not have felt welcome. She said she feels welcome at Seven Mile Road, however, and plans to stay on.