The morning sun drifted through the iridescent stained glass of the chapel in the Miami Shores Community Church as it had every morning for the past 93 years. This recent Sunday service, however, was different. It was the last time the pastor welcomed the congregation in a chapel directly owned by the church.
On March 26, the church’s board of trustees closed on a $2.8 million sale of the two-story centennial property.
Though the deal allowed the church to lease back the chapel and a few adjacent offices for $1,500 a month, it’s just the latest religious sanctuary in Miami-Dade that is facing an uncertain future.
“We will remain with a much smaller footprint,” said Kathy Martin, president of the church’s board of trustees.
MSCC board of trustees chose to sign with the only buyer whose contract would still allow the church and its dwindling number of members to remain in their historic home.
Two other real estate investment firms offered comparable prices but aimed to redevelop the property right away, which would have rendered the congregation without a home right away.
Over the past decade, dozens of religious sanctuaries throughout South Florida have closed as they struggled to attract patrons and, as a result, often lacked funds for maintenance and upkeep.
Meanwhile, developers have sought after churches without congregations as “cheaper” investments toward for-profit enterprise. For many, though, these churches are more than buildings; they represent a local history that binds communities together.
A few miles south of MSCC the Rader Memorial United Methodist Church has been closed and boarded since 2007. The church, which was founded in 1923, maintained one of the oldest congregations in Miami-Dade County through much of the first half of the 20th century. This changed beginning in the late 60s into the early 80s. Following the expansion of neighboring Little Haiti, the church’s predominantly white members moved away and the congregation lost more than 1,000 members.
For nearly 20 years the building has been vacant. According to the Miami Herald, the church was most recently sold to a developer whose plans included converting the church into a mixed-use property, ironically citing the building’s proximity to “trendy neighborhoods of Little River and Little Haiti.”
Four years later, the church still remains vacant, occupying a page on the Abandoned Florida webpage and leaving people in the community to speculate over what could happen to the building and property.
Though MSCC has managed to stay afloat (even serving as a refuge for “displaced” congregants of Rader church following its 2007 closure), challenges were plenty.
Originally constructed as a pump house and fire station in 1925, it was converted into a church in 1933, making it the oldest church in Miami Shores.
Located just a few miles north of downtown, church members observe how the organization functions as much as a civic initiative as a religious sanctuary, celebrating diversity for decades.
When most of Miami was still segregated under Jim Crow laws, the church stood as a beacon of inclusivity in the community. In 1949, the church’s white reverend invited Reverend Edward T. Graham, a Black minister, to preach during a “Brotherhood Week” sermon.
The Miami Ku Klux Klan responded by burning crosses on the church’s lawn, which prompted Miami-Dade County to pass a law criminalizing cross burning a first-degree felony.
The sale is bittersweet. Many in the community worry for the long-term fate of the church. At the same time, board members are hopeful that the sale will alleviate some of the burden that comes with maintaining a property while also operating a church.
“We see this as an opportunity to re-invent and re-launch ourselves, freed from the manpower of the burdens of the property,” said Martin. “We have a good core group of people and are doing what we need to do to continue being a church.”
Maintaining a nearly 100-year-old property means a lot of investment. Inspections done ahead of the sale documented $800,000 in need of repairs including roof replacement, restoration to the concrete and electrical rewiring. With the current expense and upkeep on a historic building, the sale became inevitable.
At least in this case, the congregation had a say. In West Coconut Grove, the St. Mary’s First Methodist Baptist Church, one of the first (and during much of Jim Crow, only) Black churches in Miami closed in 2019 after the building fell into disrepair. Though the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014, the congregation could not afford upkeep and the City of Coral Gables charged them with “demolition by neglect,”—a loophole to historic preservation that permits the razing of historical buildings if they have “suffered severe deterioration, potentially beyond the point of repair.”
Mike Edison, a lawyer, arts patron and the founder of non-profit Sanctuary of the Arts is known for his fight to save the Coconut Grove Playhouse. A few years ago, he shifted his focus toward purchasing the “unsafe” and “structurally unsound” St. Mary’s campus for $550,000.
Founded in 2019, Sanctuary of the Arts’s primary location is in another historic former church in downtown Coral Gables. In acquiring St. Mary’s, they envision community gatherings and a cultural arts space to engage with the neighborhood, providing arts access and cultural experiences while being mindful of the community’s history.
“It’s not a church per se, but we are trying to maintain that it is a community gathering space linked with the arts,” said Luka Gotsirdze, a member of the Sanctuary of the Arts staff.
The West Grove is a historically Black community and ethnic enclave, established by Bahamians in the 19th century—over a decade before the city of Miami was incorporated. But like many historically Black communities in Miami, the West Grove is rapidly gentrifying. Old wood-frame homes were replaced with multi-million-dollar box-style mansions.
When Sanctuary of the Arts obtained St. Mary’s church, they aimed to include the community and surrounding areas that are also underserved, but their presence did not go unnoticed by developers.
“When we purchased the space, some people used that opportunity for their own advantage, which was not our intention at all,” Gotsirdze said. “They sort of took advantage saying, ‘oh there is an arts organization coming’ and prices of houses went up overnight.”
Church closure and congregation displacement is a microcosm indicative of the broader urban trend, as historic parts of Miami are bought, developed, and gentrified, pockets of urban displacement are reshaping the tapestry that has woven these communities together for generations.
While Sanctuary of the Arts’ remains focused on using the St. Mary’s Church space to offer cultural engagement to the community they are a part of, many “repurposed” churches are ultimately sold to developers and companies with little interest in historic preservation. This was a concern many had in the community when MSCC was listed for sale, and some are still nervous despite reassurance from the church board that the buyer will support the church’s interest.
But, for now, the Miami Shores Community Church may have dodged displacement and the congregation is determined to proceed with as little disruption as possible.
As the last service before the sale finalized came to a close, Martin made an announcement to the group of about 30 people.
“As our property sale saga continues, we are proceeding as thoughtfully and as carefully as we can to get to the best possible outcome… it may not be our dream destination, but it will be the best possible outcome we are able to achieve,” she said, then paused before adding, “Our opening hymn, grant us wisdom, grant us courage.. sounds exactly like what we need.”
A few moments later, the congregation made its way from the chapel into an adjacent reception room. Platters of sandwiches, wraps and a fruit salad had been set out and one member turned on a cassette player. As the Bee Gees drift through the room, Martin circulated each table chatting with members.
A couple celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary shared a dance, the fellow church members cheered, raising plastic cups of sweet tea and lemonade in a toast; no one noticed the peeling paint on the wall.
