Caring Cultures: How Congregations Respond to the Sick

3: First Downtown Church

81µ 3 First Downtown Church U pon first moving to Durham, our family was immediately drawn to First Downtown Church. There were telling markers that this was the local “liberal” outpost for the denomination: It was the church whose banner was “downtown by history and by choice,” it housed an urban ministry, one heard regular social justice sermons, the pastor’s wife had organized peacemaking trips to the then Soviet Union, and the congregation actively included lesbian and gay people, though quietly. It was the obvious choice for our family. Our daughter was baptized at First Downtown, and we worshipped there for five years until I took a job in another church. We have since returned and are regular worshippers there. Our weekly drive to church holds so much of Durham’s past and present. We pass the lumberyard with building supplies for the exploding construction business. We pass Duke Hospital with its multiple attendant research and clinical structures . We pass the historic Erwin Mills, part of Durham’s past textile industry. We see tobacco warehouses, some abandoned, some part of trendy urban renewal efforts. On the left of our route is the large building for North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, the multi-million-dollar historic and black-owned 82 Caring Cultures business. On the right is the Catholic church with its burgeoning Hispanic membership. Upon leaving the freeway and approaching the church, centers of county activity come into view: the county courthouse, county social services, the county library, and the county health department. Most worshippers drive toward the front of the church but then glide past it to the back parking lot. There are few pedestrians on the street on any day of the week. The church faces an abandoned Health Department building that developers have considered for various purposes. If one should enter the front door of the heavy stone Gothic Revival building, its doors elevated seven steps above the sidewalk, one would enter a shadowed foyer that holds remnants of the past: old books and carved furniture with a Gothic flair. This would have been the entry of choice for past decades. Today most churchgoers approach the church from the back parking lot, walking through a grassy area on a short sidewalk lined by large crepe myrtle trees, brash pink in the summer. To the left is a small brick-walled courtyard that holds a garden and a columbarium . To the right is the education building, whose architecture confirms it was built in the mid-sixties. It houses a day-care program during the week. Inside this large, bright foyer are signs of the church’s current vitality: pictures of new members, a table for the youth fundraiser, posters for the CROP walk, reminders of the installation of the presbytery’s new Hispanic minister, a display of stoles donated by closeted gay clergy, and newspaper clippings about members involved in current city events. Parents are rushing kids to Sunday school, older people are moving to the new elevator, and most are aiming for the door to the sanctuary. The most commonly used door to the sanctuary is an inconspicuous one that opens into the very front, side corner of the worship space. Worshippers walk past the baptismal font and into a worship space that would hold 450 if the balcony were filled. The high ceiling draws the eye upward and the stained glass windows glitter in the sunlight. The chancel of the church is raised by three steps, First Downtown Church 83 warmed by golden wood furniture and light rose-colored marble floor. The choir sits in the very front, facing the congregation. The markers of the sacred are the windows, the organ pipes, the communion table, the pulpit and lectern, and the large cross hung high over the chancel. The most prominent indicator of the transcendent is the enormous, cavernous space above the worshippers . A classic Gothic cathedral also has high ceilings, but its interior space is limited by sidewalls creating a long, narrow nave. In this church, the sanctuary is almost square, without the spacelimiting proximity of the sidewalls. The looming, virtually square area emphasizes the sheer volume of space above the worshipper . Worshippers look short. Even in the raised side pulpit, many preachers look short. In the midst of multiple signs of current vitality, most obviously the presence of engaged and involved people, the past is always visibly present as well. In...