Urbanism and faith communities

It made a difference in this dynamic city, which is where, seeing you will be heading in late, may Bishop Claude Alexander is pastor of the Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Park church a Baptist church is one of the largest churches in the Charlotte Metropolitan Area Nathan Norris is the founding principal of the city building partnership an attorney with expertise and urbanism and development. Nathan helps, local governments, developers and places of worship achieve their potential by providing them strategic guidance and the full range of plansing services Patrick Quinn is lead pastor at the century. Church A New United Methodist Church in Pike Road near Montgomery, Alabama. And Chris, Alabama, Chris Ellisar is co-director of the World Evangelical Alliance, Sustainability Center. He is the executive director and founder of the Center for Environmental leadership in Buffalo, New York. He is a founder and producer first, and main films. Former senior Board, member. I'm Rob Studioville, editor of scene, use, public square. And today's discussion is about faith communities that are building physical mixed use communities around them. Using the tools of urban design. We'll hear about plans and implementation in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Pike Road, Alabama. First there's going to be presentations followed by discussion, LED by Chris, and then from the audience. We're expecting a lively discussion. So please use the Q&A function of Zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you. And now I'm gonna pass this along to Debt. Alrighty! Let me go ahead and share my screen if I can. Looks like I can't share just yet, Rob. Not Lynn. Right. Stop sharing, so you should be able to share. Now. There we go. Yep, got it now. Alright! Can we can we see my screen? All good? Alright. This project for the Bpx Park Vision plan for the Park church actually began at Cnu. 30 in Oklahoma City, and that's where I met Chris, Alice, Alice, Sarah, and I told him about a book that I'd co-authored about reimagining underly underutilized historical properties, and he told me about his work doing the same with underutilized church sites, and then Chris, he introduced me to Bishop Alexander and his team, who then invited my fourth year architecture students at Unc. Charlotte to design a vision plan for 33 acres of their underutilized land, which is located actually miles away from their primary sanctuary. We began the project we began with these 3 piece of profit, plan, and people. Obvious, obvious, the latter 2. But profit, perhaps not so. The church was very, adamant, that they wanted to make as much money as they could on the property, because they wanted to fund all their missionary activities around the world. So very important as we move forward through the project, seemed like that was not gonna be a very difficult thing to do, seeing that the project located within 3 miles of uptown, Charlotte, and also on a proposed light rail line. In fact, the site itself is all sitting within the half mile radius of a proposed light rail. Stop, so we'll be rezoned as Tod. There are significant and contributing land uses around the site. Perhaps most importantly, as the Boj angles Coliseum and Oven Auditorium, a historic site with many activities that occur mostly at an ecological preserve. To the north, west, the monetary elementary school, and then for economically diverse neighborhoods, Chantilly, which has over a 1 million dollars, homes. There 2 neighborhoods which are much more modest in terms of the real estate, and then Greer Heights which is one of the cities, historically African American neighborhoods. For the side itself. The church has 3 buildings on the site, all are used. A project, for expo big expos that come to town every year. The Southern Christmas Show and the Charlotte home and remodeling being the largest of them. But along with those opportunities are some significant constraints. The the site is covered well partially covered by a 100 year. Floodplain, and also most of the site sits within a brown field, and there is an active pollution pro plume on the site and one of the buildings. It's evolution we've been working with the Carolina office for Brownfield and I said it was probably unlikely that they would permit a new building to be built on that plum, and that sort of ties into our master plan, and so these issues having to deal with environment are obviously things that we assume designers always, always deal with, but we were also reminded in terms of Scripture, and that Philip best pointed out to us that there were also reasons that Christians should deal with a site which is harmed in this way, as well so there are lots of opportunities and constraints on the site, and you can see a lot of them here. But most importantly, I think what the students took away from this was this idea that this was a site that needed to be healed in a place where community needed to be built, and the way in which they started to do, that again, looking at Philip bass and his questioning about whether or not and probably should a church property should be used for more than just a church building, but the creation of a neighborhood, and so course, we begin every project like we always do, looking at precedence. We looked at architectural presidents, and also literature and screen. But as we looked at that we saw that these kind of projects are taking place, proposed around the country, and Brooklyn and Atlanta, and then perhaps most importantly, here in Charlotte, where one of these projects is actually been realized with with a mixed use community around a church but they're moving beyond the precedent. We read, Bishop Alexander's book, where he states that a Christian life must be about something. And so the students felt as if they're project needed to be about something, and for them that something was shalone. And we took that. We came to understand what shallow meant through the Gospel, in the future cities a call to action that Chris out Ellis Sarah introduced us to, and the students came to understand Shalom meaning flourishing and thriving. But on further examination they began to think about what else that might need. In this this word map is a map of where they ended up, and I think what's interesting about this is how many of those words relate to what the intent of of new urbanism is, and the creation of communities we also looked at other literature to understand what that meant in terms of a master Plan for a site, and what we learned from this reading was it a Christian community had to have a significant number of public open spaces, a mixture of land uses, and a dense population, and of course all of us know what the charter of new Earthbanism says about those same topics, you can see a similarity of intent. So moving forward. Then our first idea, in terms of creating a master plan on the site began with this idea of being hospitable to strangers. A Christian principle, and what that might mean in terms of development of a master plan. So of course, we started with a main street that creates connections between the multiple land uses around the site and the diverse neighborhoods. Hoping that this would be the first component of building community, and then, after the main street, the students designed a pedestrian scaled street network hopefully to provide opportunities to build community through familiarity. And then they designed a series of significant public open spaces. And I'll talk about each of them in detail. And then, of course, the last component was that they created a mixed use community on the site. And I'm gonna go over really quickly as to what these components are. The first component of importance is this vibrant entry plaza that welcomes folks into the site from the light rail stations and the sports and entertainment venues. Students imagine that it would look something like this activated at night because many of those events happen at night. But the idea was that the Bishop wanted this to be a desination, and that's what the students were trying to create here, past that entry plaza is a Liberty hall which is reimagined as a food haul and these are precedents from charlotte about how that might happen. And this is what students imagine that food haul, that reimagined Liberty Hall might look like. And then Main Street. They they imagined there's a main street where pedestrians would be prioritized in a pattern of the street itself was based on Cuba textiles a very famous weaving, well well known weaving pattern out of the Congo, and then, of course, there was a a retail plaza further down Main Street, topped with housing which might look something like. Up along independence, Boulevard, which gives the site incredible opportunity. Because it's a 8 Lane highway, limited access highway that goes by the site. The students decided. That's where the signature building should be. They called it the Shillam Shard. They use these precedents that you see here, and these signature buildings would house, church, diplomatic hotel, and convention functions. And this is what the students imagine that might be like. As I mentioned the plume could not be built on, and so that where most of the open spaces are located in the master plan, they wanted there to be retail on that space, because billions couldn't go there, they imagine that they would use shipping containers like boxy Park in Orlando as a precedent, and platforms that could be built where children could play, but also along this, along this side they imagine the building, that front of it would have a large LED screen where where the church could project worship services, but also where cartoons could be played for families outside of church time, and then, of course, there's a significant amount of missing middle housing on the site, using the Charleston block is precedent. I mean that's what a courtyard might look like. Another housing, project that incorporated Wrap parkking Texas doughnuts. You can see several of those on the site that's what that might look like. Another housing block that contained a dog park. As a way of bringing community together, and then the last housing area which is located on the Greenway in the flood plain that use point access and shake, and the shaking grid is a way to organize the site. And this is what the students imagine that site might look like. And so here we ended with a massing plan for the park, and that's where the students work ended. But that is not where the project ended, and I'm going to throw it over to Bishop Alexander to talk about where the project is now. But before I do that I just would be remiss as a member of the Organiz Committee for Cnu. 31, in Charlotte, that the project began in Oklahoma. It ends in Charlotte, where Chris and I and the Bishop will be talking more about it, and we invite you, and hope you all will come. Thank you. Thank you, Dev, and it's an honor for me to be sharing this time with you all in 2,006 the Park church purchased this storage facility called the Charlotte merchandise. Mark for the purposes of establishing one place of worship, as well as continuing in the hosting of conferences and and shows, and seeking to spur economic development in the corridor. That site is the place where multiple generations have come and have had certain experiences such as the Southern Christmas Show, which will bring 100,000 people throughout that building. We began to ask the question, What is the highest and best use of the site? And this is the result. We recognize that in taking away something of intergenerational memory and value, we have to create something that is at least as powerful in terms of memory and experience, if not more so. And so that Master Plan set the tone for our engaging of developers through which we are continuing even to this right moment. But several things drive us physical, mental, and emotional. Well, being to walkable, reflect, reflect reflective, engaging, energetic, creative, and innovative. And in what ways does the design and sent these both in terms of structural and site, planning the stewardship of the land? Deb talked about the redundancy aspect as well as community building, and the notion of flourishing and thriving. So I know that we've got some time to come on the back end of discussion, so I'll end there. Thank you, Bishop. That was, and there for the presentation, you've hit the table for a rich conversation. That's gonna come after this next presentation cause we're writing one more project to the conversations. I'm gonna turn it over to Pastor Quinn with the Century project, and Nathan. So Hello! About your project. Faster! Alright. Thank you, Chris. It's it's a privilege and honor once again to be on with all of you today, as we get an opportunity to share little bit about what we've been up to over the last many years. This has been a huge project that has happened in Pike Road. Alabama, which is a suburb if you will, of Montgomery, Alabama, the capital of our State, it is. It's housed in the fastest growing, or at least one of the top 3 fastest growing zip codes in our state. However, it's right now, still fairly rural and has a lot of rural character to it. Lot of housing developments going up and a and a school system that is relatively new. And so we started a church, and it is called Century Church. And this project is called The Century Project. For more information. You can actually go to San francisco.org about this, and as well. But we started church in 2,016, meeting in the Pike Road Elementary School, relatively new, very new school district that has been flourishing. It grew from a 3 a all the way to a 6 a. Today, and just a short period of time since 2016. And they are currently building and in the process of building their 7, a high school. So the very first thing we did was meet in that public elementary school, and Quick moved to a place where we want to deport land and participate in the growth of the town. And so we purchased land, and 2,018, and upon purchasing that land we had 23 acres of a much larger piece of property, that is, slated to be developed in the coming years into subdivisions, and you know community places and there's a whole master plan with new Urbanism principles around that and that red box, as well as the blue blue box that's there, too, you'll notice on the south end of this this slide. There is a new urbanism development called the Waters, and the waters, is a beautiful place. There's 5, 600 homes there, and more than are still coming. And it's been probably part of the context, and certainly the catalyst in a lot of ways for our growing area. But as we looked at getting on that 23 acres, what we wanted to do was create something special, unique, something that would be life-giving to a community that is growing so not simply come and put up a church building or just have a place for our church to gather we wanted to do something a little different. So we wanted to create a place, wanted to hang out. That was a big piece of this for me. I wanted a place where people not looking for Jesus might find out later that Jesus is always been looking for them, and that was very important to me. Very similar to the project you just heard with with Bishop Alexander and Shalom. I love that, and you'll see some definite similarities which is cool to see how God kind of has lined this up. But some of the instincts that make this a special development really hardens back to some new urbanism developments along the Gulf coast of Florida. This is a picture of seaside. Many of you know, seaside, you've traveled there. You've been a part of it. You've seen some of the wonderful things that have come out of there. I affectionately call this area home. So for me, I grew up on the Gulf coast of Florida. I knew of seaside and several other developments that happened along there, and I was actually in resist management prior to ministry some 20 years ago at Sandestine golf and beach resort that's not far from seaside. And so this certainly was a big piece of it. But as we started to think about what we could do in this community, fast growing place that needs development needs the people that are moving into this area to be concerned about loving on the community, we started researching you know, what is necessary what do we need to do, and as we researched, why church participation has decreased, it LED us to what has actually thrived in the church. And so here's here's just a slide that talks about the 5 causes that that Nathan and I kind of put together it's just quick, you know. It. We realize these 5 things. And mostly, you know, there's weakening of families and neighborhoods. People have personal bees, for why they might not wanna be a part of the church. The church hasn't adapted very well, which I love once again to see how Bishop Alexander's project is is definitely a take on this as well like. How does the Church need to adapt, and the cultural influences of our day? So when we start looking at this, when the church thrived historically, it loved on its community. First like, that's what it did. It did as so well. And so what we did was we teamed up with the C. And U Christian caucus. Once we had this 23 acres, and we're like we need to love on our community. We need this to be life giving to our community. We brought in 23 designers, architects from the Senu Christian Caucus. They were from, I believe once it was all said and done. 18 states and 2 countries, it was one of the most phenomenal things that I've ever been a part of is this, shirt that we hosted for 5 days really close to our property, where they had access to the property could come out on the property get involved in all the conversations we brought in. The community, the community came in and spoke into this. That was very important to us. Early on was, if we're going to design something, it needs to be something that the whole community buys into, whether or not they ever attend our church. They needed to be bought into. Hey! What is it that this community needs and how can we be a part of it? And so out of all of that, we ended up with these 4 principals, and I would say these 4 principles are the guiding driving force for everything that we do. A century church, everything that we have done since that day of the shorette. These have been the principles that guide us in mission and Menst Men mission mission and ministry, and the first one is really the pillar of it. All community first, and the church second. It doesn't mean that we're not putting the church in. It's proper place. It actually means that we're looking more like Jesus to the community. We want to love on this community and put our needs behind the community's needs. So we put community first in everything that we do. And this is one of the first drawings of of the Master Plan has a beautiful building that gives us indoor outdoor capabilities. But it was another way to say, we're gonna bring the community and let them use the facility, and then we will figure out how to use the facility around it. When you're talking about Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, some Bible studies all those things we can use, the facilities that the community designs around the the weekly activities that are that need to take place in our community. So the church can be second. So this second core value principle that we have adopted as part of our project is to grow forever, that works. You know, theologically, we are constantly wanting people to be in a growth mode. We never want to just say, Oh, we figured it all out. We've got our faith intact, and we don't have any reason to grow. I mean none of us that are people of faith would say that we've got it. Figured out, or if you do, then you probably quickly figure out that that's probably not true either. Right. We do not have it figured out. We need to grow. And so, how does that look like in a plan like like this? What we're gonna grow incrementally. So we have phases of growth. And that allows us to do a lot of things that I've learned from many of you that are probably on this call, and those that came to be a part of our plan is that growing incrementally allows us to actually morph and change and adapt to the community's needs over time and we don't have to set it all in stone in this day and age we can actually prepare for a decade from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, and and and allow the land to actually morph and change as the community sees fit. So we have a long-term master plan that we want the community to continually continue to speak into, and that leads me to the third core value. The principle at heart is that partnerships, matter, I mean, if relationships, matter in the Church, then partnerships matter to the vitality of the community, and so we want to get like-minded really focused in people that want to see this community grow and be vibrant and and are excited, to bring their talents, their skills, their best efforts to bear on this community, no matter what it may look like, whether it's a Y.M.C.A. Other nonprofits. It can be for-profits, cafes, coffee shops, our galleries, whatever it needs to be. But people that are all driving with the same idea that we want to love on this community and put our community first, and the final value. If our principal, if you will, if you're gonna do anything like this, where you're going to come out and be a pioneer like these 2 projects that you're hearing about today, you got to do it with adventure right? Because things are gonna change all the time, and you gotta have a spirit of creativity about you. And when the Church has been at its best, I feel like we're creative. We are people that are exploding with creativity and ways that we can actually share cries in meaningful, significant ways that bring life to the community around us. And so this is the well at century we've affectionately called it the Well. After the story of the woman at the well, that everyone is welcome. We want. People to be able to come from all walks of life. We want the community to see a thriving campus 7 days a week, with all sorts of opportunities. You'll see our little version of a dog park as well. Down in the right right hand corner, so there's some cool like-mindedness that's already there, and lots of green space and community places as well as mission and nonprofit for profit as well. And so this is the well at century. But as we moved from a planning into, you know, implementation, we were in the elementary school, and we had done this master plan, and we had done this master plan, and we were looking forward to getting this off and running and March 2020 happened. And so we had to. We had to quickly pivot. Like most everyone else in the world. So we no longer had the elementary school to to depend on. And and that was really our decision. The elementary school is very supportive in our area. We have made many, inroads, and we have loved on that community very well. But when our church family doesn't, and our leadership was Hey, we need to let the school educate kids and figure out how they're going to move forward with the children in our community and having a large congregation that had grown to nearly 600 people in our community you know come in every single week. During Covid was probably not the best idea and so if we're going to be community first, we essentially put our money where our mouth was right, and we said, Hey, we're gonna we're gonna forgo our customable indoor. Environment. And we moved outside so we moved outside on the land, and we started figuring out, how do we if we're gonna grow incrementally? How do we grow incrementally in the midst of a global pandemic? And so growing up on the Gulf coast, and seeing places like seaside and the hub at 30 a rosemary, Alice Beach. Those kind of things. We're not far from there. We're about a 2 and a half hour drive, hey? Let's start with figuring out an outdoor venue. So once again, some like-mindedness. Here we have shipping containers. Right, bring in some shipping containers. I have the idea that we would bring these huge like Ringling Brothers circus tents right over into the into the space and do the shade sales and and we have a few pictures with these tents. These huge white, tents you see on the left there's there's another picture, the shipping containers are up, and then you know, along the Gulf coast there's hurricanes, and believe it or not, we actually ended up with category one wins we're in Covid, no less category. One wins, end up up in our neck of the woods in South Alabama, and we, and only worship twice with these huge tents and this hurricane took our tents down. So tents go down and pull barns come up. So the town allowed us through zoning to incrementally start building on our property with a temporary permit, and we started to exercise that through these poll barars which we have become, I would say today not not anything that I've done, I would say that our church has become experts on how to do outdoor worship with pole barns. You would almost not realize that you are outdoors unless you know the weather. But we we have done an amazing job inside. So you see, this, this is kind of what it looks like today. That it was a beautiful sunset. By the way, that we had, and and so we have these 2 pole barns, these shipping containers that we built out and this has been our focus for 2 and a half years. Everyone. We have been outside in the first world in America, and worshiping every single day. Rain, shine, hot, cold, I have preached a sermon with snow falling all around me, and I will say I live in Alabama. So cold is not exactly our friend here. We would prefer the hot, so I even worse. Ski pants. While I was while I was preaching, so. But you know you also have other issues right? You have water issues, you have utility issues, and you have back room issues. And I never knew how important that was until your outdoors, every single week, and trying to do things so we incrementally developed our bathrooms. We started with Porta pots. Yes, so hundreds of people, and we have porta-potties every single week, and so but as as we moved on we incrementally continued to develop. And we've become very good at building out shipping containers. We have people in our church that not only have the expertise from a construction standpoint, but also design from some architects and draftsmen. And so we recently opened up permanent bathroom facilities for our outdoor venue. But we are moving forward, and so we just broke ground last month. You'll notice that the kids are in the picture. That was intentional, that's our youth and our kids, some of them that we selected to actually break ground. We thought, if we're if we are building a facility for the next generation, century church for the next century of believers and the community, then it would be best if our kids would be the ones to break the ground. And so here's some images from above that show you kind of what the ground is looking like right now. You see the 2 pullbacks. We have shade sales that roll out in the middle, and we broke ground on our infrastructure. And so they're starting to put the roads and utilities in, even as we speak. So every week our ground is starting to change and morph, and become part of our first phase. So this is our 23 acres as it stands pretty much today, or at least a few weeks, and we are. We are moving forward with our very first building, and here is our very first building it's meant to be small. It will see about 300 people. It does indoor, outdoor worship, and when I mean that I'm mean that very, very specifically, that we can go indoor or outdoor with about a 30 min window, we we can shift and morph depending on what we need to do, and how the weather is behaving that day, and what we feel like. We we have on the on the schedule. This this facility, though first and foremost, is designed as a multi-purpose building that will be used for the community. There is nothing else like this in high grade or with a river region, area, and there's really not a facility that is, I would say, heremark for the community quite like this one is in our entire town that is now grown to a little over 20,000 people. So this is us. This is who we are as century, church, and I look forward to answering questions as well as we move forward with the century project. I give a lot of credit to the Cnu Christian caucus and all the principles that I have learned, as I have tried to be a pastor on a mission to put our community first and allow the church to come alongside and love on the community and meaningful ways with economic development nonprofit strategies and a mission that can last far into the future through an incremental build. Hey? Thanks, Patrick, that's amazing. Story started several years ago, and seeing you know what you're doing right now. But there's a quick question in the the Comments section that I'm gonna do to Nathan, cause I wanna get your voice in right now, Nathan, and the question is, you know, he may have missed. This is from Jeff. Compton Nelson may have missed this in the early presentation, but I what else is surrounding? You know the Century project in terms of criminism. Village, whatever maybe. Essentially where you saw there's open fields around it. That had been designed for essentially traditional neighborhoods to be developed. And then across the street is a long-standing community that's rather poor that we've also interacted with. So we've got that within less than about a half mile is where the water sits, which is a for pike road. A pretty large population center, like Patrick was saying, about 600 homes, or there, or condos, or townhomes, or whatever. Thanks. Chris. Also, we're we are less than a mile from the Interstate, and there's development all up that way as well as the traffic study along Marlow Road. It has increased exponentially with other housing projects and developments that have that have come into. So we are essentially, maybe sell a little early to the game. But everything is coming our way, if you will. It's great, it's great. And then we have, you know, Google Earth, Google Maps. Take a look, you know, from, you know, wherever you're sitting around the world, we have somebody in here from South Africa, you know. He was in this conversation. We can look exactly what surrounding both of these projects by going to those resources. But again, I'm Christella, Sarah, and I'm gonna just be kind of facilitating the conversation here, and we're gonna start off with. I feel like interview questions and then move into from those folks that are joining us from around the world. And we have, you know, nearly 160 participants, which which is amazing. I'm gonna start with Bishop Bishop Alexander worship you're not new to New urbanism. You came to Savannah 36, and you work, you know, 5 different leaders from black churches across the United States. But now you're actually going from theory to practice, and you're doing a a development. So you're you know, a bishop, developer I would say, if I can use that term. What do you design for when you gave the brief to the students, you talked a little bit about what you're trying to design for? But can you go into that a little bit more? And why did you select those choices for designing as as a bishop developer, leading your congregation this type of way? Sure, so one I wanna take a step back. And I guess provide a little bit more context. Not so much for me particularly, but for development. That's been done in the African American Church. Experience the whole notion of How do you know? Is not new to the Black Church? Black churches have been doing this for a number of years, primarily in the senior housing development space and the affordable housing development space. What is new is the notion of large scale planned? Multi-use development, and the notion of intentionality behind that, looking at, looking at, developing a whole community, not just not just some apartments, not just some single family. Dwellings, but large scale community development. So that's the that's the first piece. When one moves into that space, then one realizes first how ill prepared seminary. Get you there. Hey! Man! There are no classes in seminary for the building of communities, nothing in terms of economic development. And so you quickly realize that you are operating outside of your domain, and that if you want to honor God and Stewart, the land and the people's resources, it is best done in partnership and relationship. That's number 2. Third. The notion, then, of being clear of what your desires are. And so our desires are 1, 2 empower community. To establish a legacy. Those 2 things really drive are looking at this empowering community and establishing a legacy. And how do we do it? In a way that is sustainable? Long term, so it's not just growing for the future. But it's making sure that that my successor and now successor, successor, and whomever they will lead, that they're sustainability for them to come. So those those things are the things that drove or drive this approach. Chris. Oh! You needed to communicate that to the students, and I was in the very first class with with deaf students. And we actually decided to talk to that class which is diverse some, I think we're Christians. They didn't put their hand up and say, I'm Christians. Yeah. Many others were not, but we had that first class to try to talk about Shalom, and then how that Shalom gets put into design principles and using, you know, tenants of all the new urbanism Dave, can you talk to us about you know how the students what the students learn in that process, you know, working with this vision of Shalom and the design that they put forth. And some of maybe the challenges. And some of the things that they were thinking through. Can you talk about the students? Experience in that regard? Well, I'm happy to. I did want to say I noticed 3 of them online. Sam Sydney insane, and I know they can't talk, but if they'd like to add their thoughts into the chat, I think that would be great, especially since I think Zane and Sydney are actually in Rome right now. So it'd be wonderful to hear their thoughts. You know it was interesting. Starting the studio, you know, in a State university. I asked the students to respect. I didn't expect them to believe, but I did ask them to respect, and then come to find out that for bit there were several students in the class that were very devout, and actually prayed with the church leaders when they came and and so I didn't actually talk to them about their own beliefs, and that didn't actually seem necessary. But it I will say it probably was the happiest, kindest studio I've ever taught and I think that's probably partly because of the church leaders leaders who modeled such joyous behavior in front of the students. So that was, that was a wonderful thing, I think, in the study of architecture we ask our students to suspend their disbelief and think about different ideas all the time, and for them to think about. Why they were doing something in a broader context rather than just an architectural, a form. Base contact, I think, was very important to a lot of them, and what was interesting at the end of this architecture studio is that I'm gonna say, third of the class, maybe a little bit more. It came to me and said they wanted to study urban design. Now, instead of architecture, because they felt like for them, it was more meaningful than just the decision of buildings, so I think that is an end. Result was a pretty important one. We're coming back to you, Bishop, I don't come to you in second, Patrick, but I want to ask, as you go through this process, you've talked about Shalom. You told me what the Church wants to do. So it was. I like the you know the profit piece cause that enables you to have, you know, resources invest in community. Is there anything surprising that has come through the design that you have received from Dave's class and say, Hmm! This I wasn't thinking, would how it would be manifest in a plan, in a design. Think about the housing think about the transportation, thinking about the you know, the Tod aspect and opportunity you have there anything there is kind of like, wow! That makes sense, and it really squares with my faith, and the plan. Well, the most immediate is that the notion of the plumes, and looking at that from a redemptive lens, and how? How, what we do redeems that we weren't responsible for it. But we have it now, and how do we redemptively operate and plan? So that would, that would be no. Then the you know the other thing that hit me was the diversity of of instruments in terms of the housing stock, that that they that they did that that was fascinating, because it wasn't just boxes. No, there was intentionality in terms of diversity, and what that diversity does in terms of the experience that people have. So those were the 2 big things that immediately come to mind. Thanks for sharing that. I'm gonna your project, you know, Nathan and Patrick, and I'm gonna here a little bit of something, because I think I wanna bring in when you in terms of that, some of the we I've talked about the opportunities that churches have for engaging in! Contributing to the urban fabric. Would the properties that they have, and the properties that they can develop, and also say that we are facing as churches because you mentioned the decline. A crisis of and a tidal wave of church property, redevelopment coming onto the market, as it were, and so we asked you to think through this and accelerate the way that we work in in our capacity to develop and there is a great study that has been done recently and if I can just share my screen here. This is by by Georgia Tech, and it's again. It's interesting because it's a full project. By some Georgia tech students focused on what churches are doing in an Atlanta building. In good faith. And so here you have. You can see my slide here. Who's doing stuff enterprise, community partners, they're doing all bunch of stuff in Atlanta. And then these other churches are doing stuff. So here's the map. They develop a model here, or how, how how to churches can do development, and so on. And then here are some examples of some, some buildings that they did like them for different opportunities that are in Atlanta. This is the first one on the left hand side is is a synagogue actually, and they go through and make some suggestions for it. For how to. You know design and redevelop, you know 5 properties in this. In this particular study. But here is the what I want to get to the conclusion, and. Policy recommendations. They have some recommendations for zoning. They recommend a zoning overlay for church properties. They recommend parking types of reforms for churches that so they can do development, and so on and so forth. Some tiny home kind of changes to the ordinance, so they can help with some tiny home development, and so on and so forth. So my question for for you, Nathan, and Patrick, is you working through your development? How is it squareing with some of these practical planning, architecture design things that you're working through in your design and and incrementally working towards your vision for first century project? Go right ahead! Patrick, you want me to take that? Yeah, it's like putting a square peg in a round hole. We are on property. That was zoned for this, which is all new urbanist principles. But the church campus doesn't fit either into that. We actually have a planning consultant for a task. Who's a member of the Christian caucus and the Cnu and the urban Guild. And so that's good to have. But it still doesn't mean that everything fits easily. So we have to work around it. My, my, you know what I do professionally generally is only deal with projects that don't fit the law. So it's not like a shock to me. It just you gotta work through it. Hmm! It's a lot of extra work, but some people may find it interesting that Century Church is having to designated a special district pursuant to the smart code as opposed to following under one of the 6 transect zones in order to move forward with what it's doing so what that usually means in the big scheme of things is, I want to compete. A compelling vision with sort of baby steps, to work into a relationship. The local municipality to say, Look, we're we're gonna try to figure this out, and we're gonna figure it out together. But it's not easy, and I would suggest that in most my clients I would suggest that they do not go about trying to change the law, to make them do what they do. They just work with the parties, because what we found is that, especially with a church that's really outreaching to the community in all sorts of ways. You know, like like half our staff or bus drivers for the local school district, you know that sort of stuff, Patrick helps with all the sports teams. So it's so. I say, just work through the locals on the difficult things that don't work, and because to fit within the framework of existing regulatory framework, it just that's sort of a fool's Erin right now, unfortunately, in most places from my perspective. Just wanted to let participants know that we're at the hour point, and we will be posting a video of this webinar on the Cmu website. Probably within 24 h, and so you can see the rest of it if you have to go for any meetings. But we're gonna continue on for maybe another 10 min. Yeah. Chris, one of the things that I that I'd love to add. That's a little tangent to the question you ask, but maybe gets to something. The Bishop was was talking about. When you think about our 2 projects and the and the need for loveving on our community, so to speak, in economics, ways in housing, and now moving into some more, you know, robust development and to your point about the article you said, I think what might be interesting to the audience is to know that things like this. I feel like the Lord has put this on the hearts of many pastors and church leaders. We're just 2 projects that are on here. I'm learning about new ones all the time, and I'm getting called all the time, and I'm sure the Bishop is too about like, how do we do this better for our communities? How do we repurpose all these trick properties and buildings that will actually be life-giving and something to give back? And so I think that conversations like this are so vital and so important. I'm glad that you're doing this today because I believe that the time is now for our local community. Small towns across America, big metropolitan areas for God's people, and the assets that we have at our disposal to be utilized and reinvisioned in ways that once again share the essence of the gospel that is good news and it can be good news in ways that maybe people haven't thought about before, and that's what's really important about this right now that I think we cannot lose the focus of what the principles that that new urbanism and the Cnu and the Christian caucus things I've learned from from Nathan is that this is actually all coming together. I can see it coalescing in a beautiful resurrection of the ways that the churches across America can actually find more purpose, better foothold in their communities, going forward in a world that is in a post Christian kind of context. But we have. We have the best story, and I believe that there are the best parts that are in the church. We just need to give them a vehicle in which to actually share that message. And projects like this do that. I thanks for sharing that. And I wanna just dive into working a little bit further in terms of taking it further I'm going back to this study by by the Turner center, because when we say that there's potential and he's described that eloquently Patrick. They say that there's really 4 issues, and we've talked about one issue in terms of doing things in this particular space. But they mentioned I've highlighted here 4 issues and concerns, and the third one is, there is no straightforward search for financing, for housing on religious land, particularly for affordable housing, and then the last one, a barrier is most faith based organizations have little to no real estate development, experience. So when it comes to these 2 barriers, to the opportunities that we have, can you speak to what you're doing? Either Bishop or Patrick in terms of the the financing solutions to your projects, and all the expertise that you're bringing in to help you with these projects. And maybe Deb, you can speak to that too, or others as well. But those are the 2 barriers. I think that I just wanna have a little quick conversation about as we get close to wrapping up here. I could just go real quick and tell you from our perspective, and just keep it real short. One. Nathan taught me this which I give him credit for. Make places interesting again, you know to me some of the design principles of new urbanism. Architecture is actually that places are interesting and and so I think that financing follows. You know money follows vision. Right? And so we're making it interesting. And there's a whole host of people that I feel like are coming around the church because it's interesting, because it's not just we're gonna sing 3 songs, have a nice sermon and go home. We actually are doing something life giving to the whole community now and and it's interesting. The second piece about it is that I think when you, when you do things with adventure, that's the last principle in our design plan, is, do it all with adventure. We, we, the church, when we're at our best, we're on this life giving adventure where we take risks with Jesus. We get out of the boat and walk on water. Right we go, and we heal, and we give, and we love and we do things that are totally counter cultural. And out of our comfort zone and so I think if we can capture the essence of that with people, what I have found, and I'll be practical is that I have developers, architects, people that and many others that their skills have lot have been dormant in the church because we haven't necessarily called those out of the pew. If you will. Now they are showing up in droves and businesses, and people that are like Wait! So I can be universalized in a plan like this, and I think, probably for the listeners, the more that we can get. People engaged that have been silent in the pews haven't felt like they have had a place. They have skills. These students. There's so many skills that are being called upon in plans like this that I think there'll be a resurgence of energy. And that's what we're. That's what we're seeing in our project. To that I would. To that I would add, it is a combination of we're putting in our property as as are part of a joint venture. The developer then, is driving the combination of private equity. Bank related instruments, transit oriented development dollars as a combination package. As Nathan has said, there is, as Patrick has said, there is this unlocking of imagination in the hearts and minds of individuals who have resources when they see the Church. Exercising reimagination, repurposing, and openness, and that combination develops an excitement that is not limited to to the Church. And the development process and product then becomes a message in and of itself. That's been much longer than any sermon that either Patrick or I. We'll ever preach. Man, thank you. Yep. Chris, let me add something that made a big impression upon me about it, because I think it's important that the audience, the folks that are still on realize how there's such a huge yearning Rob, can probably vouch for this. But I believe in 2,019, the article that we wrote about what Century Church was doing. I think it was like the most red for second, most read article of the entire year. For the Cnu, and so there is a lot of huge interest out there. I know Patrick and I have received calls from. Well, you don't think it's crazy, Chris, to receive a call from New Zealand, but we thought it was crazy to get a call from New Zealand or Australia, that are interested in this. But I didn't know about how the church had been the one that started all the universities and started all the the hospitals and it's it's that sort of outreach. It's that thinking that's that sense of adventure, and saying, we're gonna go out to the community that I think is so many people are so ready to do it. And they're ready to volunteer their time in all sorts of capacities that have not been used at all in the past. So I'm very bullish on it, and I'm excited to see people being able to engage in places they couldn't before I'm a living example. Of somebody who hadn't volunteered in the church until Pat Patrick said, Hey, we're buying 23 acres. Can you help us? It's like, I guess I'd rather do that than park cars, but everybody's got to do something right. Yeah, you're the expertise that's coming in to help them. I think Rob's back on. I think he's gonna wrap us up there's a bunch of resources I like to share attended a chance to do so. I think we'll provide those after the after the Webinar online. Somehow. Because folks want to connect with us, and there's places to connect it's a senior Christian caucus. There's a new. I've been running this for the last couple of years, faith, properties, collaborative. Hey? Profits, collaborative bunch of folks around the in the webinar who are part of that developers, finances, designers who are all talking about how to collaborate in this particular space. So that's another resource. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that we can share with you after online. So I'm gonna probably just turn it back to you now, Rob, and let you wrap it up. Dave's gotta go. Yeah, we we will send an email out when the video is posted and we will have links to all these resources in that email. So folks who were signed up for this can get that. I want to thank everybody who attended this. All the participants. This has been an awesome show. It's been really educational for me. And so thank you, Chris. Deb Bishop Alexander NASA, pastor, and everybody who watched today and he's gonna watch on online. So thanks once again for everybody, and we will see you again on the park. Ben. Hi! Hi! All thanks! Hey deb