The Waitsfield United Church of Christ is not closing. It’s opening. That’s the word from Reverand Mark Wilson who held a frank and honest discussion with community members this week about the future of the historic church and Village Meeting House, an important landmark in Waitsfield Village.
“The takeaway is that the church is not closing. It is opening. It’s opening to the future and that future may not include us,” Wilson said at a May 12 meeting for some 20 invited guests.
He explained that the congregation finds itself in a position where the number of people who support the church is dwindling. Some of those folks who have been the mainstay for years have moved away or moved on and others have “gone on to glory,” Wilson said.
The bottom line is that – in looking to the future – the congregation and its leadership team see a need for a different ownership model, one that puts management of the facility, the structure, the church and the Village Meeting House into the hands of an entity that can preserve, manage and maintain it.
Wilson explained that since 1796, the Waitsfield United Church of Christ has been a presence in Waitsfield. The first church was on Waitsfield Common, the second church was on Mill Hill and the current church has been in Waitsfield Village for 150 years.
Wilson and Karen Nevin, moderator of the church council, explained that while the faith-based community is strong and the church has some financial reserves, the position they find themselves (and the congregation in) is not so much about money as it is about human resources and facilities management.
“We have a decent crowd of people who worship. We’re looking at who comes next and who will replace us,” he said.
Nevin explained that the Village Meeting House space is heavily used all week long and on the weekends. Those present asked if all the existing users of the space pay rent and were told that most do and that is it not a lot of rent, in keeping with the goal of making the space available as a community center for community usage. In 2024 the Village Meeting House hosted 700 hours of community activities. Scouting, AA, fitness classes, support groups, workshops, library activities, camps, concerns, blood drives, Rotary meetings, town votes, school activities, private gatherings, vaccination clinics, cooking classes, homeowners’ association meetings and more take place in the Village Meeting House. Upstairs the worship hall regularly hosts art shows and at least one local nonprofit has office space with Wilson on the second floor.
Wilson said that the parking lot behind the church is well-used seven days a week beyond church activities.
As part of the 2018 work, the facility is now ADA compliant and has an upgraded wastewater system as well as improved insulation, heating, and cooling as well as a shored-up foundation and more.
‘It’s used by the library, by seniors, for exercise, for classes and for so much. And it was renovated for that purpose,” Nevin said, referring to the 2018 remodeling and updating of the Village Meeting House for which the church and larger community raised $800,000.
Those present asked the church leaders what their ideal solution would look like. Becky Auclair, chair of the board of deacons, said that they had interviewed other churches in similar situations.
“We found one in Worchester, Massachusetts, that found a nonprofit that was able to take over and its values aligned with those of the church. As a nonprofit it is able to apply for and get federal grants that a church can’t due to its religious affiliation,” she said.
Wilson said that his best case scenario would be that a local group, not unlike the nonprofit board that manages the Mad River Valley Health Center building, would be formed for the Village Meeting House.
“The Village Meeting House could be handed over and the mission of the church could continue. We would not have exclusive use of the building,” he said.
Church elders Jane Cunningham and Holiday Rayfield weighed in as well, Cunningham noting that the pews upstairs could be removed (and some already had) to create one of the largest gathering spaces in The Valley and Rayfield advocating for continued public access to the kitchen and other spaces.
Wilson et al were asked if they were working with Waitsfield’s Irasville master planning team and Wilson said that they had been in communication about that work.
In response to questions about whether holding more events would yield more funding to pay people to steward the building, Wilson said, “The issue isn’t money. It’s people available to plunger the toilet. We have money, what we really need is 10-20 people to steward a makers’ fair or an event and clean the floors after and take out the trash. We can’t staff all of that,” he said.
He was asked again if more revenue would solve the problem and said “the larger issues are that the people it would take to do this can’t afford to live here. The energy it takes to be the church and a community center is more than we can do and we chose the church. We can’t do both,” he said.
Church leaders were asked about timing and were told these changes weren’t happening immediately but that they were coming and they wanted to be prepared.
Nevin said that next steps include the church council reporting back to the congregation on June 8. She also said that she loved hearing all the ideas about how to support the church and acknowledged how hard and sad it is to say,“e are not required to be here.”
“But we’ve had six months to hear this and we’ve gotten over the grief,” she added.
