I picked up a copy of the December 2008 newsletter "Presbytery Life" last night, which is "A Newsletter of the Regional Church of New Jersey in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church." Why? I'm a religion nerd, basically. When I got it home and took a look at it, I saw that on the front page is an article entitled, "Providence Glassboro Relocates." Same old story. Rowan expands, expands, expands, and a developer tries to buy them out.. The church is forced to find a new location. Quote [ironic emphasis mine]:
As you may have already guessed, the church that was sold for $900,000 (according to tax records, anyway) was the original Incarnation parish, whose history you may find here. I have a friend who lived nearby Incarnation, where she used to attend daily mass. Apparently they used to hold daily mass in the original, smaller church owing to its small size. I suppose it was considered a good location for smaller, more intimate gatherings. This friend of mine would not go to the larger, new church, built in 2002. As I understand it, many still loved the old church building and were sad to see it unnecessarily sold. The old church, after all, looked a lot like a...church. The new church isn't the ugliest I've ever seen. It is what it is, an auditorium-style church-in-the-round, 1970s style. But hey, for close to a million bucks, just how necessary is it to keep the old church?
While I feel glad for the Presbyterian congregation's good fortune, as they are merely trying to worship the Lord the best way they know how, it is nevertheless depressing to see the former location of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass stripped of altar, crucifix, stations, statues, etc. In the newsletter picture of the "new" church, you can see the alcoves that once held, presumably, statues of St. Joseph and Our Blessed Mother now empty. Get ready, folks, because this first symbolic act is just the tiniest foretaste of the atrocities about to be committed if the Diocese goes forward What a great offense to Our Lord and His Mother, with all the angels and saints as witnesses.
In early 2007 the developer asked a real estate agent to show us a Roman Catholic building in Mantua that had become available. Imagine what it was like for a group of devout Presbyterians to walk into a Roman Catholic church building trying to visualize what it would be like to worship in an auditorium that was presently adorned with several icons and crucifixes, and which housed three confessional booths in the back. There were several good points about the property, including the size of the main church building, a substantial parking lot located in a good residential area. However, the property also included a large church rectory with offices, six bedrooms and three large living rooms. We believed the entire property would not only be too costly for the developers to be willing to buy, but would be too costly for our congregation to maintain.Tax record information as to the transaction publicly available here.
In January of 2008 the developer asked if we would reconsider the Catholic church property if they would purchase it for us and subdivide the rectory for a separate sale. In response to this offer, we noted that before it would meet our basic needs a number of things would need to be done by the seller and the developer to bring the building up to date....We submitted these items to the developer along with the request that they pay off the balance of our OPC Loan Fund mortgage on the Glassboro property.
After what had seemed to us a great period of uncertainty, the Mantua property was acquired in our behalf and we received the keys to the building in October of 2008. The building has a basement (something we did not have in Glassboro), auditorium has more than adequate pews for our present needs, and in addition a functioning carillon and an Allan Digital Organ. [The developer agrees to do a ton of upgrade work to the property which must easily total a hundred thousand dollars.] We began worshiping in Mantua on a regular basis on November 23, 2008.
...the Lord has taught us much....After all, a building is not the church, the body of Christ is the church.
While we still continue to struggle over our financial situation in maintaining our ministry, we, nevertheless, stand overwhelmed by the fact that the Lord has taken us from a property that was purchased in 1994 for $100,000 to a property that will have cost the developers close to $1,000,000.00! ...
As you may have already guessed, the church that was sold for $900,000 (according to tax records, anyway) was the original Incarnation parish, whose history you may find here. I have a friend who lived nearby Incarnation, where she used to attend daily mass. Apparently they used to hold daily mass in the original, smaller church owing to its small size. I suppose it was considered a good location for smaller, more intimate gatherings. This friend of mine would not go to the larger, new church, built in 2002. As I understand it, many still loved the old church building and were sad to see it unnecessarily sold. The old church, after all, looked a lot like a...church. The new church isn't the ugliest I've ever seen. It is what it is, an auditorium-style church-in-the-round, 1970s style. But hey, for close to a million bucks, just how necessary is it to keep the old church?
While I feel glad for the Presbyterian congregation's good fortune, as they are merely trying to worship the Lord the best way they know how, it is nevertheless depressing to see the former location of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass stripped of altar, crucifix, stations, statues, etc. In the newsletter picture of the "new" church, you can see the alcoves that once held, presumably, statues of St. Joseph and Our Blessed Mother now empty. Get ready, folks, because this first symbolic act is just the tiniest foretaste of the atrocities about to be committed if the Diocese goes forward What a great offense to Our Lord and His Mother, with all the angels and saints as witnesses.