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Glory Beyond Buildings: A Theology of Capital Campaigns

In May 2023, in addition to my full-time ministry as chaplain of Saint James School in Hagerstown, Maryland, I became the quarter-time vicar of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Boonsboro, three miles south of the school. It is a small and quaint building, yet, in its own way, grand. Years of Eucharistic liturgies celebrated at its altar, Daily Office services prayed in its nave, and sacred music sung by choirs past and present have sustained generations of God’s people in south Washington County, Maryland. Above the altar is a window depicting St. Mark the Evangelist, reminding the parish of its mission to hear and spread “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). As the church reached its 175th anniversary, I was soon approached about a capital campaign. My hope, in this essay, is not to offer practical suggestions or strategies, but rather a theological reflection.

In many ways, the founders’ choice of St. Mark as the parish’s patron reflects aspects of the 175 years through which it has journeyed with God in faith. For instance, to read through Mark’s gospel is to find it both short and fast-paced. Mark presents Jesus as One always “on the go.” He moves “immediately” from here to there, to this and that place and person, preaching and teaching and making his way toward Jerusalem and the cross. This is why Jesus always speaks of God’s kingdom — because He does not want anyone to miss out on it. “Keep awake,” Mark reports Jesus saying, “for you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33).

The spiritual foundation of St. Mark’s Church was laid on October 8, 1848, in a small stone schoolhouse in nearby Fairplay, Maryland. Robert Harper Clarkson (1826-84), a deacon and faculty member at the College of Saint James (as it was known then), led the first Episcopal liturgies for residents. It proved to be a thriving missionary venture. Clarkson’s evangelism was successful to the point that the next months brought a determination among the residents to establish themselves as an Episcopal parish and raise money for a church building. James Thomas Notley Maddox (1810-87), a physician and the parish’s principal lay founder, gave one acre of his Woodley Farm estate to the parish for the church. A construction contract was signed with a local carpenter by February 1849. William Rollinson Whittingham (1805-79), the Fourth Bishop of Maryland, laid the building’s cornerstone that April. And on July 25, 1849, being the Feast of St. James the Apostle, Whittingham returned to consecrate the completed building under Mark’s patronage. Like Mark’s gospel, in an astoundingly short time — 291 days — the parish organized itself and raised the money for, built, and had consecrated its church building.[1]

Another distinctive aspect of Mark’s gospel is how he starts many of the stories he tells about Jesus with the word And. It is a word of connection. Similarly, the fact that the parish’s church building remains the only one within which it has conducted Christian worship for 175 years represents the connection of today’s members with those past and the continuance of God’s Word teaching, healing, and saving still. I think of Dr. Maddox traveling down the mown path from Woodley Farm to the church on Sunday mornings to hear the Word of God and receive the Blessed Sacrament. I think about the church nave functioning as a hospital for wounded soldiers after the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day fought during the Civil War only six miles away. I think of all the enslaved whose labor built the historic space, who were sent to the upstairs balcony, which remains. They now rest in the church’s historic graveyard, and I, the parish’s first black priest, stand on their shoulders.

These historic connections still affect the parish. A letter to Dr. Maddox’s descendants from one of his daughters, written shortly before her death in the 1930s to remain engaged with St. Mark’s and ensure its care, speaks to a founding family’s continuing commitment to the parish’s mission to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Jesus Christ. Its role as a Civil War hospital for wounded Union and Confederate soldiers reminds us all how, when everything is said and done, we are cared for and loved by the same God. And the still visible slave balcony is our call to learn from the past, repent of past offenses done against others, and respect everyone’s dignity. God is using aspects of St. Mark’s original building to teach his people what love is, how we are to love, and why love is important.

It was because of these past connections, the lessons they still teach current parishioners and others, and a wish for them to continue teaching in the future, that spurred the desire for a capital campaign. The New Testament is consistent in its teaching that the church is not a building but Christ’s people. As such, Christ calls his Church to preach and live out the Gospel in ways that restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ (Book of Common Prayer 1979, p. 855). Through the Church, Christ offers an invitation: come and find rest and salvation in the living God.

While having dinner with one of Saint Mark’s newest parishioners a little while ago, I asked him what encouraged him to join the parish. He spoke of the parish’s friendly, welcoming, and small nature, and the “holy feeling” he felt being in the historic church. His words helped me see the evangelistic mission of not only St. Mark’s, but all Christian capital campaigns. By investing in the preservation of the structures God has blessed us to gather in, we can keep strong the foundation of the buildings through which God speaks to those searching for him, inviting them to join us in ministry to others. As our communities grow, they become stronger in God.

When the capital campaign committee and I first met and discussed our goals, we saw the campaign’s potential to be an outreach effort. Given St. Mark’s significance in Washington County, Maryland’s history, principally in Civil War and African American history and the internment of major 19th- and 20th-century county residents in our churchyard, we set the goal of starting new relationships with county, regional, and state historical organizations. Not only is this increasing St. Mark’s visibility throughout the county, but it is bringing a greater realization of our continuing function as a worshiping community and efforts to engage with our neighbors. Our hope is that the campaign will be a successful means through which St. Mark’s will ensure the standing of its historic structure for years to come and reach out to others with the greater love of God.

Thus, Christian capital campaigns should always be evangelical in scope and missional in purpose. The ecclesial symbolism of our buildings is just one of the means God uses to incline people’s hearts toward his greater glory. Our church buildings can and should offer testimony that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, incarnate in Jesus Christ, is the one true God. As Solomon prayed at the dedication of the First Temple, our prayer should be that when people pray within our buildings, God will hear their prayers and forgive (cf. 1 Kgs. 8:30).

But our respective churches’ brick-and-mortar buildings and what we experience in their walls cannot be the one and only thing. We must go forth from them in Christian charity and service, taking the One we meet inside them out into the world for others to meet and see. To gather in our local buildings, hear God’s Word, and be nourished by him in the Church’s sacraments is to encounter the means through which God gives us grace to bear witness to his enduring love throughout this world that is in much need of him. God sets his glory beyond our buildings above the heavens (cf. Ps. 8:2).

As I continue leading my first capital campaign, the important point that has been reinforced to me is how our buildings should help proclaim our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died, risen, and coming again with power and great glory. Not only should our buildings be houses of prayer for all people, but also structures for them to come in, encounter God’s grace, and go back out into the world witnessing to his salvific work. They should help us see something far greater, leading us to exclaim: “O Lord God, there is no God like you” (cf. 1 Kgs. 8:23).

May all of us involved in Christian capital campaigns be thankful for everything God has done for us and others within our sacred spaces. And may our lives become even more pleasing in God’s sight than the beauty of our structures, his holy houses of prayer.

[1] Charles R. McGinley, The Story of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Washington County, Maryland, 1849-1974 (Tri-State Printing, Inc., 1974), pp. 8-11.

The Rev. Dr. Brandt Montgomery is the Chaplain of Saint James School in Hagerstown, Maryland and Vicar of St. Mark's Episcopal Church (Lappans Road) in Boonsboro, Maryland.

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