Our parish in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, never imagined purchasing the property next door, a family-owned grocery store, and continuing its lease. Yet that is what happened in 2021.
On the afternoon before our monthly vestry meeting in January 2021, I received an unexpected email from a local realtor: the property adjacent to our church was for sale. It was home for nearly 70 years to a neighborhood grocery store.. The question was, were we interested in buying?
This simple question launched St. Paul’s into a three-month season of prayerful, parishwide discernment, which in fact did result in our purchase of the property and the continuation of the grocery store’s lease. But even more, our parish’s sense of identity, vocation, and mission were formed as we considered foundational questions: Who are we? What gifts has God entrusted to us? How is God calling us to steward those gifts for the sake of Christ’s kingdom? This discernment became the foundation for our 2021 strategic plan, our revised mission statement, and our emerging identity as a teaching parish.
Founded in the 1950s, Jr’s Foodland has a customer base that has spanned four generations. The property was owned by the H.G. Hill Company, and was leased over the decades to several family grocers. With deep roots in the area, the current business owners, Andy and Susan Haynes, took over the lease more than a decade ago. “We have customers who have been coming to us for years from our hometown of Unionville,” Susan said. “They bring their coolers and stock up on their shopping trips.”
Our church had wondered whether one day we might add the property to our campus. In the 1990s, the congregation and diocese explored if the land might be part of a plan for future parking or a day school to serve our growing congregation.
Over that weekend in January 2021, our vestry very quickly determined to make an offer. We are grateful for the board of the H.G. Hill Company who accepted our offer, which was one of several. Once our offer was accepted, we had 90 days for due diligence regarding the property, while also engaging the entire parish in a prayerful, transparent discernment process.
I am incredibly proud of our vestry and lay leaders who led us in a prayer-steeped, multi-layered, broadly participatory discernment process, including:
- Six prayer meetings around the altar.
- A vestry retreat utilizing Dale Carnegie’s mission and vision discernment exercises.
- Three discernment questions adapted from Jim Collins’s Good to Great and the Social Sectors, which shaped our introspection.
- Five Christian education discernment forums, during which we worked to recognize the heart of our character, the gifts God has uniquely given us, and the unique calling God has placed on St. Paul’s.
- Three pages of FAQs that grew to five pages as conversations progressed.
- Seven town hall meetings, in person and online, during which we heard from voices across the parish.
- More than 12 parishioners donating their professional expertise.
- 16 vestry meetings, Executive Committee, or Parish Discernment Committee meetings.
- 293 Individual parishioners engaged in the process through meeting attendance, survey response, or email communication.
- 745 email addresses to which property discernment emails were sent.
As the parish discerned together, we noted that with the closing of a nearby chain grocery store, Jr’s Foodland is the only source of high-quality groceries for this confluence of three neighborhoods. We learned later that about 10 percent of the customers is walk-in traffic coming from the university, the historically Black, and the downtown neighborhoods that are served by the grocery store. One elderly gentleman at checkout showed his custom-cut order of thick-sliced bacon, which he said has been his breakfast “for nearly 80 years.”
We learned that Jr’s Foodland is Murfreesboro’s only independently owned grocery store. We learned later that it is the epitome of a family business. Andy’s sister Beth is the Jr’s store manager, and Andy and Susan’s daughter Emma serves as personal assistant for the business. Sons Zach and Luke help lead the family businesses, and Zach’s farm business is the store’s sweet-corn supplier in the summertime.
The turning point for me was the moment when, in one of our town hall meetings, a matriarch of the congregation finally spoke. “It seems,” she said, “that we are talking about doing something we have never done before. In the past, we have always purchased properties to meet St. Paul’s needs. For the first time, now we are talking about purchasing a property for the sake of our neighbors.”
In the end, the vestry voted to purchase 323 E. Main Street. It was a sobering decision, and not unanimous. Coming out of the pandemic, it felt risky. But it is proving to be a source of blessing, both to our neighbors and to St. Paul’s. The lease fully pays for the costs associated with the property, and one day could be a source of revenue. We feel that God has been very good to us, going out ahead of us and asking us to trust and follow.
Anna Stewart, our steady and wise senior warden at the time, wrote to the congregation:
The opportunity to purchase 323 E. Main St., the Jr’s Foodland property adjacent to our church campus, was a once-in-a-lifetime and wholly unexpected opportunity that arose in early 2021. Whereas previous property purchases were made primarily for the needs of our parish, the decision to purchase this property was made in order to serve our downtown community where our church is truly rooted. Our Vestry listened to you, sought God’s will, and made a mission-driven decision to purchase.
For the foreseeable future, that mission is simple: to maintain a grocery store for our community. While the financial details were important considerations for your Vestry during the discernment process, we also prayed to hear God’s will for this property and the future of St. Paul’s. We have learned through this process that we are a congregation seeking to make Jesus real to our community, to evangelize, to gather, and to care for our brothers and sisters around us.
So the way we think and talk about this property, this purchase, whether within our parish or within the larger community, is important. To our church, this property is not simply an acquisition or a space for future parking. This is a family business which employs our town’s residents and provides our neighbors with access to fresh foods. This is a mission-focused expansion of St. Paul’s impact in our community. With the decision to purchase 323 E. Main St., we trust that God is guiding us, as we seek to grow God’s kingdom in downtown Murfreesboro.
The Rev. Kristine Blaess, DMin, is rector at St. Paul’s Church, Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She spent her first decade of ordained ministry in rural Idaho serving congregations in majority LDS communities. Her doctoral work emerged from her desire to help congregations flourish as their leaders grow ever deeper as disciples and disciplers of Jesus Christ.
