Brian Shane reports for The Daily Times of Salisbury, Maryland:
OCEAN CITY — The leadership of St. Paul’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church has decided to demolish its historic rectory destroyed by arson in November, the church announced in its latest newsletter.
“This was not an easy process,” wrote the Rev. Dr. Mark Cyr in the church’s April 1 newsletter, “but the vestry realized that there are more possibilities available to us to exercise our ministries if we are not constrained with the present building.”
… “The parish is pretty evenly divided between renovating the rectory and demolishing it,” Cyr wrote. “These two are intrinsically connected, because we cannot begin the necessary work in the sanctuary without knowing what is going to happen to the rectory.
“Once we were able to define ourselves, not only as we are now, but as we are committed to being in the future, we approached the first decision in our reconstruction process — the future of the rectory,” he added.
Image: Fire destroyed the historic rectory at St. Paul’s in November. Grant L. Gursky/ENS
