How are we leaders in the neighborhood at the intersection of tradition and newness?
Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, TN
Calvary has been in downtown Memphis for almost 200 years. With strong traditions and a long history, Calvary now finds itself part of a revitalizing city center. We worked with them to envision how their historic building and property could be transformed to make them leaders in bringing life back to the neighborhood and serving their neighbors.
Together we explored:
demystifying points of entry to the space to make it more accessible and welcoming
incorporating green space to encourage connection with the surrounding area
balancing transparency and security
“Any love that the Bible might contain doesn’t matter much to the world until it comes into contact with the ordinary particulars of lives like ours. It won’t surprise many of you that I’ve had the report from feasibility study on my mind all week.
What I’ve loved about this process is the way it involves some aspects of our common life that are objective and countable, like survey response rates, project priorities and yes, dollars. But since Mieke and Erin and their team understand church, they translated all those more quantifiable things into the even-more important realms hopefulness and trust and what faithfulness to Calvary’s mission to make God’s love visible might look like in this particular place, in this particular time.”
— The Rev. Scott Walters, in an excerpt from a sermon he gave called Somebody Loves Us All
