Making Housing Happen: Faith-Based Affordable Housing Models

Churches are effectively addressing the housing crisis from Washington State to New York City-where an alliance of sixty churches has built five thousand homes for low-income homeowners, with virtually no government funding or foreclosures. This book not only presents solid theological thinking about housing, but also offers workable solutions to the current crisis: true stories by those who have made housing happen.

Editor - Jill Shook (2021)

THE EMBRACE OF BUILDINGS: A Second Look At Walkable City Neighborhoods

In a culture long enamored of the suburban ideal, Hardy invites his readers to reconsider the many advantages of living and working in walkable city neighborhoods—compact neighborhoods characterized by a fine network of pedestrian-friendly streets, mixed land uses, mixed housing types, and a full range of transit options. In addition, he investigates the role religion has played in defining American attitudes towards the city, and the difference church location makes in Christian ministry and mission.

Author - Lee Hardy (2017)

The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment

"Jacobsen sets himself two goals: to get us to attend to urban space--the space between the buildings in a city or village--and to explain why Christians in particular should care about the quality of urban space. He succeeds admirably on both counts. A fine contribution to an extremely important topic."--Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale University and University of Virginia

Author - Eric O. Jacobsen (2012)

Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith

Christians often talk about claiming our cities for Christ and the need to address urban concerns. But according to Eric Jacobsen, this discussion has remained far too abstract. Sidewalks in the Kingdom challenges Christians to gain an informed vision for the physical layout and structure of the city.

Jacobsen emphasizes the need to preserve the nourishing characteristics of traditional city life, including shared public spaces, thriving neighborhoods, and a well-supported local economy. He explains how urban settings create unexpected and natural opportunities to initiate friendship and share faith in Christ.

Author - Eric O. Jacobsen (2003)

We Aren’t Broke: Uncovering Hidden Resources for Mission and Ministry

This book is an invitation to envision a different way of putting God’s gifts to work in the world. It draws upon a remarkable story of rebirth at a Presbyterian affiliated campus ministry center at the University of Wisconsin, along with profiles of other creative social enterprises, to describe how church property and investment assets can be put to work for innovation, transformation, and financial sustainability. Theologically rooted but practically minded, it provides guidance and tools for church and nonprofit leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors of all kinds who are seeking new ways to fund and participate in God’s work in the world.

Author - Mark Elsdon (2021)

Retired, Rehabbed, Reborn: The Adaptive Reuse of America’s Derelict Religious Buildings and Schools

Retired, Rehabbed, Reborn features ten in-depth case studies of adaptive reuse outcomes for religious buildings and public schools that have achieved varying degrees of success. Several case vignettes appear within various chapters to illustrate specific points. The book is a useful tool for architects, planners, developers, and others interested in reusing these important structures.

Authors - Robert A. Simons, Gary DeWine and Larry Ledebur (2017)

Remove the Pews: Spiritual Possibilities for Sacred Spaces

“A church is both building and people, bricks and mortals. First came the attendance decline among mortals; a bricks crisis followed. Now church buildings are an endangered species. . . . This book is about that move out of denial into response. Evolutionary thinkers call such moves “adaptive.” I call them creative evolutions, adapting as we go. I call them learning to live to pray another way, another day.“

Author - Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper (2021)

Historic Houses of Worship in Peril: Conserving their Place in American Life

“In a world that is racing to knock down the old and quickly build the new, this book is a much-needed pause. - Matt Molfsky, Lead Pastor, The Gathering.”

“Thomas Frank lays out the case for how historic houses of worship serve as community anchors, symbols of neighborhood character, places of personal and collective memory, and sites of cultural identity. - Paul W. Edmondson, President and CEO, National Trust for Historic Preservation.”

Author - Thomas Frank (2020)

A Call to Rethink Dying Houses of Worship

Published in Public Square, the online journal of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), this article is co-authored by Chris Elisara, the lead for the Studio of Placemaking and chairperson of the CNU Christian Caucus. It explores four overlapping areas that congregations need to simultaneously consider in order to successfully redevelop their property for the mutual benefit of the congregation and the community they are embedded in.

The Embedded Church Podcast

You can view the podcast here. In partnership with The Embedded Church, Ormond Center is hosting a year-long podcast season exploring the theme, the call and ecology of shalom.

The first ten episodes, that is the spring season, will kick off with the podcast’s hosts, Dr. Eric Jacobsen and Sara Joy Proppe, discussing with Ormond Center’s Dr. Josh Yates and Dr. Chris Elisara three foundational concepts: the biblical understanding of shalom and why it is so important to Christian faith and life; place and its indispensable connection to human thriving; and finally placemaking—a vital activity for Christians as God’s agents of shalom in the world.

After Church Atlas

The After Church Atlas was designed as a pilot project to create an online portal and resource for the study of church closure and transformation, supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Memorial University. The pilot phase is now complete. Based on feedback from users and partners, we are archiving this pilot version, and reconfiguring the Atlas based on feedback we've received. The new platform will use ArcGis apps and tools. We plan to relaunch the Atlas in early fall.

A project by Dr. Nicholas Lynch and Dr. Barry Stephenson, Memorial University, Canada.

Affordable Housing: Resources for Churches in Gentrifying Neighborhoods

This affordable housing toolkit is organized as a menu of options for action based on the resources a church might have at its disposal—money, time, partnerships, land, buildings, and the like. See the links below. Each option is accompanied by examples, with photos, descriptions, and additional links. There are also pages that provide basic information on housing markets and affordable real estate development, suggestions for advocacy, as well as a page of resources for churches that want to bring the needs of the homeless and the housing insecure into their worship services.

Author - Dr. Lee Hardy, Calvin College and CNU Members Christian Caucus

Placemakers In Their Own Words: #1

This is John and Ash Marsh’s POWERFUL testimony of how Jesus personally healed them, set them on their Christian faith journey, and why and how placemaking is part of that journey. As we say at the Studio for Placemaking “we participate in, and are agents of, God’s shalom, particularly though placemaking. John and Ash’s story is one expression, writ large, of the “why” that motivates the Studio for Placemaking.

Looking At A Big Picture

This TEDx talk by Andrew Himes provides a big picture perspective on the importance of placemaking, namely the world is in a phase of rapid mass urbanization where over the next 40 years we will need to build another 2 trillion square feet of building space to accommodate the billions more living in cities by 2060. This is equivalent to building a new New York City—all 5 boroughs of it, every 35 days for forty years! We are at a built environment and climate crisis crossroads that the church and Christians should be wrestling with. The Studio for Placemaking is working on this through a lens of Christian faith applied to urban design, planning, materials solutions, policy, finance/development, etc., all blended into building the cities we need and love for all.

Good Placemaking Is Good Economics

Wes Craiglow, a city planner, shares his passion for creating communities for people by thinking like a farmer and considering urban "crop yield."

Craiglow’s talk explains why traditional urbanism—mixed used, walkable, and compact urban design is not only the best spacial design for people and the planet, but also the best economic design for our cities, towns, and neighborhoods.

Craiglow is currently the executive director, of the Urban Land Institute, Northwest Arkansas.

We Are Not Just Economic Creatures: Dave Kresta’s Vision of Economic Development

Published in Strong Towns, Dave Kresta discusses how we develop vibrant local economies that are good not for the shareholders of a corporation headquartered in some distant state, but for the people who actually live in the neighborhood.

Jesus on Main Street

God loves just economies, but sadly the invisible hand of the market has chiseled huge cracks in our communities. Fortunately, Jesus announced freedom for the poor and oppressed, and by taking on his mantle we have a role to play in helping establish just economies here and now! Jesus on Main Street provides church leaders and church planters with a broad overview of Community Economic Development (CED), with practical steps to lead your church in following Jesus into those cracks.

Author - David Kresta (2021)

Ormond Center Better Cities Film Festival

You can learn more here. The Ormond Center is teaming up with the Better Cities Film Festival because we both believe “a story can change a city,” or a town, a rural community, or a neighborhood.

Stories, scholars tell us, sink deep into our bones and picture for us what constitutes the good life. We then we lean into those stories as characters in the narrative we’ve absorbed. Where in today’s world are we getting the stories and narratives that inspire the cities, towns, and rural communities we’re imagining, designing, and building today? Are today’s city and community builders influenced by stories that inspire them to design and build places and communities in ways best fit for human thriving? We can do only what we dream. We can build only what we can imagine. So we better have good stories to kickstart and shape our imaginations.

The mission of the Ormond Center Better Cities Film Festival is to curate, present, and celebrate the very best films on the theme of making better cities, towns, rural communities, and neighborhoods. We are especially interested in telling stories that will inspire the Christian community and support the emerging field of Christian placemaking, which is the art of designing and making places that are commensurate with human thriving for all.

How to plan for the post-pandemic future of church buildings

Published in Faith & Leadership. The number of congregations closing could rise sharply after the pandemic. The time to explore using church real estate wisely is now.

The Promise of "House of Worship Districts"

Published in Strong Towns, this article offers an approach for understanding how underused houses of worship can come together and contribute to strengthening their community.