BRATTLEBORO — With expenses outpacing contributions, the First Baptist Church's decision to sell a valuable stained-glass window caught the national press's attention and triggered an outpouring of donations and community concern.
Will the new donations be enough to keep the window in the church?
“We'd like to keep the window, and it's what we're working towards, but it's too soon to tell,” says Trustee Karen Davis.
The 88-member church's finances have been ravaged by declining membership. When the current building was dedicated in 1868, the First Baptist Society had 412 members, according to Mary Cabot's Annals of Brattleboro history.
Selling the one-of-a-kind, 9-foot-tall window, with an estimated value of $75,000, is not the church's first attempt to rebuild finances.
Louis Comfort Tiffany helped revitalize and reinvent the art of stained glass. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York describes him as “one of the most versatile and talented American artists working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”
According to the museum's timeline of art history, “Tiffany and his early rival, John La Farge, revolutionized the look of stained glass, which had remained essentially unchanged since medieval times when craftsmen utilized flat panes of white and colored glass with details painted with glass paints before firing and leading.”
The two artists “experimented with new types of glass and achieved a more varied palette with richer hues and greater density. By 1881, each had patented an opalescent glass, a unique American phenomenon that featured a milky, opaque, and sometimes rainbow-hued appearance with the introduction of light.”
Three years ago, the trustees sold the parsonage and recently they liquidated a number of endowments.
“We need more paying members - that's the realistic end of it,” Trustee Sylvia Seitz says.
According to Seitz, the church needs a conservative annual budget of $150,000 to cover a full-time pastor, administrative assistant, heating, and insurance. To cut costs, Pastor Suzanne Andrews agreed to a part-time salary, and the church eliminated the sexton's position, bringing the budget to $102,000.
But the cuts were not enough, and when slim finances threatened the church's other programs, the trustees asked the congregation for permission to sell the window depicting Saint John the Divine.
The thin finances threatened the town's overflow homeless shelter at the church, open in the winter months from 5:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. when the Morningside Shelter is full.
“We are emotionally and spiritually invested in the homeless shelter,” Davis says.
Grace's Kitchen also feeds the hungry in the community on Wednesday nights. The church also serves as headquarters for Brattleboro Pastoral Counseling and provides meeting space for Alcoholics Anonymous.
Seitz and Davis say that the church donates the use of the building for these programs. Some programs like AA give “at-will” donations, but those funds are not enough to offset extra costs such as heating.
Despite the financial setbacks, the generosity comes because “American Baptists are mission-oriented, more than wanting gold-leaf in the church,” Seitz says.
According to Davis, sale of the window and gifts from a recent estate could carry the church through 2011.
“It's only wise for us to consider what we could get for the window,” says Davis. She noted the church also considered selling its bell, a similarly traumatic decision that would not generate as much revenue.
Coverage strikes a chord
News of the church's plight hit The Boston Globe Nov. 23. From Boston, it was a short hop, skip, and jump to the Associated Press and finally national broadcast on ABC News in December.
Responses to the decision vary. Some comments posted on sites like iBrattleboro and ABCNews.com commend the congregation for choosing their spiritual mission over a material window. Other postings worry about the community's loss if the window leaves Brattleboro.
The story struck a chord and spurred people into action.
Even into the new year, donations to save the window arrive in a steady stream. A group of concerned Brattleboro community members - including Greg Worden of Vermont Artisan Designs and other representatives from the Historical Society, the Chamber of Commerce, and Building a Better Brattleboro - approached the trustees to see how the community could help the church keep the window in town.
“We wanted something we could do as a unit to help with funds, keep the window in town and help with the homeless shelter at the same time,” Worden says.
The outpouring of support may alter the trustees' plans for the window.
“We're in flux,” says Seitz. “If money is coming in, that's sort of like a bid too.”
Seitz and Davis agree that as much as they would like the window to stay, it is too early to foretell the outcome.
“We are very grateful for the donations and prayers and consideration of the people sending money,” says Seitz.
Approximately $4,000 in donations have come in so far, says Davis. “They are generous. Especially those coming from strangers,” says Seitz.
Davis describes many of the letters accompanying the donations as touching and heartfelt, a community reaction that Worden also describes as a “generosity of spirit.”
The Estey family remodeled the building from 1895 to 1900 to accommodate an Estey organ, still in use today. The Tiffany window was dedicated in 1910 to the memory of Levi Fuller, who served as governor from 1892 to 1894 and who was the husband of Abby Estey.
The details of how the purchase would work remain in the air. A buyer might purchase and remove the window. The church has described the concept of seeking a donation that would keep the window in place for at least five years. Worden and his group have proposed purchasing it on behalf of the town and moving it to a public space.
Davis says, regardless of the final decision, the church must rebuild its finances to meet short- and long-term needs. The trustees welcome suggestions and volunteers.
“We don't know how long this congregation will exist, but we're stepping out in faith,” says Davis.