Good News: Evangelicals Preserve Another Church

There is good news to report this week from the Nation’s capital. A major church building seen as a potential condominium conversion will remain a church through a purchase agreement with a non-denominational evangelical congregation.

The current site of Church of the Holy City, completed in 1896 as the National Swedenborgian Church, will be the new home of Union City Church. The latter was launched in September 2021 and has leased space at the Miracle Theater on Barracks Row near Eastern Market for the past year for its two Sunday services.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth take place in our congregation to the point where we are close to outgrowing this current location [Miracle Theater] as well,” Union City Church’s Delaney Woodward noted in the church’s purchase announcement.

Watch Union City Church’s video announcement on Instagram here.

The purchase agreement is a victory for DC’s Sacred Spaces Conservancy which works with congregations to collaborate in preserving historic church buildings. The nonprofit organization last year facilitated a connection that led to the Church of the Advent, an Anglican congregation launched in 2007, purchasing the historic Third Baptist Church in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington. Sacred Spaces worked alongside Union City Church to help them submit an offer that was accepted over five others from developers that would have ended a church presence in the landmark Swedenborgian building.

Built at the turn of the 19th century, construction of the gothic revival church building was supervised by Paul J. Pelz, famous for his work as the primary architect for the Library of Congress.

The structure’s owners, Church of the Holy City, are a smaller congregation looking to downsize from the 15,170-square-foot structure and 350-seat sanctuary. The property was listed for sale in July with an asking price of $5 million and sits along a stretch of 16th Street Northwest less than a mile north of the White House alongside stately edifices including Foundry United Methodist Church.

Union City is among a long list of evangelical churches that have found a home ministering within the District of Columbia. When I first arrived in DC more than two decades ago as a young Capitol Hill staffer, only about a half dozen evangelical congregations were situated in the District: National Community Church (planted in 1996), Christ Our Shepherd, Capitol Hill Baptist Church and National Presbyterian among them. Many young adults traveled to suburban congregations in Virginia and Maryland.

Within a decade, that number had grown to more than 40 churches with names readers will recognize: Grace DC, Church of the Resurrection, The District Church and Redemption Hill. In the subsequent decade, congregations including The King’s Church, Anacostia River Church, Grace Capital City, Passion City Church, Waterfront Church and Antioch DC were all launched and successfully took root. These are just pieces of a thriving religious and urban renewal in Washington, many of which conduct worship services in languages other than English.

What a cause for rejoicing as each of these congregations reach both new arrivals and longtime District residents with the Gospel message! Here’s hoping that Sacred Spaces DC can continue to facilitate fruitful connections between congregations old and new.