This week on the popular Facebook page Churches of Tasmania ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/1906683362994760/ ), it was pointed out by one of the page's followers that that the wonderful Ross Church in the small township of Ross in the Midlands of Tasmania, is being put up for public sale by the current owners, the Uniting Church of Australia (which, occasionally for brevity (Hah! I glance at the length of this lengthy post, and laugh in the face of brevity) I shall abbreviate to UCA.)
As is fitting for such, there has been many 😢,😮, and 😡 reactions to the post; it is a sad thing for a place of worship to be removed access-wise from a small community, of which there are quite likely descendants of the original church-family still living within it.
After a number of comments ranging from shock, disappointment, "they shouldn't be allowed to sell heritage buildings", "I almost got married there", a demand that it doesn't become a café, and a comment from the Page owner that stating that "The sale of this church has been on the cards for some time now. Ross has also lost its Anglican church."
(The Anglican Church in Ross was sold to a private buyer in January of this year, despite a community bid to the Anglican Church to keep it in community hands. ( https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-16/historic-st-johns-anglican-church-in-ross-up-for-sale/101538998 ))
I (being me) made the following comment on the post: "Another sad one, but the stark reality is that even with 5.2% of the Ross population claiming Uniting Church as their religious affiliation (twice the percentage of Tasmania['s population percentage claiming UCA affiliation], according to the 2021 census), that's only 15 people in a population of 291 (within that 291, the median age is 61, there are 91 families, with an average of 1.6 children per family). This doesn't account for those living outside the town, but it also doesn't indicate how many of those 15 are financially in a position to contribute to running and maintenance for that mighty structure; going on the above figures, 5-7 of those 15 are possibly children (yes, these are paper napkin calculations). So, the harsh financial reality has obviously played a part here. I have no idea what the Redress obligations on the Uniting Church in Tasmania are, or if that is even a consideration regarding the sale."
The Churches of Tasmania Page owner (who, for full transparency, I have gone on numerous wonderful Church photo-shooting adventures on, and I consider a good friend) responded to my comment with: "Yes, that is the sad reality. Also add to this the enormous cost of maintaining and insurance of these buildings. The Memorial Baptist Church on Wellington Street, Launceston, for example, has a $45000 pa. insurance bill. As Reverend Alan Thompson said on the closure and sale of the Devonport Uniting Church "when people invested a lot of themselves into a building they needed to be careful not to become worshippers of the bricks and mortar"."
And then, more than a day later, another response to my "harsh reality, devil's advocate" comment was posted. It came, not from an individual account, but from the Facebook Account of the Bicheno Community Church. Bicheno is located on the East Coast of Tasmania.
The response from them to my post was this: "what is the monetary Value of fragmentation of a community whose heritage has volunteered land, labour,maintenance and service to be usurped by a ‘Christian Organisation’ such as UCA property trust who hoodwink community for the glitter of $$$$$$$$?"
When I read this this morning, I was taken aback. My initial thought was very Monty Pythonesque: "I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!" but I refrained from writing that as a response, and instead went to make the kids lunches and see them off for the day. I do not know in what capacity representative-wise the actual author has regarding the denominations that meet in their neat little weatherboard building, but later today, as another symptom of my mental make-up, I wrote the following response ( which I will refrain from posting on the Churches of Tasmania Facebook page unless my friend especially wants the potential extra grief my consolidated thoughts may provoke) to "the Bicheno Community Church":
I wish to state at the onset, that I am autistic. I mention this for two reasons. One, my mind very much thinks in numbers - in balances of plusses and minuses, of tipping points where something is viable or not viable. This may feel like I only deal in absolutes, and everything is a numbers game ignoring any feelings or emotions. It is a commonly held falsehood that Autistic people have little or no feeling. Those who know me well know that oftentimes the opposite is true. My love for this state's faith-architecture is great, and I am intimately and personally familiar with the pain and suffering caused to congregants when threatened with their beloved place of worship being sold from under them. The feeling of betrayal to members both present and past, is so very real and very traumatic. I feel it. It saddens me greatly. However, there are still those balances in play, and it is a sad and often painful reality that so often we are faced with the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. I elaborate on that later.
The second reason I mention that I am Autistic is to identify that I find it very hard to determine personal intent, both in face-to-face (please don't ask me to look you in the eye; it is physically painful!) Interactions, and also filtering nuance in non-face-to-face interactions. Like Social Media! I therefore can't tell whether your response "addressed" to me is adversarially "directed" at me, personally -as it initially confrontingly (and, may I say, most "unchristian-like") felt- or actually nebulously directed at the UCA. The latter seems odd to me, coming from a Facebook page for a building that, as far as I can tell, still services UCA members? I should stress that I don't identify as a member of the UCA, but find it incongruous (other than the fact that the Ross church in question is currently owned by the UCA) that you single out your "hoodwink community for the glitter of $$$$$$$$?" accusation to the UCA. My understanding is that the Bicheno Community Church is currently(?) used by the Anglican (edit 18/11/23 it seems only for Christmas and Easter currently), Uniting, and Catholic church congregations for services. Yet the other two denominations you (still?) accommodate are both very much "guilty" of historically and presently selling off community-cherished real estate!
Please forgive me for theme the Autistic distraction, but it got me extremely curious. To play devil's advocate yet again: according to the 2021 census, Bicheno has a population of 797 (almost three times that of Ross), with 129 Anglicans, 79 Catholics, and an estimated 21 Uniting Church members. This makes up a rough figure of 229 people possibly utilising the Bicheno Community Church (fifteen times the number for Ross!) Even with the likelihood of that regular utilisation being less than 229, even half that would be in a reasonable position to justify continued operations as a religious meeting place, and likely able to maintain such a beautiful and historical building such as your Anglican-and- Presbyterian-built 1882 wooden building is.
You are certainly blessed by having it built from materials still easily obtainable for maintenance, and a still-common skill set fairly easily accessible -possibly even by tradies within your three flocks- for such maintenance. I do not mean to imply that maintenance costs and skill-requirements for Bicheno's house of worship are insignificant. However, when compared to the maintenance requirements of the the slate roof alone, of Ross's 250 to 300 seat edifice - before considering the very rare and expensive artisanal skill required in maintaining the impressive, but fragile, lime-mortared dressed sandstone of walls, buttresses, and magnificent spire (the Wesleyan Methodists of Ross in 1885 where an ambitious lot!), the current small population of Ross, with its 15(?) Uniting Church members are at a distinct financial and skills disadvantage. Coupled with the insurance costs -with the threat of stone and slate-falls as just two factors to take into account- Bicheno and Ross's circumstances, I think we can all agree, are very much different! In a broader sense the Uniting Church in Tasmania - certainly in my observation during personal travels around the state - has its hands very full of maintenance-heavy "real estate", many with far greater numbers of potential congregants.
What do they do? Do they continue to throw money at a grand, stunningly beautiful, but extremely costly building with few congregants, whilst other larger Tasmanian UNA congregations have their church buildings decay around them? And this, again -and I stress once more that I do not know if this was a deciding factor in the building's sale- is ignoring the Uniting Church of Australia's potentially enormous National Redress financial obligations (see https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/10/uniting-church-has-faced-2500-reports-of-child-sexual-abuse-royal-commission-hears ).
It is all extremely emotive. I feel it. I honestly do. I have sat quietly in Ross Church- not as a member of the Uniting Church (or Anglican, or Presbyterian)- and looked up at those fine timber ceilings, and admired man's exquisite handy-work whilst contemplating God's far-greater handy-work and my tiny place within it. It was reverent, and I certainly felt far closer to Divinity than I had in a long while within the walls of my "home church"- with its noisy kids (a number of them mine!), unbearably-loud (there's the Autism again) chatterings, gossips, and boisterous conversations of "brothers" and "sisters", its very plain off-white ceiling and walls, a very plain and understated single row of organ pipes, and windows bereft of coloured artisanal glasswork. However, it was peaceful and quiet in Ross for a reason. For a good ten minutes I had the church entirely to myself - and then another coach-load of tourists came bustling in, before being whisked off to the wonderful bakery and I was alone with my thoughts. One of those was, "I know I made a contribution to the donation box for continued maintenance. I wonder how many of that whirlwind of tourists did?" Another was the sad fact that, for a brief moment, there were more people in the pews than any Sunday for a long time.
So, Bicheno Community Church, you cry accusations of UCA money-grabbing -which may well be quite justified- and yet these church sales are going on all over the State, the Country, and throughout the world, through pretty much every denomination. Do you have a sound suggestion for retaining Ross Church as a place of worship? There are countless similar communities throughout the world who would like to hear your suggestion if you do, rather than yet more unconstructive accusations that could easily be misconstrued as pearl-clutching.
I've got nothing. And my keyboard has run out of commas, semicolons, hyphens, and parentheses, so here endeth my TED talk.
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*ADDENDUM*
The Northern Midlands Courier posted a comment on the Facebook post, after I had completed this Blog post. I confess that I feel smuggly vindicated. 😈
They posted "From earlier in the year . . .", with the following image:
