This Dayton church is closing after more than 150 years

Its final service is scheduled for the second week of April 2018.

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Recent years have not been kind to the church’s stretch of Salem Avenue. Abandoned properties and boarded up homes surround the once vibrant church.

Facing declining attendance, dwindling resources and an increased need for infrastructure repairs, the church started to study its future about 18 months ago, Rev. Connie McCarroll, the church's deacon for three years, told this news organization.

Credit: Teesha McClam

Credit: Teesha McClam

“We are a vital ministry and a powerful ministry, but we do it with so few people,” she said. “We are right in the city with the people who have the need. We are in a food desert.”

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Once closed, the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio will take control of St. Andrew’s property and other assets.

McCarroll said that one proposal is that the St. Andrew’s building be used as a center for local Episcopal outreach programs.

LONG HISTORY IN DAYTON 

St. Andrew traces its history back to 1865, when a group of parishioners started a Sunday school in what is now South Park. The congregation survived several moves and the Great 1913 flood before landing at its current location in 1923.

Rev. R. James Larsen, the church's priest, retired Sunday. McCarroll will remain to help the church close. The decision to close was not an easy one to made, she said.

St Andrew's hosts New Hope Christian Foundation, a ministry that serves

refugees from Rwanda and Burundi. Formed in 2011, New Hope Fellowship holds services every Sunday at St. Andrew's.

St. Andrew’s has run its Dayton Foodbank-supplied food pantry since 2008. The pantry provides food to 200 families per month.

Mary Williams, the pantry's co-director, said that it is important that programs remain in the neighborhood.

In 2016, it served 6,150 people and 2,049 households, according to its pantry report.

“These clients won’t cross the river,” Williams said.

Many don’t have cars. Williams and others say they walk, bike or take buses to the church for services.

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The church launched a baby formula program in March to help mothers when they run out of funds to feed their babies.

It has had a clothing room since 2009.

Helen Serrano, a clothing outreach volunteer, said that the St. Andrew's clothing room helps fill a very real gap year-round.

“Shoes, coats and sweaters in the winter time,” the former New York social worker said. “It is pretty comprehensive.”

In 2016, St. Andrew's clothing room served 211 adults and 181 children.

Amanda M. Romero, St. Andrew's senior warden and a church member, said that St. Andrew's fate is unfortunate, not unique.

“You hear the same storyline unfortunately all over,” she said. “Unfortunately we have an aging congregation, and the energy is not there.”

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Romero estimated that fewer than 20 people now attended the church’s weekly service. The decline has been swift in the last three years.

“It was never a big church, but I know back in the heyday there were two or three services. That was back in the ‘70s. We have declined ever since.”

Now 57, Romero has attended St. Andrew since she was 20.

Her parents, Carlos and Clarisa Romero, still live near the church in Dayton's College Hill neighborhood. They are very active at St. Andrew's .

“It hurts our heart to see the closing of the church,” Amanda Romero said. “But I tell people that we are still here (for now). We still have our Sunday service.”