How One Pastor Is Helping Struggling Churches Keep Their Doors Open

Late last month, two days before Christmas, the Rev. Dr. Katrina D. Foster, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, was showing off her church’s recent renovations. The neo-Gothic church was built in 1891, and the original blue, vaulted ceiling; wooden pews; stained-glass windows; and a Jardine & Son pipe organ all looked relatively new.

“On Dec. 7 we had a huge rededication service,” said Pastor Foster, 56, who walked around the church with quick, sprightly steps and could not stop beaming. “It was the same day as Notre-Dame had theirs.”

Since 1994, when Pastor Foster was ordained, she has become known for her work turning around churches whose physical buildings and congregations are on the verge of collapse. She does it by community organizing and by building financial support for the church among churchgoers and the wider neighborhood.

“She’s often been entrusted with congregations that are struggling financially,” said the Rev. John Flack, pastor of Our Savior’s Atonement Lutheran Church in Manhattan. “She’s been able to do some pretty amazing stuff not just to keep them alive and keep them going, but even to thrive.”

She has mostly helped churches that she has led as a pastor. But other congregations have also recruited her as a consultant. “I have been invited to meet with congregations to talk about financial stewardship, evangelism, discipleship and building housing,” she said.

In November, Pastor Foster met with the leadership team of Our Savior’s, where, Pastor Flack said, she stressed the importance of showing the congregants that even small contributions could make an impact.

“If you are not able to give that much — say you can give 50 and someone else can give 5,000 — the weight of that $50 is even greater than the weight of the 5,000 because it shows that people who are struggling are still investing,” he said.

When Pastor Foster arrived in Greenpoint in 2015, the Gilded Age building was crumbling. There were holes in the walls, plaster falling from the ceiling and loose paint chips everywhere.

“The interior of the building was an evangelism issue,” she explained. “How do you share the good news of Jesus when people are looking around at falling paint, and it looks terrible, and people don’t want their kids here because they don’t want them eating lead paint?”

Indeed, the congregation was dwindling. “We had 15 members,” said Pastor Foster. (The state of disrepair was also stripping them of potential revenue, she said. For example, two television shows wanted to film in the church but backed away once lead was discovered.)

It took Pastor Foster nine years, but she eventually was able to renovate the bathrooms, replace the plumbing and electrical systems, and, most recently, raise the hundred of thousands of dollars needed to restore the church’s interior. The funds came from members — there are now 80 — and from the wider community.

“There are people who live down the street who don’t go to the church who bring us a check every year because they see what we are doing,” she said.

St. John’s Lutheran Church is now a hub for the neighborhood, hosting Scouts meetings, a community meal that feeds almost 500 people a week and 12-step programs. (Pastor Foster, a recovering addict, has been in recovery for 34 years.) In 2017, “Beardo,” an Off Broadway play, rehearsed and performed in the church.

“They wanted a falling-down-looking place,” explained the pastor, laughing. “It was like, ‘Here you go.’”

A Lack of Business Skills

Keeping churches open today is not an easy task, said Richie Morton, the owner of the Church Financial Group, a company that advises churches and religious nonprofit organizations on their finances.

There are fewer people going to church, he explained. “The demand is not there,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is the culture we live in. In the post-Christian society, fewer people are going to church, and even the church people are going less often.”

“There are going to be more and more churches that face some tough decisions,” he said. Indeed, some researchers predict that tens of thousands of churches will close across the United States in the next decade.

It does not help, he added, that the leaders with the task of keeping churches open — the pastors — do not always have business skills or passions.

“A lot of the pastors don’t even want to learn the business side,” Mr. Morton said. “They didn’t get into this profession for that. They have this wonderful dream, this calling, to feed the hungry in town and to write wonderful sermons. But to do those things they need money coming in. They have to find ways to find supporters and support out in the community.”

Pastor Foster, who said she was called to the job at the age of 4 when she served as an acolyte at her family’s church in North Florida and sang the pastor’s parts, believes she has a solution: Make people feel connected to the church spiritually or communally, and the resources will arrive.

“I always say we don’t actually have any money issues,” she said. “We have faith issues that show up in our finances.”

Pastor Foster learned this lesson at the age of 26 when she was posted at Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx, a small and, at the time, mostly Caribbean-born congregation.

“I was young, I was Southern, and the members were deeply suspicious of me, and rightfully so,” she said. “The buildings were falling apart, they had fewer than 20 people, and I was like, ‘OK, what do I do now?’”

Her conclusion: Follow in Jesus’ footsteps. “Jesus organized people, resources and power,” she explained.

She went door to door in the community, asking people what they needed and how she could help. When a school required budget to fix holes in a fence, she helped call a news conference where she held up clear bags of used condoms and needles collected from the schoolyard. When children were being hit by speeding cars, she called the Bronx Department of Transportation commissioner directly and implored him to install speed bumps.

Savita Ramdhanie, 51, who works as a social worker in the Bronx and was a member of the church, recalled being shocked by the pastor’s willingness to get her hands dirty.

“I don’t know if I was impressed or I was like, ‘You are going to get yourself killed,’” she said. “I was like: ‘Listen, this ain’t where you are from. This is the Bronx. You can’t go chasing people down or talk to drug dealers late at night.’ But she would do those things.”

When congregants voiced concerns for her safety, the pastor would “remind us about her belts in karate,” Ms. Ramdhanie said.

The more community members saw value in the church, the more they invested in it. Pastor Foster grew church membership from 20 to 120. Annual giving went from $8,000 to $72,000, which helped them invest in three new roofs, three new boilers, a home for girls who had been in foster care and a tutoring program.

Her time at Fordham was not without its controversy, however. In 2007, after she disclosed that she had married a woman in a religious ceremony (gay marriage was not legal at the time) and that the two were raising a child together, Pastor Foster, along with other gay and lesbian clergy, faced the possibility of being defrocked by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The country’s largest Lutheran denomination, it then permitted openly gay pastors to serve but prohibited them from being in same-sex relationships. (Eventually, Pastor Foster was allowed to stay in the church; she and her partner are now legally married. The church itself has since closed.)

In 2008, Pastor Foster was asked by Robert Rimbo, then a bishop, to move to the Hamptons, on the eastern tip of Long Island, where she took charge of two churches on the brink of closure: the Hamptons Lutheran Parish of Incarnation Lutheran Bridgehampton and St. Michael’s in Amagansett.

“Incarnation had some money but no people,” said Pastor Foster. “St. Michael’s had some people but no money.”

To build community support for the churches, she started a television show in which she interviewed local politicians (she pressed Lee Zeldin, then a representative, on his votes for House appropriations bills) and advertised for the church on a local radio station. (In one commercial, she announced that when people came to church, they always had questions like, “Is the church full of hypocrites?” “Yes, it is,” she answered. “And there’s always room for one more. In fact, we’ll give you a score sheet so that you can keep track of the sins of others.”)

By the end of her tenure she had drummed up enough community support and resources to build a 40-unit, low-income senior housing project and community center, and expand Immigration Legal Services of Long Island, an organization that helped people running from gangs or who had survived human and sex trafficking.

Not Just on Sundays

Brad Anderson remembers the mood at St. John’s when Pastor Foster arrived in 2015. “We were getting ready to sell our church and close it down, and people were really, really upset,” he said.

Mr. Anderson, 63, who now serves as the church’s vice president, recalled a mood shift almost as soon as their new pastor arrived. “Her sermons were electric and interesting, and she delivered them from the floor of the church, not the pulpit, and people kind of noticed she was different almost immediately,” he said

While the church doors had usually been open only on Sunday for prayer, Pastor Foster insisted they remain open all the time. In addition to providing a meeting space for community groups like A.A. and the Scouts, she also created a discretionary fund to help people with funeral costs, rent, food, heat, electricity bills and other costs, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic. She even started a financial literacy class through Dave Ramsay’s Financial Peace University, which helped congregants learn how to budget, save and build wealth.

Every time someone stepped foot into the building — whether it was to be in a play or to attend an A.A. meeting — she told the person about the efforts to renovate the church. (The latest financial campaign debuted on GoFundMe in May 2024.)

The approach was refreshing, said Mr. Anderson. “I think that nobody had ever asked people from the community to give before,” he said. “It was very insular like, ‘This is our group, and this is what we do,’ as opposed to ‘Let’s try and expand our group.’”

At St. John’s, Pastor Foster now displays blown-up pictures on the wall of how the church looked before it was renovated over the summer. She said it was to remind the congregation of how far it had come and of the work it still wanted to do.

“Our goal is ultimately to raise $233,000,” she said. “God is always calling us to do something.”