“Wisdom is supreme,” Proverbs 4:7 says in the Holman translation, “so get wisdom.” 

For First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, this injunction has informed the church’s capital campaign since its launch earlier this year. Listen closely, however, and you might hear First Pres members add under their breath, “But get communication too.” 

A large congregation on an aging campus in an historic city, next to a major university within a dense urban environment: the fabric into which First Pres is woven in downtown Chattanooga has created a number of challenges over the years, particularly as the church has grown. Recognizing these challenges, in 2019 church leadership began work on a long-term master plan to shape the vision of the church, its campus, and its mission for years to come.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and though the work slowed down, the church persisted, methodically mapping out every ministry and consulting leaders to arrive at the clearest picture of its needs. Children’s ministries, overseas missions, home education, worship, and more all weighed in until the Master Plan was completed in 2023. And of all the needs that First Pres faced, one stood above the rest.

“Facts Are Our Friends”

In its prime, the Medical Arts Building on McCallie Avenue (known as “the Tower”) was a modern office block built in 1929 by architect R.H. Hunt to house medical and dental clinics. First Pres purchased the building in the late 1970s, and for many years it accommodated church offices and other tenants. Despite being physically younger than the adjacent sanctuary, the Tower aged more quickly, suffering expensive leaks and other issues, and the church began to face increasing upkeep costs. These costs, the First Pres Master Plan revealed, would soon eclipse not just the church’s budget but their vision: consultations with structural engineers found that to rehabilitate and maintain the building would cost millions more than to replace it. 

Enter wisdom, and communication. In the year between the completion of the Master Plan and the launch of the capital campaign, First Pres leadership worked diligently to educate the entire church on the state of their needs and the proposed recommendations, with members of the session, the diaconate, and staff all involved. This old-fashioned, shoe-leather campaign meant trying to find and speak to every single member of the church.

“We undertook a major outreach campaign internally,” Mike Kramer, capital campaign co-chair, said in an interview. “We went to Sunday school classrooms, to home Bible studies, to every gathering of parishioners we could find, to consult with them and explain the process and the changes. It was a great opportunity to use our polity structure to help guide the congregation through the process and show them how we were going about our work.”

Though the news had already been circulating informally, when church leadership held a major meeting in late 2024 to publicly announce the plan to demolish and replace the Tower, they were prepared for a fight. Instead, they received a round of applause. With only a few voices dissenting, the congregation overwhelmingly approved the vision—a result that Kramer credits to the long, hard months spent laying the groundwork for the change.

“We will all mourn the loss of the Tower,” he acknowledged. “But facts are our friends, and no matter which way we looked at it, we just couldn’t see a way to keep it.”

Creating Welcoming Spaces

The First Pres capital campaign, estimated to cost around $30 million, is not limited to the replacement of the Tower. Other phases include modernizing the education wing, relocating the pastoral and staff offices, and expanding the fellowship hall. First Pres also plans to improve accessibility in and around the historic sanctuary—a particularly cogent need for elderly or disabled parishioners and families with children. Currently, access to the worship space is limited to a few poorly-placed entrances, a condition that Kramer says needs remedy.

Binding these projects together is a vision for First Pres to continue serving as an anchor church for downtown, especially given its proximity to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga campus. 

“During the school year we have over a thousand students walk past our front door on McCallie Avenue every day,” Kramer observed, noting the potential for a café or multi-purpose space to serve the student community and open the doors of the church even wider. 

In the interim period between the demolition of the Tower and the construction of its replacement, multiple ministries may move into the existing student center temporarily.

But no vision is realized without provision, and at the formal kickoff of the capital campaign earlier this year, First Pres presented a multi-pronged approach to fulfilling its vision. Early meetings with potential donors, as well as a dedicated trust set up decades ago to fund specific church needs, provided an initial base of support for the campaign’s work. At present, just under half of members on the church rolls have given—a number that Kramer expects to rise as cranes go up and jackhammers come down, and the campaign hits its early milestones.

Communication is King

Those milestones are already in view: the Tower is projected to come down by the end of 2025. But as with Christ Central Church in Durham, none of this matters without fulfilling the core mission of the church: gospel witness to a city in need of God’s grace. 

“Everything we’re doing,” Kramer said, “is an attempt to make sure our new building will complement our sanctuary and support our efforts at teaching and worship. We are a city center church,” he adds. “We have to have a vision for the next generation.”

This vision, he notes, did not arrive overnight. The product of many years of study, prayer, consultation, and collaboration, the current Master Plan and the capital campaign to enact it are all direct outworkings of First Pres seeking to determine God’s will, and drawing on all available wisdom to guide them through the process. 

Asked what lessons First Pres has learned through the last several years, Kramer doesn’t miss a beat: “There’s no such thing as enough communication,” he says.

“No matter how much we did and how much we tried, we could always do more. The small-group outreach was the most effective thing we’ve done, but there’s no substitute for using every channel available: in-person meetings, pulpit announcements, updating our website, all of it. You can’t be afraid to have hard conversations within the process or tell folks challenging truths, but what is most important? Simple. Communicate, communicate, communicate.”

Kramer smiles. “Then, right when you think you’re done, communicate some more.”