Editor’s Note: Several PCA churches have recently moved into church buildings previously used by other congregations. In the process, each congregation has witnessed the blessings of a physical worship space and encountered unique opportunities to serve their communities. This week we will feature their stories of God’s provision. Read the previous installments here and here.
The Table Church: Finding Space in a Secular Community
The Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado, was planted in 2016 under the oversight of the Rocky Mountain Presbytery, after being sent by an Acts 29 church in nearby Boulder. For eight years, the congregation of The Table met in rented spaces like an arts nonprofit and a local high school.
In August 2024 the congregation, led by Pastor Brad Edwards, moved into a church building they are renting from another congregation. The experience highlighted for Edwards the importance of a church’s physical space and the challenges of church planting in post-Christian communities.
As it did for many churches, COVID upended church life and worship for The Table. Government restrictions made gathering difficult, and neighboring businesses were unwilling to rent space to a church that, to a secular city, seemed to be meeting unnecessarily. The Table went 18 months without gathering in person.
Following the pandemic, Edwards eventually found a small, Christian-owned venue where the congregation worshiped for almost three years. But the rent was “so expensive for us, and nowhere near covering the bills for them,” Edwards said. Because of this, the venue’s owners did not renew The Table’s annual lease but offered a month-to-month lease while they worked to sell the building.
On May 1, 2024, the building’s new owners gave Edwards and his congregation 90 days’ notice: they no longer wanted to rent to The Table. Thus the church was forced to find a new space.
Months earlier, Edwards had reached out to the pastor of a local church, Catch the Fire Boulder, to inquire about renting the church’s second building. At the time, two other congregations were using the building. After Edwards learned that his church was losing its worship space, he called the pastor of Catch the Fire again, to no avail.
The pastor called Edwards back five weeks later asking whether he was still interested. One of the congregations using the building was moving out, and the other congregation, a small, Spanish-speaking congregation, could not cover the rent by themselves.
Edwards had investigated 11 other options before connecting with Catch the Fire. He recounted one particularly discouraging rejection from a movie theater: the theater only showed movies one week each month, and the building was closed the rest of the month.
“And they were like, ‘No, we’re good. We’re not interested in renting our building to a church at this time.’ So it was bad,” Edwards said.
However, after a few renovations this summer, The Table has been blessed by their move into Catch the Fire’s extra building. By Edwards’ count, only four church buildings in Lafayette actually have Protestant congregations meeting in them. “It’s rare to be in a church building as a church here, and it’s been a gift,” he said.
The rarity of worshiping in a church building owes, in part, to the character of The Table’s surroundings. Northern Colorado doesn’t have venues for large group indoor gatherings outside of schools. Edwards related, “When you move out here, you are intending to spend as much time as possible in the great outdoors.”
Edwards also noted that the community has an anti-institutional, “hyper spiritual” bent: before starting The Table, Edwards drove past more cults than churches on his way to the Boulder church who sent them to plant.
In the midst of such an environment, The Table holds “a theological vision of hospitality and trying to reach our neighbors in a place that is extremely under-churched,” Edwards said. The new building offers many opportunities for hospitality. Though the church lost a few families through the process of moving, Edwards said church attendance is considerably higher now than it was during the initial post-pandemic gatherings. Through their recently acquired building, The Table has started hosting weekly evening events like Bible studies.
And Edwards said The Table has developed a “wonderful working relationship” with the Spanish-speaking congregation that co-rents their building. The population of Lafayette is more than 16% Hispanic or Latino. Edwards has long prayed for opportunities to interact with the Hispanic community, and in the gift of The Table’s new space, that prayer has been answered.
“I was praying that God would just give us a space that we wouldn’t have to load in and out of a trailer every week. I wasn’t even thinking about prayers we had been praying years prior about how we could have a natural opportunity to intersect with this part of our community,” Edwards said.
The Table’s search for space and their recent move have prompted Edwards to consider the significance of physical space. The church is not a building, true. But when a church doesn’t have an affordable, dependable space for weekly worship gatherings, it puts a strain on the congregation and its leadership.
“We dramatically underestimate how potent of a catalyst a building is in the day-to-day life and formation of a congregation,” Edwards said.
Property, Edwards holds, is “a huge blind spot” for the PCA and church planting in general, a blind spot that will require creativity to address.
“The more post-Christian a place is, the more absolutely essential property will be to a church plant’s long-term viability, and the harder it will be to acquire.”