Troy Albee, pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church South Shore, sat in a room with one of his church leaders and the trustees of a 175-year-old Methodist church that was preparing to close.
The representatives from Grace South Shore had been told to bring an offer if they were interested in purchasing the Methodist property, which included a sanctuary, large fellowship hall with a kitchen, and space for Sunday school and a nursery.
Grace South Shore was very interested and presented an offer for $600,000.
As soon as Albee delivered the offer, he watched the Methodist trustees exchange looks and shake their heads.
Albee’s stomach sank. He was sure Grace South Shore’s offer was too low.
In Norwell, Massachusetts, the town where the church is located, the average house sells for more than $1 million. This church property was clearly worth more than that. But Grace South Shore had been trying to make an offer that aligned with its limited resources and hoped $600,000 would be enough.
After seconds of sweat-inducing silence, one of the trustees spoke.
“This is too much,” he said. “We can’t see it going for anything more than $500,000 to your congregation.”
Instantly, Albee became choked up. God was giving Grace South Shore a home.
Praying for a Permanent Home
Getting to that day had taken years of prayer and preparation.
Albee and his wife had three young children in the fall of 2010 when they packed up their life in the Carolinas and headed north to plant a church in Plymouth County, about 30 minutes south of Boston. A fourth kid joined their family two years later, and for the last 16 years the Albees have faithfully served the community.
Protestant churches are rare in Plymouth County, which is home to about half a million people, and Presbyterian churches of any stripe are non-existent. When Albee arrived to start the first PCA church in the county, some neighbors he spoke with had never met a Protestant minister.
The church plant started with a core group of three families who began making inroads in the community through hospitality and evangelism. Over time, God brought other people into the area who were interested in helping with the church plant.
They officially began holding public worship services in the fall of 2011, and for about 12 years rented space from a Lutheran church in Hanover, Massachusetts.
Over time, God blessed both congregations with growth, and it became clear that the ongoing shared space would not work well forever.
Chad Powell, an elder at Grace South Shore, said the church members appreciated the Lutheran church allowing them to use the facility, but it sometimes created challenges with scheduling and storage space.
“A lot of our events that we had then had to be set up, broken down every single time,” Powell said.
Grace South Shore’s congregation began praying for a permanent home. There were two very clear obstacles that faced them when they started considering their options. First, the price of real estate in New England is extremely high; and second, the church’s bank account balance was relatively low.
The congregation might be able to afford land, but Albee knew if they went with a new build, they would be dealing with high construction costs and strict building codes. The church’s search efforts seemed to be hitting dead ends, and by the summer of 2024, the situation started to feel hopeless.
“Lord, I don’t know what to do or say,” Albee prayed one day after another dead end. He pleaded for an answer.
It came two months later.
In October 2024, he was approached by a woman who knew of a church that was closing. The church, she said, was interested in a conversation with Albee about the building.
That building was Church Hill United Methodist Church, a historic ministry in Norwell, less than two miles up the road from where Grace South Shore was meeting. Attendance at the Methodist church had dwindled over time to the point that they were planning to merge with a sister congregation in a neighboring community.
While the church building was old, it had been well maintained and updated recently with a new HVAC system and new roof. It also included a large hall building. The property easily could have been sold to a developer, but the trustees of Church Hill hoped they could find someone else to continue using it for ministry.
“You could tell they really wanted to just kind of pass it on as another place of worship and not see it get developed,” Powell said.
When they finally got to the point of talking about numbers, the trustees of the Methodist church told Grace South Shore to bring an offer. Then came the meeting where Albee’s prayers were answered, and the trustees counteroffered for less than the original offer.
“God’s Hand in Every Step”
With an accepted offer, Albee knew he had to begin fundraising in earnest. The congregation started a campaign called Anchoring Grace and set a fundraising target of $1.1 million. This would cover the purchase and some repairs and upgrades they hoped to complete. He realized the congregation wouldn’t be able to meet the goal alone, so he reached out to connections he had in the southeastern U.S.
“I just hit the road, and I went back South and started to meet with individuals and churches that I knew,” Albee said. “I started reaching out to the different organizations and folks and entities that would potentially want to invest and be a part of it.”
Again, he saw God provide.
Grace South Shore was able to get about $500,000 of donations and in-kind support from pledges within the congregation and then another $450,000 from outside donors. It was enough to move forward with purchasing the property and completing repairs.
Grace South Shore took ownership of the property in the summer of 2025. It was a transaction that pleased both the buyers and sellers.
“Our hearts have just really joined with them,” Albee said. “They have celebrated with us. They have accommodated us and cheered us on and it’s been a beautiful kind of handoff.”
Grace South Shore moved in right away and started working on some cosmetic repairs. Updates have included redoing some of the hardwood floors and making some parking lot repairs. The congregation also added a playground.
Albee said it’s been a blessing for the church to work on the project together.
“It has been a beautiful community-building opportunity for us,” he said.
Many times they’ve had a family pizza night where they invited members to show up with work gloves or paint brushes and either paint or clean. Members with construction skills were able to do some of the more skilled tasks, like replacing windows.
The congregation understands an older property has some challenges. The manse on the property, for instance, will have to be demolished, and they’ve had to do some repairs to the fellowship hall roof. Still, those were small compared to the other options they had.
“We haven’t had any colossal expenditures, just small things,” Albee said.
Having the church building has sparked interest among neighbors curious about what is happening at the old church.
“I think just the presence of a full parking lot and a new sign out front has spurred some interest,” Albee said.
On Easter Sunday this year they filled the church to capacity with around 175 people.
Looking back, Powell is amazed at where they are today given the many unknowns and long to-do list for making a transition like this happen.
“It was a bit daunting, but you could just see God’s hand in every step of the way, how he kind of orchestrated it all to happen,” Powell said.
Perhaps the greatest answer to prayer, he believes, was the unity the church had throughout.
“I think unity is a huge underlying spiritual thing,” Powell said. “You can’t fabricate that. You can’t orchestrate that at a human level.”
Through it all, they’ve grown closer as a church and have been able to put in a visible anchor in the community.
“It’s been a collective effort and a community-building, life-giving thing to our congregation,” Albee said.