Quechee
“We are delighted that another church is taking over the building,” said Lannie Collins, chairman of the soon-to-be-defunct Quechee Community Church. The church stopped holding services in January because the dwindling and aging congregation could no longer afford to maintain its building on Quechee Main Street.
After several failed efforts to save the building, Collins and other parishioners put it on the market, worried the buyer would put an end to its 143-year history as a house of worship.
The first few potential buyers to express interest didn’t ease those fears, said John Bassette, a real estate agent who lives in Quechee and works in Hartland.
“We had people who wanted to turn the church into a bar or a restaurant or a single-family home,” Bassette said, “none of which were very attractive to Quechee Community Church, and none of which would appeal to the spiritual element.”
Since closing the building in January, Collins said, the membership — about 30 worshipers used to show up every Sunday — has fragmented, with each person choosing his or her own new congregation.
The church, which was built in 1873, occupies a prime piece of real estate in downtown Quechee, but it also had a backlog of needed maintenance, with one assessment from the Preservation Trust of Vermont identifying $100,000 in needed repairs.
Collins said the initial buyers wanted to tear down the church’s signature steeple, which has beams rotting near its top.
“We really wanted to maintain it as a church in the village to carry on the teachings of God’s will, and to be a service of God in the community,” Collins said.
His prayers were answered by a congregation called the Christ Redeemer Church, a Baptist congregation that holds regular Sunday services in Hanover High School.
Christ Redeemer, which was founded 16 years ago, has roughly 400 members, including roughly 80 Dartmouth College students, according to church leaders.
Bassette proved to be the providential link; the real estate agent attended the Quechee Community Church as a child, and currently attends services at Christ Redeemer Church.
“It’s a great match,” said Bassette, who first approached his current church’s leadership with the idea of getting involved in Quechee.
The Rev. Don Willeman said that Christ Redeemer is not moving away from Hanover; the goal, he said, is to provide support to the Quechee community until a self-sustaining congregation can be established.
Collins said he was happy to see a gathering of the faithful under the church’s roof.
“They had a meeting there with their congregation, and it did my heart good to see the laughter and voices once again fill the sanctuary,” Collins said.
The Quechee Community Church was part of the mainline Protestant Christian United Church of Christ, while Christ Redeemer is part of the national Baptist General Conference congregation affiliated with Converge, a worldwide grouping of churches.
“What delighted me is that they serve a lot of the same doctrine,” Collins said. “They use some of the same worship music and some of the same teachings.”
Willeman said he recognizes the church has a big task ahead, both in terms of building maintenance and in terms of establishing a healthy congregation in the same place another congregation was forced to disband.
“This summer, we want to begin doing some work on the facility. It’s in amazingly good shape for being 140-some years old, but it still needs some TLC and some attention,” he said. “We’ll try to do some work on the facility and do some community outreach to say we’re here.”
The changes come at a time of general decline for church membership, with the number of Vermont church adherents dropping by 19 percent between 1980 and 2010, according to the Association of Religious Data Archives.
Willeman said he hopes to start holding services in Quechee in the fall, and eventually establish a self-sustaining congregation.
“We’re not in a rush,” he said.
Neither party would disclose the price of the sale, which is scheduled to close on May 26; Bassette said it was “probably below market value.”
In August, Collins said the Quechee Community Church would consider giving the building away for free to the right organization.
According to town records, the 2.8 acres of land have an assessed value of $132,800, and the property with the building is worth a total of $488,000.
Collins said the Quechee Community Church congregation would perform a final duty of distributing the proceeds of the sale — and any assets it has remaining — to charitable organizations in the community before disbanding. He said he intended for some money to be donated back to the Christ Redeemer Church to help repair the steeple.
Collins, Willeman and Bassette, who donated his services, all said the finances of the deal were unimportant.
“Money,” Bassette said, “was not a major consideration.”
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.