You may be wondering what’s with North Point’s involvement with the Salem Community Arts Center.  Well, here’s the story and our sense of God’s call:

Chris Gilbert came to Beverly four years ago, and as a film maker engaged with local film makers.  This led to a role on the founding committee for the Salem Film Fest – a now successful documentary festival that presents its fourth event in March, 2011.

From this milieu he found a local film maker friend spear-heading an attempt to buy back for the Salem community St Mary’s Italian Church that today functions as a thrift shop for Lifebridge – an agency providing housing for the homeless.

The Church was built by immigrant Italians, leatherworkers and factory workers in 1925, a beautiful cathedral space where they promoted the worship of Christ, the development of local community, and their love of the arts. This was taken from their descendents and sold off by the arch-diocese of Boston in 2003, because of the costs of reparations for sexual scandals.  It seems unjust: The church had $150,000 in the bank a thriving congregation and a priest – it seems the motivation for the seizure of church and assets was its easily realized market value.

As Chris made the story known to other North Point leaders, we wanted to honor his friend’s request for help in buying it back.  He joined the core group of the group that has formed for that purpose, the Salem Community Arts Center and in time, David Cook and Chris have become members of the steering committee, alongside Joe Cultrera, whose parents helped build the church, Matt Caruso and other children of the original community, Paul Van Ness who was a business panelist in our Every Square Inch series, and members of Salem’s arts community.

What if? from Joe Cultrera on Vimeo.

In the process we’re invited to consider conducting Sunday worship in the space in the spirit in which the original community intended, when we all succeed in buying back and renovating the church building. Clearly, this is an uncommon invitation by former Catholics to reformed Protestants.  We’ve experienced a lot of grace and favor in our engagement with the city in this adventure, and by continuing to serve this group thoughtfully we expect this will continue to open up for us other avenues to serve and assist the development of the community life of our North Shore region.

Whether we end up conducting worship at St. Mary’s Italian or not – we consider it a privilege to roll up our sleeves in fund raising for this making of lemonade from otherwise bitter experience.  The space will become a remarkable asset nor just for Salem but for the North Shore, in providing a concert hall for musical and theatrical performances, and gallery space for visual arts.  Then, to have Christian worship located in such a center city community center seems a leap forward in our dream of engaging as a respected voice in local mainstream culture, an ultimate Kingdom of God endeavor.

Joe Cultrera will come to North Point on October 17 in our education hour, at 11:45am, after morning worship, to show a 30 minute documentary he made about the closure of St Mary’s and for Q & A about the buy back project.  To learn about this project is to gain a better understanding of North Point’s vision of mission to the world.  And, in this local project, you might find a great opportunity for service!