The Land Was Never Ours
During summers in high school, I traded my 5,000-square-foot house (complete with pool and poolhouse) for a room in a low-income apartment complex in North Charleston, South Carolina. I spent mornings and afternoons in the thick, low-country humidity doing backyard Bible clubs with the children who lived nearby. I supervised children whose parents worked and had no other childcare options. At the time, I thought my most important contribution was introducing these children — most of whom were Black and brown — to Jesus. Many of them would nod and pray the sinner’s prayer and ask for another Popsicle.
Later in my life, I came to understand this approach to ministry as colonizing. Most of these kids already knew God; their grandmothers had a deeper faith than I could have imagined. Our time would have been better spent working alongside their grandmothers to advocate for just housing solutions in Charleston County. I have reckoned with my experience in Charleston for over two decades. What is most important is the awareness I developed of the injustices of our country, of the stark difference between my life and theirs, and of my inherited wealth as a white person. No matter how fraught that experience was, it helped me claim my own calling to ministry.
As the Senior Pastor of a church in a wealthy town that is continually growing and gentrifying, my congregation in Cary, North Carolina, is at the literal crossroads of the affordable housing crisis. We sit at the corner of Kildaire Farm and Maynard Roads, right at the entrance of one of the most appealing downtowns in the country. Like many churches, we also find ourselves with more physical space than we need. Thankfully, my congregation doesn’t shy away from asking hard questions or engaging in challenging solutions. Greenwood Forest has always been an inclusive community of faith, opening its doors to community groups and fostering healing and connection in its neighborhood.
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, we continued our discernment process of how best to use the gift of our space by engaging with as many partners as we could, including nonprofit directors, medical providers, and government leaders. They all, regardless of industry or focus, gave us a similar answer: “If you have land, build housing.” The top three needs in our community are affordable housing, affordable childcare, and affordable healthcare, and having a place to call home is the most basic need that impacts all three. The annual income needed to afford a two-bedroom home in Wake County has risen to $70,520. You’d need to make at least $34/hr to afford it. (NLIHC Report 2025) Monthly childcare costs in Wake County have risen to $2,501, comparable to the fair market rent for a four-bedroom home. (TOOTRIS analysis) To avoid being housing and childcare cost burdened (e.g., spending 60% or less on both), you need to make over $170,560 annually as a household in Wake County. BIPOC, who have historically been excluded from the wealth-building mechanics of homeownership and who have also disproportionately done blue-collar and working class jobs that require more childcare, are even more severely impacted by the need for affordable housing and affordable childcare.
As people of faith, who seek to do justice and help create the world of God’s dreams, we decided it was time to share our land with our community in a way that doesn’t just help people for the short-term but changes the community in which we live. My people decided they wanted to be a part of the solution to the problem of affordable housing and affordable childcare in our town and use our land to create the world as it should be. In Leviticus 25, in the middle of God's instructions about the Jubilee year, comes a line that ought to disturb every Christian property owner: "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants" (Lev. 25:23). The Torah makes clear that land cannot be permanently accumulated by anyone. Land belongs to God. The land we were gifted by a family when Cary was little more than farmland doesn’t belong to us anyway. It is land that originally was inhabited by the Tuscarora, an indigenous tribe that was displaced. It is land that ultimately belongs to God, land that we are called to care for and steward. It is land we are to receive and to share as a gift for sustaining our community.
At the beginning of 2027, half of our church building will be demolished. But in its place will rise the Timothy Ash Carr Center: fifty-one apartments affordable to households earning between thirty and sixty percent of the area median income, eleven more set aside for working families with children transitioning out of homelessness through The Carying Place, a full-day early childhood center serving 175 children in partnership with the YMCA of the Triangle. The Town of Cary has purchased the land beside us with plans for building townhomes that will offer home ownership opportunities. The center is named after a beloved church member, Timothy Ash Carr (Tim) who was instrumental in project planning before he died in 2024. When things got complicated and it looked like it was impossible to carry on, Tim would always say, “We will find a way. God is calling us to do this.” This is the gospel. The good news isn’t about how things will be better by-and-by; the good news is that the world of God’s dreams, where all God’s children can thrive, is possible now — at our corner, and yours.
At this juncture of American life, more churches close each year than are opened. In fact, as Mark Elsdon, editor of Gone for Good: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition points out, 100,000 buildings and billions of dollars of church-owned property are expected to be sold or repurposed through the US by 2030. He asks, “After the wave [of decline] has receded, will church property have further contributed to injustice and the widening of the gap between rich and poor? Or will we have put our creativity and energy into new uses that leave communities more connected, more just and with new programs and support that bring light and life into people’s lives?... Repurposing church property is a chance to do something new. It allows us to think differently, see more vividly, listen more deeply, and love more fully.” How might God be calling your church to use its land to do justice in your community and help create the world of God’s dreams? After all, we are just passing through. The land was never ours anyway.
Rev. Lauren Hayes (she/her) is the Senior Pastor of Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in Cary, NC, a community she has helped to lead for fifteen years. Her visionary leadership, alongside other community partners, has helped to make the Timothy Ash Carr Center possible.
