Pilot ended right after Thanksgiving. Public comment/feedback will be gathered until 12/23 here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ScooterPilot2022

They’ll assess whether to extend the contract based on that.

Quoting myself from another reply: >It was a donation from a parishioner, along with the second parking lot across from MedChi. There were initially hopes to be able to use the buildings for something, but the money wasn’t there and really hasn’t been there to be able to do anything substantial with them.

As for why accept… the church is not in the habit of turning down donations. They wouldn’t be able to survive if they were.

It was a donation from a parishioner, along with the second parking lot across from MedChi. There were initially hopes to be able to use the buildings for something, but the money wasn’t there and really hasn’t been there to be able to do anything substantial with them.

Ah! Understood now, thank you for clarifying. There are a lot of misconceptions flying around elsewhere in this comment section, so I was already feeling a little defensive, but it is definitely still my fault for presuming negative intentions; please forgive me.

>How can any Christian, believe they don’t have an obligation to those around them.

So here’s why I’m confused, because you responded to my comment in which I literally listed the various ministries in the community from this one particular parish that results from such a religious obligation.

Old Testament came before the Church (of course), the Church started with Christ (rather a given, there), and the growth of the early Church coincided with writing the New Testament (see epistles), and the Church later codified all those into the Bible. Scripture and tradition (handed down starting from Christ, then thus to the apostles [see Pentacost], and so on and so forth) are considered inseparable in Orthodoxy. So yes, we follow scripture since it’s an integral part of Christianity. I’m still not seeing your point.

They were founded by immigrants. They chose to stay in the spot those immigrants established and continue to give back to the city in which these congregants still have a spiritual home. Are you saying they should just be transient evangelists? They baptize people in the Trinity - they’re Trinitarian, and also don’t rebaptize other Trinitarian converts. I don’t understand your point.

Fair. I wasn’t arguing with you so much as using your comment (which I only had the minor picky issue with) as a springboard to try to correct presumptions made by others in this thread. It’s just really disheartening to be constantly compared to the Catholic churches, or a mega-church, or some tax shelter for county residents when none of that is true. It’s plenty expensive maintaining the historic structure of the cathedral itself (built in the 1880s by Protestants, 50 or so years later left to rot after that parish had financial issues before being bought and restored by Annunciation). People are acting like these buildings were ever remotely habitable in the time the church has had them (nope, at least not without massive amounts of money being sunk into them) and that the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to restore them is something that a self-sufficient church just has (it does not).

I understand people’s concerns with historic value and architectural character. Maybe with the threat of razing the buildings, perhaps UB or another local institution with far more resources might now consider buying them (when they haven’t wanted to previously), and honestly there are plenty of folks in the parish that would prefer to rid themselves of the burden entirely.

> This is a Greek Orthodox Church, with a specific focus on that specific community.

True.

> They have no more specific obligation to “serve” people located nearby

Not true. They actually do, ethically speaking, just not legally. (ETA: meaning their obligation is due to the religion to which they belong, not due to any contract or state or federal laws.) And they do - there’s a “Loaves and Fishes” program that makes food for local soup kitchens and shelters, pre-pandemic we had an active food and clothes bank running from the church itself that’s starting to get back on its feet, Weekend Backpacks delivered to city schools with cereal and canned goods to send home with city students who are food insecure, AA meetings in the church to serve the immediate area, leftover furniture from the annual flea market fundraiser donated to organizations to furnish homes for low income renters… not to mention straight monetary donations to local non-religious organizations. Like I get people on reddit are generally anti-religious, but there are a lot of assumptions in this thread that are entirely off-base from the actual reality.

Given the expense of all the work it would take to make the buildings actually livable/leasable, there are no buyers willing to take the properties in the state they are in. Believe me when I say they would prefer to sell - they’ve been trying to repair and maintain for nearly three decades, but they can’t afford it much longer, it’s a literal fire hazard, and nobody is buying. Nobody. You may think 100k isn’t a lot for a church, but they aren’t Catholics - each parish must fund itself and be self-sustaining. Every dollar going into those properties is a dollar less for the homeless shelters, soup kitchens, furniture sales/donations, hosting community programs like AA, etc. that the church would prefer to put back into the community.