Spiritual and secular development: Inside SouthPark Church’s years-long journey

It’s 7 a.m. and members of SouthPark Church’s congregation are working to transform a movie theater into a place of worship.

Lights are hung from steel rods, illuminating the dark space with hues of pinks, greens and blues. A sound system is installed, cameras are positioned to capture the service and participants are miked. In the lobby, concession stands turn into coffee stations and ticket booths become information tables.

By 9:30 a.m., everything is in place, the choir has rehearsed and a traditional worship service begins. It will be followed by a contemporary service an hour later.

This was a recent Sunday morning — and for now, it’s the routine — for members of SouthPark Church in Charlotte. They have been doing it this way for the past two and a half years.

As the congregation worships at the Regal Cinemas just down the street from their campus, the original church has been torn down and is being rebuilt. But it’s about as non-traditional a rebuild as a church can get. Along with a modern church building, they are adding apartment complexes, shops, restaurants and a hotel.

All in an attempt to increase the size of the congregation, attract more young people and refocus the church on ministry.

Digging wells

The vision for the development of the land came from the Bible, the Rev. Kyle Thompson said.

There’s a passage in the book of John in which Jesus meets a woman by a well. Thompson said she didn’t go to the well that day to meet God, she was simply doing an everyday activity: gathering water. While she was there, she encountered God, the passage says.

“Our vision,” Thompson said, “is to dig wells on our property that God has given to us. And so the idea is to build a village, in essence, on the property where people live, work, play and shop. And then at the heart of that is the church.”

At the heart of this mixed-use development — amid the apartments, restaurants, shops, hotel, businesses — will be the church. Thompson said he hopes this will reflect the story in John, and that people living in the SouthPark community will encounter God during their daily activities.

‘The heart of SouthPark’

Sharon United Methodist Church was founded in 1966, but after 50 years in one of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods, church membership has been dropping. Church leaders knew they needed to make a change.

From 1966-1982, Thompson said the church had been in “growth mode.” The church opened its doors and consistently grew both in worship attendance and membership numbers, he said. In 1982, the church hit its all-time worship attendance peak of 543.

Then, attendance plateaued. Until 1994, the church’s worship attendance numbers remained around 500. Then, from 1994-2012, the church experienced a decline. By 2012, average worship attendance was down to 262.

SouthPark found what it believed to be the answer to their loss of connection with their community. And it was in their own backyard.

Thompson said the church connected well with the Sharon community in the past, but didn’t shift when the community became SouthPark, which attracted a younger population. The church changed its name to SouthPark Church and sold 5.5 acres of its seven-acre site for $15 million.

Developers Childress Klein Properties and equity partner Ascentris are constructing a pair of 12-story apartment buildings with 345 apartments and 88,000 square feet of commercial space for shops and restaurants on the site. According to the developer, the apartment buildings will include a swimming pool, gym and 24-hour concierge service. A six-story parking deck and hotel are also in the works.

Tim Cool, project manager for the church’s development, said construction is scheduled to be completed in early 2021. Cool said a two-bedroom apartment will probably rent for $2,500 to $3,000 per month.

In the center of the development will be the new campus of SouthPark Church.

Before, the 7-acre site had been solely occupied by the old 40,000 square-foot church building. The new church alone will be 86,000 square feet, and the total seven-acre property will have 750,000 square-feet of building space.

“What we’re doing is we’re trying to be good stewards of the property that God entrusted to us,” Thompson said. “So we were sitting on the heart of SouthPark, an amazing location to be in with seven acres, and we were only using maybe a seventh of that land.”

With change comes challenge

When church leaders began discussing the potential for a rebranding and this new development, not everyone embraced the idea of change. Not only did the church struggle with land ordinances, choosing a developer and getting final approvals from Methodist officials, they also faced resistance from their own congregation.

“But sometimes, you know, God just calls us to do things that are hard but worthwhile,” Thompson said.

Over the six-year period that this development has been underway, there have been struggles. Thompson said SouthPark Church has seen about a 30-percent decline in its membership.

Thompson said members of the congregation had their reasons for resisting the change. They’d been married, raised children and held funerals there.

“There were just a lot of memories there,” Thompson said. “To tear that down, that icon in Charlotte, that was hard.”

Jim and Elaine Langstaff were charter members of Sharon United Methodist when the church was founded in 1966.

Jim Langstaff said that when the rebranding and new campus became part of the conversation, Thompson held a meeting with the 15 charter members who were still involved with the church to explain what the vision was. The couple says they had their reservations, as did the other charter members.

“A lot of us were sort of wondering, ‘Oh my goodness, we’re going to tear down the church that we helped build 25 years ago?’ You know, we were really torn,” Jim Langstaff said.

But, he said, he knew that if the church was going to survive in that area of Charlotte, they’d have to make a change.

“If it meant leaving our church for whatever period of time, we would be willing to take that risk,” he said. “And I have no doubt that it’s going to attract thousands of people all around us, every day.”

A focus on ministry

Not only was SouthPark Church able to save much of the profit from selling the land, they’ll also continue to generate revenue from commercial spaces on the first floor of their new church building.

With apartments, a hotel, steakhouse and name-brand shops, Thompson said he and the church hope to be financially secure enough to both grow their congregation and focus on ministry instead of focusing on how to keep the lights on.

Thompson said with the affluent nature of Charlotte and the SouthPark community, the church hopes to feed people’s spiritual hunger.

“I think that there’s a spiritual hunger that I think a lot of people have, but they don’t know how to identify that,” Thompson said.

Thompson said there’s not much SouthPark Church won’t do to connect people to God.

“We’ll knock our buildings down. We’ll change our name, we’ll create a whole new mixed-use development,” he said. “We’ll do anything to help people establish a relationship with God.”