In January 2019, Erik Estep, senior pastor of Village Church in Blythewood, was in downtown Columbia – in the pouring rain. Making a hospital visit, he remembered his wife Emily, a Realtor, telling him about the gentrification of Columbia’s historic Elmwood Park neighborhood. “It had been 30 years since I had driven in that neighborhood, […]
Forty-five years ago during the summer of 1975, I visited four cities of the 15 where 100 churches were located I was studying as part of a research project. These were Baptist churches in changing communities. Most of these churches were experiencing membership and attendance decline because they had not been successful in adjusting to […]