I began this blog (nearly 3 years ago! Holy Crow!) talking about evangelism for the arts. Thoughts of religion have never been too far from my mind since then, mostly because a church has always been pretty close to my stage.

I have mentioned before that a number of churches have taken turns renting our facility. The rent helps balance the budget and the church understands that the theatre’s needs come first so they need to work around our sets. (Though when we did Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses they saw the large pool of water as an opportunity for baptisms.)

There are more churches locally than there are facilities to accommodate them. I think they are basically subsidizing the public school system here because I can’t pass by a school on Sundays without seeing a directional sign for a church. Whenever a suitable building becomes vacant, there is a lot of competition between the churches as well as businesses to rent it. In fact, one of our previous church tenants built a new facility, out grew it within 6 months and were asking to come back.

One of the insidious (though they don’t mean to be) things about the churches is all the money they have to throw around. Even though they rent a storage room for us, every Sunday they bring in a large U Haul truck full of equipment. Among this is a large sound system because ours is not adequate for the number of musicians and singers they have every Sunday. They put up television monitors in our lobby for nursing mothers and over flow (a previous tenant put them in classrooms in adjacent buildings so large was their overflow.)

The insidious part isn’t that they have so much money. My envy would be my problem. It is that the money gives them the ability to offer us so much of what we need in return for concessions. A prior renter bought lighting instruments with the stipulation that half were for our use and half were to be left permanently focussed where they wanted. They also bought a projection screen which we could use any time we wanted. When they left, they only took the permanently focussed instruments and sold the screen to the next church. All in all, we haven’t done too badly.

The current church has proposed replacing our entire sound system–a $40-50,000 proposition–in return for a 3 year guaranteed lease (vs the renewable 1 year one). They say they will vacate at the end of that time regardless of whether they find a place or not and leave the sound system–and will put it all in writing.

Most of my crew has been salivating at the idea, of course. They also have their reservations. Some are small, but important, like whether they will be more lax in taking care of the facility if they know they can’t be kicked out. Others are of greater concern. Will every request that is made have an unspoken “because we bought you a $50,000 sound system, after all” tacked to the end.

There is also a cautionary tale of a local high school that was grateful to have a huge renovation and upgrade of equipment in their auditorium paid for by a local church in return for guaranteed use of the facility on certain days for which they would pay rent, of course. The problem is, now the high school can’t use their own facility on weekends and some weeknights. (And if you think that is bizarre, a local high school marching band couldn’t use their own field this Fall because the school had rented it out for use by a private school’s marching band. Such is the state of education funding.)

But this story isn’t about the growing power of churches, not really. It could have just as well been about an extremely wealthy donor or a corporation. Churches are just an emerging figure in an old story about non-profits and the hard decisions that need to be made in the face of expectations attached to the receipt of money and goods.

My particular story is interesting only because it is the offer of a church which has the potential of corrupting the soul of my organization. From the way I read things, it doesn’t appear as if those I answer to would accept the proposal despite the benefits. While I initially wrestled with the whole situation as I pondered the pros and cons, I would have to generally agree with my staff’s reservations.

I daresay, smarter people than I have had to wrestle with bigger proposals which necessitated greater compromises. The whole controversey with corporate naming rights at the Smithsonian comes to mind.

Its a situation all arts managers need to ponder. Most of the time, you think you wish you had the problem of people wanting to give you lots of money and how you would snatch it up while blithely saying “Oh you only want one of my kidneys, what a bargain!” Like most daydreams, you don’t realize how attached you are to your body parts, or organizational soul as the case may be, until you receive a genuine offer for it.