The story includes technical details about repair and even some information from one steeple repairman. Mark's, which has no website, has never needed to tell the 22,000 people in Wadsworth where it was because, Likens says, 'everyone in town knows this is the church with the bell tower.'īut they do have a web site! And a very nice one at that. Grossman notes how church shoppers look for Google results more than steeples these days: I love how the story incorporates the various factors affecting bell towers and steeples. Īrchitects and church planners see today's new congregations meet in retooled sports arenas or shopping malls or modern buildings designed to appeal to contemporary believers turned off by the look of old-time religion. Steeplejacks, specialists in clambering up to build or repair the soaring structures, see weather-struck, maintenance-deprived steeples chipped, leaking, even tilting. Nationwide, church steeples are taking a beating and the bell tolls for bell towers, too, as these landmarks of faith on the landscape are hard hit by economic, social and religious change.

It may not sound again - unless a congregation numbering 58 souls in a good week can come up with $30,000. Mark's Episcopal in Wadsworth, Ohio, hasn't dared sound the 2,000-pound bell, which has a broken carriage and patched hammer, for a year. If you are in any way interested in this topic, this is a great read, built around this lead anecdote:Ītop the tiny, white-columned 1842 church where Glen Likens was baptized, where he married his wife, where their children were baptized, where they still worship on Sundays, the steeple is rotting. It's like I commanded the story from my personal wishes. Then again, half of Baltimore looks that way!īut that messed up bell tower had been on my mind and then I came across USA Today religion reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman's piece ' Church steeples, aging out of fashion, meet their maker.' It was abandoned and looked like it had gone through a rough couple of decades. It looked like it may have once been Catholic but the bell tower had been redesigned with some recent vintage bare crosses helping hold it up. I was in Baltimore this weekend and saw a large church for sale. My current congregation has a bell tower but I think it has a carillon in there. When we'd be out playing in the fields, we'd stop and count each clang. And whenever a parishioner died, we'd toll the bell once for each year of their life. That's when the locals would know to head on over - on foot. For one thing, it rang shortly before services began each Sunday morning. We lived across the street from the local church, though, and many of my childhood memories involve the church's bell tower. I grew up in the Central Valley of California, a few miles outside of a town of a thousand people.

Church steeple motion background