Why is Rosewood Church up for sale?
Worshipers at Rosewood Church are looking for a buyer for their 50-year-old church building and its nearly two-acre campus.
But the church hopes the sale will only deepen their ties to the surrounding community, rather than end more than eight decades in the Columbia neighborhood.
Pastor Bob Morgan says the change is painful, but selling the aging facilities is necessary for the church to survive.
“It’s heartbreaking to have to do, but it’s necessary to be sure we have a future,” he said.
When the current sanctuary was built in the early 1970s, it was designed to hold close to 1,000 people, and most Sundays the Baptist congregation was standing room only, Morgan said. But when the current pastor took over in 2015, the church had dwindled to less than 50, most of them retirees who had been going to the church for decades.
Morgan tried to re-brand the church, opening it up to community programs and even dropping “Baptist” from the name to broaden its appeal.
“For younger people, denominations have become a stumbling block,” he said. The name made the church seem like a distant institution, and its theology and church government remained Southern Baptist even after the change. “Why put one more obstacle between people and the Gospel?”
But even as the congregation started to grow, maintenance costs on the now over-sized building were eating into church finances to the point that it threatened the church’s future.
After the church is sold, Morgan hopes to relocate somewhere else in the Rosewood area, either up-fitting an existing facility or finding the space to build a new church that better fits its current needs.
There’s no listed sale price right now for the property at 2901 Rosewood Drive, but property information from Richland County gives the church a market value of $1.8 million. Morgan says he’s had informal talks with a potential buyer, but doesn’t want to speculate about what might go in the property, which faces a busy commercial stretch of Rosewood Drive. The church is directly across from the Rosewood Shopping Center that includes Publix supermarket.
The Chapin-born pastor is quick to point out no one will make a profit from selling the property, since money from the sale will be reinvested in the church’s next location.
“I don’t even set my own salary,” Morgan said, noting the church’s trustees control the property and all the church’s financial decisions. “I want them to handle the finances so I can focus on the Jesus business.”
Morgan has already tried to find new uses for the empty spaces on the campus. Rosewood Church hosts a regular Celebrate Recovery program for those dealing with drug, alcohol and other problems. The church also hosts a food pantry and a clothes pantry for the underprivileged.
For the last couple years, Katherine Easterling has used the meeting rooms to host classes for Classical Conversations, a program for homeschooled children.
“Rosewood Church has allowed our kids to build a community and grow together,” Easterling said, bringing together dozens of families from as far away as Blythewood.
The program has already found another church home in West Columbia, but “It will be bittersweet to leave,” she said.
Morgan said the move is not the end of the church, but another step in its evolution. In 1937, when the future Rosewood Baptist first came to the plot on Rosewood Drive, he said, “they borrowed a tent from another church so they could start preaching the Gospel on a street corner.”
“All we’re doing is finding a different tent,” he said.
This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 4:01 PM.
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