Sault’s 148-year-old downtown church is up for sale

One of Sault Ste. Marie’s oldest churches is up for sale.

St. Andrew’s United Church, located at 712 Wellington Street East, was listed by EXIT Realty True North for $995,000 earlier this week.

Originally constructed in 1875, the current building was completed in 1908 and was rebuilt in 1942 following a fire. Several parts of the church, including the Christian Education Wing and J.C. Pinch Auditorium, were added in the early 1960s.

Sitting on a 1.7-acre site, the property includes 30,000 square feet of usable space with 92 paved parking spaces.

Reverend Eun-Joo Park says it was an incredibly difficult choice to put the church on the market.

“It was not an easy decision to sell the building and the congregation is already grieving the loss of their beloved church building,” she says. “I am, however, reminded of what church really is by one of the wise members of the congregation who said, 'In the Bible, ‘church’ never refers to a building. It always refers to people – the people who follow Jesus Christ. Being part of the body of Christ means we are called to be continually shaped to be more and more like Christ.'”

“The spirit is that we wish to divest ourselves of this building. Selling the building does not mean the church is closing – it’s not closing, in fact, it’s transforming.”

SooToday caught up with Rev. Park just before Easter earlier this year to see how churches like St. Andrew’s were holding up following the lifting of COVID restrictions.   

Since the pandemic, she said they have been livestreaming their Sunday services on YouTube and Facebook. They also have a teleconference system hooked up for people who don’t have access to internet.

“It’s a convenience for some, but not for all of them,” she said in April. “All of us are three years older now."

In the spring, Rev. Park mentioned their in-person service attendance was back up to 60 per cent from their pre-pandemic numbers, while most of the remaining 40 per cent were still watching or listening in from home.

A caretaker with St. Andrew’s told SooToday that in-person numbers were hovering around 30-40 people in recent weeks, compared to an estimated 200 or so prior to COVID.

Despite the dramatic dip, Rev. Park says they’ve resumed nearly all of the activities and services they enjoyed before the pandemic, including a neighbourhood dinner where they feed the hungry, as well as a children’s activity group called ‘United in Fun.’

Dan Sharp, a chairperson for the Board of Trustees, says they would like to continue investing in these programs, and emphasizes that the financial struggles being felt by St. Andrew’s are not unique to just their church.

“As with many churches across the country, our membership numbers are not what they were in the 1960s and 1970s,” he says. “Our congregation is finding that the church building is now too large for us and consumes too much of our resources. Our church will continue to exist, and we would like to spend this money on church programs and outreach activities.”

Rev. Park says St. Andrew’s is currently figuring out how they will continue as a congregation after the church is sold. Their intentions are to move to a new location that is yet to be determined.

Discussions between St. Andrew’s and other United churches in the Sault have begun in an effort to “explore ways to collaborate together to maintain vital and dynamic ministry in our community,” Rev. Park says.