A church loan from MIF helps bring a new vision to life in a refurbished space

When a Seattle-area church closed its doors and donated its building, Salt House was born. The congregation turned to MIF as they sought to renovate and realize their new ministry.

Salt House didn’t just renovate a church space; they built a new ministry from the ground up.

Built in 1955, Trinity Lutheran Church thrived for decades on Seattle’s Eastside. By 2013, however, after years of dwindling membership, Trinity made a painful decision, followed by a most generous one.

The church closed its doors and donated its building, the last $100,000 in its coffers and the surrounding three acres of prime Seattle-area real estate to nearby Holy Spirit Lutheran Church, asking only that Holy Spirit be responsible for creating a new ministry in Trinity’s place.

As Pastor Sara Wolbrecht, who was eventually called to lead the new ministry, remembered, “They just said, ‘Make something of this place.’”

“They were very courageous,” said Holy Spirit Pastor Michael Anderson of the Trinity congregants. “They knew that God was calling them to face their grief, to let go of the past so there could be a new future born.”

After months of discernment, the Holy Spirit congregation agreed on that future: a satellite church offering an alternative liturgy to young adults as well as others from the Eastside. The ministry was named Salt House.

The Mission Investment Fund played a critical role in helping Salt House take shape. With a loan financed by MIF, Holy Spirit completely remodeled the former Trinity space, relocating the altar to the middle of the church and installing new speakers and a new lighting system, while also refurbishing and updating the fellowship hall so it met all building codes.

Pastor Wolbrecht said the MIF team also offered the fledgling church another, deeper kind of support.

From the generosity of one congregation and the prayers and dreams of another: a community sharing God’s love with young adults.

“The people we worked with from the Mission Investment Fund reflected back what they heard in our story, that God was doing something at the center of this ministry that we were beginning,” said Pastor Wolbrecht. “They could see it, too.”

Salt House first held worship on March 29, 2014—Palm Sunday. As Pastor Wolbrecht said, “It was a crazy time to launch a church, during Holy Week, but we got to speak to what resurrection was like in a very real way, as we were living that.”