Grace, Clayton, proves that church can happen anywhere
By Summerlee Walter
Since its establishment in January 1996, Grace Episcopal Church has never had a permanent home. The congregation has worshipped throughout the town of Clayton, first at Clayton High School, then with stints at West Clayton Elementary School and a former bank before an 11-year residence in a converted warehouse space. When the church’s most recent landlord raised the rent to keep up with commercial real estate prices after years of offering Grace a discount, the vestry negotiated an end to the lease and found a new home at McLaurin Chapel. It is not, as you might suspect, another church that offered to share its worship space. McLaurin Chapel is instead the chapel space inside of McLaurin Funeral Home.
The church’s current vicar, the Rev. Andrew Phillips, interviewed for the position in December 2024, while the church was in the process of finding a new home. On his third Sunday at Grace, in early spring 2025, Bishop Jennifer Brooke-Davidson came for a visitation, deconsecrated the warehouse space and met with the vestry while her husband, Carrick, helped the congregation load the U-Haul. They ate some pizza, handed over the keys to the building and drove the truck to a storage unit.
While the congregation had offered to wait until the new rector arrived before committing to a new worship space, Phillips asked them to move ahead with their plans.
“I had been a supply priest for a while before that, so I was pretty used to turning up where I was told,” he explained.
Finding a new home had not been easy. As Clayton grew, commercial real estate prices rose. The congregation had also aged since the church’s founding three decades earlier, and the idea of transporting everything for worship back and forth each week felt like a larger concern than it had been in the past. The church’s Land and Building Committee sought a place that could host around 50 people on a Sunday morning without requiring an overwhelming amount of setup each week. After briefly exploring hotel meeting spaces (which required too much schlepping) and a partnership with a synagogue (which was too far away to be practical), a member of the committee approached the funeral home owner, a long-time member of the Clayton community. He offered to rent the space for $1 per month, and the church pays an additional $50 per month to the funeral home employee who opens the building each Sunday. The price wasn’t the only benefit. The chapel was already equipped with a lot of the things a church service needs: an altar, piano, pulpit, sound system and chairs.
Just a Regular Sunday
Each Sunday morning, the congregation moves all the trappings of liturgy into the funeral home chapel, then back out again after the service concludes. They repeat the process in the parlor, which doubles as the congregation’s parish hall and fellowship space. Sometimes the congregation needs to expedite worship or coffee hour a bit because a funeral is taking place later in the afternoon, but overall Sundays feel pretty normal.
Grace has also been careful to make it easy for visitors to find the church. The church’s Google Map listing identifies the location as Grace Episcopal Church at McLaurin Chapel, and signs along the highway, in the parking lot and in front of the building direct people where to go.
“We’ve actually fairly consistently had first-time visitors while we’ve been in the funeral home,” Phillips said. “I think for the most part, they have not been daunted by it. Several of them have described a little bit of hesitation or curiosity about what’s this going to be like, and then they get there, and it’s a nicely kept up space, there’s a chapel, there’s easy parking, we have coffee fellowship afterward. This feels a lot like church.”
The one major drawback to worshipping in the funeral home is the limited kitchen facilities and fellowship space. To meet the congregation’s social needs, about once per month Grace worships at the Clayton Woman’s Club. While the clubhouse, which is located in an old house, is perfect for fellowship and meals, it is less conducive to worship.
“One of the things we’ve learned over the last year has been trying to honor the whole of the church’s life,” Phillips explained. “Worship is easiest at a place designed for worship. Fellowship is easiest at a place designed for fellowship. And so we try to come up with a pattern and a rhythm that kind of honors both of those.”
The church has been flexible with its other offerings, too. Bible studies and formation, for example, have happened at a coffee shop and in people’s homes.
The heart of the church, though, is the funeral home chapel. “I’ve been delighted by and surprised by the amount of theological reflection that this has brought,” Phillips said.
“Thinking about what it means to proclaim life in the face of death, and what it means to come to this place where we ask some of the most important questions about who we are and about who God is…. One of my teachers used to talk about dislocated exegesis, what it means to read a part of the Scripture in a place you don’t normally read it—so, what it’s like to read the Passion on Palm Sunday in a funeral home or what it’s like to hear the readings for All Saints at a place that’s buried a bunch of people.”
When Bishop Sam Rodman joined the congregation for confirmations on Easter Sunday this year, he had a similar experience. “It was a joy to celebrate Easter this year with the people of Grace, Clayton at their temporary place of worship in a funeral home,” he said. “It was a poignant reminder of the resurrection promise—that God is bringing new life and hope and new possibilities, especially in the places of grief and loss and sadness.”
Not a Regular Church
In these scenes from Bishop Sam Rodman’s visitation on Easter Sunday, it’s difficult to tell that Grace, Clayton, worships anywhere other than a typical church building. Photos by Molly Herman-Gallow
While Grace’s worship space lends itself to unique liturgical experiences and profound theological reflections, it also presents unique logistical challenges beyond setup, signage and coffee hour. For example, when the church’s treasurer called Church Insurance Company to try to renegotiate Grace’s insurance rates, the representative initially didn’t know what to do with their request. It turns out the company didn’t have a set rate for insuring a funeral chapel with a $1 per month lease, plus a storage locker and a parishioner’s garage full of liturgical goods. Church Insurance sorted it out a few days later—and at a significant savings to the church.
Just as the funeral home has benefitted the church in ways both practical and spiritual, the church tries to give back to the funeral home, too. Shortly after Grace moved in, Phillips offered to officiate any funerals for families that want a religious service but don’t have a minister. Three days later, Terry Hames, the funeral home manager, called in the favor. A Catholic family needed a priest on the same day the clergy of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh were on retreat, so Hames offered them Phillips instead. The family asked what an Episcopalian is, and Hames told them it was probably close enough, so they agreed to let Phillips officiate their loved one’s funeral.
“I called the family and had a lovely conversation with them,” Phillips said. “I pulled on a couple of Roman Catholic resources that honored the liturgical traditions of that part of the church while still staying true to the Anglican expressions of faith and liturgy. But it was really quite lovely. The family was very sweet. They were very grateful that they were able to have a religious service and something that honored their loved one’s life and legacy of faith.
A Permanent Home
While Grace is thriving in its temporary home, the congregation would like a permanent place to settle and expand its ministry. The people of Grace are active in the Clayton community through Habitat for Humanity, Backpack Buddies, a blessing box at Clayton High School and the church’s annual Angel Tree gift drive. The congregation also supports the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry. In addition, the church has served as a formation site for those discerning a vocation to ordained ministry and recently hosted both a candidate for the priesthood from the Diocese of North Carolina and a seminarian from Duke Divinity School.
As the church wrote in a recent grant application: “Our vision is not simply to buy or build a place for Grace to worship—it is to create a community hub that serves Clayton seven days a week. Instead of asking ‘How can we find a permanent place to worship?’ we feel called to ask: ‘What is God doing in Clayton? How can we be part of that? And how might that include a permanent place to worship?’ We envision our search for a home as a genuine community project: partnering with local nonprofits, businesses or institutions to share space, share costs and address real needs.
“Clayton is a community in transition—rapid suburban growth is bringing new residents and new pressures on housing affordability, while long-term residents face rising costs and limited access to services. A model that frames our building search as a community investment, rather than a congregation seeking permanence for its own sake, could address those pressures directly.”
The congregation hopes to partner with a real estate firm that specializes in helping faith communities reimagine, repurpose and redevelop their physical assets in service to both congregation and community, and currently is seeking funding and partners to help achieve those goals. And they’re thinking creatively about how to make that happen.
McLaurin Chapel is located next to a small strip mall, and there is an abandoned Hardee’s two doors down from the funeral home. “And so—this actually came up seriously at a vestry meeting—[someone said] ‘Well, it has a dining room; that works,’” Phillips explained. “The Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina is looking for new places to distribute food. We’d have a large commercial kitchen, and a walk-in fridge and freezer. You could remove some of the stigma about going to the food pantry because you’d just roll up and we’d hand you a bag.” While Grace’s next home might not be a former fast food restaurant, Phillips thinks it will probably be somewhere at least a little bit surprising.
“I feel like in some ways God may have been preparing the people of Grace for something unusual. After the funeral home, we can do anything.”
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Summerlee Walter is the communications coordinator for the Diocese of North Carolina.
