Engaging faith communities and neighbors through education, consulting and cohorts

Our projects are opportunities to leverage assets — physical, financial, social, cultural, and spiritual resources — for the common good. As we work with faith communities and neighbors, new possibilities emerge:

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• Dialogue and discovery across age, belief, and background.

• Solutions to loneliness and despair.

• Public and private collaboration.

• Personal agency and communal power to effect change.

• Social capital maximized for social impact.

Our current projects include:

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The Sacred/Civic Placemaking Project

Current Cohorts: Chicago, Charlotte, and the Triad

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Sympara convenes congregations that desire to reimagine their properties for social impact and want to learn together. The peer-learning experiences help congregations discern their calling to housing, engage neighbors and other community stakeholders in visioning, determine how to achieve missional impact and financial sustainability, and prepare for the multiyear journey with developers, funders, and programmatic partners. Learn more about the curriculum and current cohorts here.

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Shell Ridge Community Church

Walnut Creek, CA

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Sympara is facilitating a discernment process to help the church live into a hopeful future. The process includes experimentation in the use of the church space by community partners. Learn more about Shell Ridge here.

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Sympara Asset-Mapping Tool

Everywhere

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Sympara's web-based app helps religious and community leaders identify, map, and connect resources to solve problems. Sign up for the free tool here. 

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Aging for the Common Good

Online

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Sympara hosts Zoom-based, cogenerational writing groups where participants share reflections essential to the well-being of individuals and society — insights especially crucial for older congregations and their neighbors who are navigating change. The groups explore the loss and discovery of identity through aging, the experience of aging in relationship to place, the evolution of a spirituality of aging, and the journey to embrace the role of elder. Learn more. 

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Congregational Death/Community Life

Online

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Why is it so hard for congregations to die? Sympara's free Zoom series features conversations between cofounder Daniel Pryfogle and pastor and counselor Rick Mixon, who explore the struggle and promise of institutional death through a rich composting of theology, psychology, and personal history. Learn more.

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Conversations on Sacred/Civic Placemaking

Online

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Amid the struggles of religious and civic institutions, third places are emerging on religious properties. These are spaces to work out what it means to be neighbors and citizens and even creators of more just, equitable and sustainable communities. This free Zoom series explores the convergence of civic engagement, community design and prophetic action with religious leaders, community organizers, developers, social entrepreneurs, architects and others. Learn more.

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Recent past projects include:

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Bethany Christian Church

Austin, TX

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Sympara facilitated a yearlong discernment process for the historic Black church and community stakeholders. The church heard a call to build affordable housing on the property — to create a site for an alternative economy in a city where gentrification is displacing the Black population. The church is now moving into pre-development of up to 80 senior housing apartments with nonprofit housing developer and operator Christian Church Homes. Learn more about Bethany here.​​​

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Chapel of Christ the King

Charlotte, NC

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Sympara guided this historic Black church and its neighbors through a 19-month discernment process from 2022-2023 that led to a vision of a mixed-use development to preserve the 100-year-old sanctuary and create affordable housing and flexible community space. The church is now moving into pre-development with DreamKey Partners, a Charlotte-based nonprofit developer. Learn more about the church here.

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HumanGood

Pleasanton, CA​

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From 2019-2025, Sympara identified multiple congregations with properties suitable for development of workforce housing and other below-market-rate housing on behalf of the sixth largest nonprofit provider of senior housing and healthcare in the United States. Learn about HumanGood here.

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Plymouth United Church of Christ

Oakland, CA

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Through a yearlong discernment process from 2024-2025, Sympara helped the multiracial congregation, which is known as the "jazz and justice church," discern a vision to build affordable housing on the property and generate income to sustain the overall ministry. The process fostered new relationships with neighbors and community stakeholders and prepared the congregation to enter into pre-development. Learn more about the church here.

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The Former St. Mark's Episcopal Church

Raleigh, NC

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Sympara facilitated an eight-month discernment process in 2023 with community leaders to imagine how a closed church might be reused to benefit the neighborhood and the wider city. Stakeholders developed a vision of a community space for gathering, healing, and working. Since then, community leaders and the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina have created the New Hope Collaborative. Learn more here.​​​​​

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Union Baptist Church

Durham, NC

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Through a yearlong discernment process from 2024-2025, Sympara helped the historic Black congregation discern a vision of "health, housing and hope for all" as it stewards 7.5 acres on the edge of downtown Durham for social impact and income generation. The church is now moving toward pre-development. Learn more about the church here.