A small Little Rock congregation with a large but aging campus has donated its building to the Arkansas Baptist Children's Homes and Family Ministries.
Members of Markham Street Baptist Church will continue to worship in the sanctuary, as they have for decades, but most of the facility will be used to facilitate foster care, adoptions, counseling and family reunification.
The organization's administrative offices will also move there.
"It's going to give us incredible open doors for, very practically, impacting people's lives," said Chris Larmoyeux, the nonprofit's director of mission advancement.
"We'll have a resource center for foster families. We'll have visitation rooms for biological families to visit with their children. We'll have a counseling center to meet needs in the community. The foster care area will have a birthday party room where people will be able to have birthday parties for their kids," he said.
Arkansas Baptist Children's Homes is an agency of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
It began, in 1894, as an orphanage in Drew County. Today, it offers programs statewide.
In 2021, its foster care programs placed 266 children, helping 109 of them to either be reunited with their families or to be adopted. Its Living Well Counseling program provided 9,368 counseling sessions as well.
James McClintock, the church's pastor, said giving the building to Arkansas Baptist Children's Homes was the best option.
Over the past 15 years or so, "we've seen a decline in membership and have gotten to the place that we no longer needed the building and really couldn't afford to keep the maintenance [up]," he said.
The new partnership will ensure that the building will continue to be used "to do God's kingdom work," he said.
"As far as our church goes, nothing will change at all. We will still be meeting in the worship center. We will have our office space and we'll carry on; we'll just be sharing the building with the children's home," he said.
Organized in 1951, Markham Street Baptist Church grew rapidly as the city expanded westward. In 1986, the congregation broke ground on a new 30,000-square-foot education facility valued at nearly $1.2 million.
At the time, average Sunday School attendance was 344, according to an annual report published by the state convention. That had fallen to 50 by 2019; then the pandemic hit.
"Markham Street Baptist Church has struggled with attendance for a long time. And covid, in particular, has made it difficult for their congregation," said Derek Brown, executive director of Arkansas Baptist Children's Homes. "Despite their limitations, they've done a good job preserving the building. ... The building is not in disrepair but just has a lot of deferred maintenance."
The transfer in ownership took place Feb. 1, the agency said.
"This is an exciting thing, I think, for Arkansas families across the state," he said.
"Renovations have already started and we are recruiting volunteers, both skilled and unskilled, to be able to help with that," Brown said.
Once it's complete, there will be 55,000 square feet available for ministry, he said.
"We're going to come in and put a new roof on the building, and all-new soffit and fascia and vinyl. We'll have to trim and caulk all around the windows and clean everything up and then do some interior improvements. Lots of [Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning] replacement is going to have to be done. Then we can get it functional and ready to use," Brown said.
The goal is to open the counseling and family resource centers on June 1, with the administration offices following on Sept. 1.
"It's an aggressive timeline. But if we can get the volunteers in place, I think we can achieve that," he added.
Brown said he wants Arkansans to know about Markham Street Baptist Church's "faithfulness and generosity" and their desire "to put the kingdom first."