Cleveland church to close after remaining members take vote

In Cleveland, Ohio, the Broadway United Methodist Church, which was constituted as a Sunday school in 1872, is getting ready to close. A church building that once held hundreds of worshippers on Sunday mornings now draws only about 20 people for services.

On Nov. 17, only 17 church members were at worship and, after service was concluded, voted to close the debt-ridden church by a vote of 16-1. This was the final blow for a once-thriving church that, in recent years, had disbanded its choir, shutdown its preschool and exhausted its endowment.

The New York Theological Seminary is an institution dedicated to multiculturalism, diversity, social justice and religious tolerance. The mission of the seminary is to prepare men and women, from every background, for careers in ministry.