When Dexter Nutall was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, his family attended New Bethel Baptist Church in Shaw. “There was the corner store across the street when I was a kid,” Nutall remembers. “The whole Ninth Street area was not very active. There were very, very small operations.”
 
Now, Nutall—Reverend Nutall, now—is the pastor at New Bethel, and that’s not all that’s changed in 30 years.
 
The 1991 construction of the Shaw Metro Station, less than a block from the church, spurred development in the area. In the last few years, nearby townhouses have been renovated into pricey new apartments and condos, trendy restaurants and specialty food shops.
 
“A lot of change has taken place,” says Nutall, who became pastor five years ago, around the same time the neighborhood began its shift.
 
As D.C. develops, residents, shops and restaurants come and go, often moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. But churches remain. They anchor the community as it changes, and often find themselves changing with it.
 
Changing demographics
At New Bethel, change means the church has gotten bigger, with younger people and young families flooding in.
 
Even the racial makeup of the church has changed a little. “[New Bethel] historically is a traditional black Baptist church,” Nutall says. “That, I think, is changing to some degree.”
 
Nutall says new neighbors who aren’t African American have been coming in to check out the church, and some have become members. But the demographics of the church aren’t changing as quickly as the demographics of the community around it, he says.
 
Of course, the other side of bringing in new blood is that many longtime neighborhood residents have had to move away. “Because of gentrification and other forces that have forced people to leave this neighborhood, we have congregants that commute to the church,” Nutall says.
 
Congregants have long commuted to the National City Christian Church, which has sat on Thomas Circle since 1930, but as the neighborhood has developed, the church has begun to attract locals.
 
The neighborhood was once known for drugs and prostitution — until about ten years ago, when fancy apartment buildings popped up on the same block as National City. With them came wealthier, younger — and often whiter — residents. “It’s just changed the flavor of the neighborhood, for better or worse.” says Bill Knight, a church member of nineteen years who is now its facility administrator.
 
The church has always prided itself on diversity and openness (“We were doing gay wedding before gay weddings were legal,” Knight says), and Knight says the congregation has always been diverse in age, race, socio-economic status and sexual orientation. Some of those demographics have shifted since the development boom.
 
“We have seen more young white people here, but that’s just the nature of the neighborhood, “ he says. “But then again we’ve got some longstanding members of color that still come here.”
 
Despite mixed feelings about gentrification in the neighborhood, the influx of Millennials has had a rejuvenating effect on the church.
 
“We were an aging congregation before that,” Knight says. About ten years ago, a couple started a group for young adults at the church, and it’s now up to 60 or 70 members. “And out of that we’ve actually [done] two weddings,” Knight says proudly.
 
Changing Buildings
 
At first, it’s not obvious what the building at the corner of 10th and G is.
 
“We often joke that we should put a sign outside that says, ‘This is not a bank,’” says the Reverend Doctor Sid Fowler, Senior Minister at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, which occupies the first two floors of the modern, mixed-use building. The eight floors above the church house offices for businesses of all varieties.
 
First Congregational hasn’t always looked like a bank, but it has, in one form or another, occupied the same corner for 149 years.

“It was designed to reflect a real commitment to the city because the city would be above us.”

 
The new building, which opened in 2011, is the third iteration of the same church on that site. Fowler says it reflects the First Congregational’s dedication to not only staying in the District, but to growing with it.
 
“It was designed to reflect a real commitment to the city because the city would be above us,” Fowler says.
 
Founded by abolitionists at the close of the Civil War, First Congregational was the first integrated church in the District. Even in the late 1950s, when the church’s first building needed to be replaced and other churches in the area were leaving for the suburbs, Fowler says there was a “heels-in-the-dirt” resolve to stay in the city. They built a second church on the same site in 1959.
 
By 2004, First Congregational needed another new building.
 
“At that time, downtown was not a place people were living and membership was dwindling,” Fowler, who came to the church shortly after that time, says.
 
Church leaders brought in developers to help figure out how they could build something new and stay in the city. “The building was exhausted, and we had to think of something else to do that kept us in the city,” he says. They proposed the idea of selling the church’s air rights.
 
Because of the church’s historic dedication to combating homelessness, “The original hope was that the church would be the first floors and it would be affordable housing above,” says Fowler. After financing fell through, the idea evolved. “It shifted from affordable housing to more expensive housing and finally went to office space,” Fowler says.
 
From 2004 to 2011, the community worshipped at a Lutheran church few blocks away as their church was rebuilt.
 
They returned to a very different corner. “The city itself kind of did some renewal while we were away, in exile so to speak,” Fowler says.
 
The downtown area had suddenly become a place people lived, and high-end condos had gone in a few blocks away.
 
New members found the church. “We probably, on a Sunday, have as many people that have joined over the last year or two years than we do that have been there before,” he says. “There’s more young adults, there’s more young families, there’s more LGBT folks. We’re having more people of color become members.”
 
The change isn’t good for everyone, Fowler notes. “It’s the gentrification issues of who’s being squeezed out,” he says. “Some of that is happening.”
 
But Fowler says the homeless still feel at home on 10th and G, a corner that’s flanked by the Martin Luther King, Jr., Library and the headquarters of Catholic Charities. So the church continues to serve the homeless, but has added new programs, such as a weekly meditation hour, which draws both office workers and homeless to the church.
 
“So we continue,” Fowler says. “But it’s just a little bit of a different world.”
 
 
Changing Outreach
 
Up at National City, church officials have also reexamined how they interact with the community. “We have completely changed our focus,” says Knight. “We don’t sit here and say, ‘Come to church,’ we go out into the community.”
 
When Knight first joined the church nineteen years ago, "going into the community" meant dealing with the prostitution, drug use and homelessness the pervaded the Logan Circle neighborhood. The church started a food pantry and services to help the homeless.
 
Now, in addition to serving 200 people each week at their food pantry, the church also offers a toddler play group on Wednesday mornings.
 
They also offer space to nonprofits whose missions align with the church’s, including House of Ruth and the D.C. Coalition against Domestic Violence. The board of Capital Pride holds meetings there, and nearby Balance Gym holds its boot camp class on the church’s front steps.
 
It’s all to make the church not a Sunday destination, but an all-week-long community meeting place. “Honestly, this is a scary building to approach,” says Knight of the intimidating front steps. “It’s a big stone building, but inside we’re very warm and fuzzy."
 
Changing Missions
 
Since the 1970s, New Bethel has owned 76 affordable apartments on the corner of 9th Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW, reserved for tenants with Section 8 vouchers. As rents in the area skyrocket, the church’s affordable housing program now seems more relevant than ever.
 
Reverend Nutall says other Shaw churches also own affordable housing units in the area. When times were tougher, he says, New Bethel and neighboring churches maintained the community with affordable housing programs, clothing programs, reading programs and employment programs.
 
“That’s something that is not necessarily understood or appreciated,” especially by those new to the area, Nutall says.
 
The changing economics of the neighborhood have prompted Nutall to reconsider how the church can serve its congregation — both those in Shaw and those who have moved out.
 
 “I don’t think our mission has changed. I don’t think it will change,” he says. “But how we accomplish it might.”