Rev. David Holder (right) with members of New York Covenant Church inside 500 Main Street in New Rochelle.
As a young aspiring poet, Langston Hughes asked an immortal question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” Hughes went on to become the preeminent poetic voice of the Harlem Renaissance, an era of unbridled growth and expression for writers, musicians, and artists in the African American neighborhood of Harlem in New York City. His question referred to the elusive pursuit of liberty, justice, and prosperity for Black Americans, but his poem has become world famous in part because unfulfilled longing is a universal experience across all walks of life.
Especially pastors.
In the 1960s, when a group of Covenanters purchased a countryside property a dozen miles outside of Portland, Oregon, where they intended to build a church, the location was strategically selected as an opportunity for growth. A nearby highway had recently been constructed, and the area was ripe for commercial and residential development. So when Somerset West Covenant Church was built, it was a modest building located on a much larger piece of land. The expectation was that the neighborhood would grow and become more prosperous, and so eventually would the church. When that happened, the building would be renovated and expanded to accommodate the new growth.
Decades of faithful ministry ensued in that little church, which was eventually renamed after the popular freeway as Sunset Covenant Church. People in the surrounding area came to faith in Christ, and many families called it home. Children were born, raised, and launched into the world in that church. Eventually, a preschool was started to meet the needs of the many young families who were moving into the area, and the ministry thrived.
However, most of the families of those preschoolers never found a home in Sunset Covenant. Unfortunately, the anticipated wave of exponential growth never came. As sometimes happens in smaller churches, a cycle of pastors came and went, some staying for many years and others just a few. All the while, a dedicated remnant kept worshiping together, prayerfully steadfast in their belief that God still wanted to do something significant on that property.
In 2017, I began serving in pastoral ministry at Sunset Covenant, first alongside Rev. Mary Putera as associate pastor, then alongside Rev. Nathan Salinas as copastor. Eventually, the leadership of the congregation made the difficult decision to close the church and sell the property to another ministry. As a result, the church was able to donate significant sums of money to various local and area ministries. One of those recipients was Cascades Camp and Conference Center, and Sunset’s donation ended up being a lifeline that helped launch the camp into new adventures.
The organization that bought Sunset’s property was the Union Gospel Mission of Portland. Their desire was to construct a life-change center, where single moms and their children could find safety in the process of recovering from domestic violence, addiction, and other perils of street life.
That Union Gospel Mission was even involved in the sale was something of a miracle, because the church had already formed preliminary agreements with a commercial developer when a Sunset member with connections to UGM mentioned their potential interest in the property. Pivoting from one buyer to another was not simple, to say the least. Ultimately, however, the fact that Sunset wanted to sell to another Christian ministry doing important community work was a factor that convinced the other group to allow Sunset to back out of the deal without significant cost. Around the time my role there concluded in December 2020, the sale was finalized and the church closed.
Nearly four years later I received an invitation from UGM to tour the Life Change facility, which was nearing the final stages of completion.
Jelani Greenidge at the Union Gospel Mission Life Change facility.
It was a little weird going back and seeing that my previously cozy little church home had become a three-story building overlooking the neighborhood. The UGM staffer who gave us the tour pointed out all the beams and wooden structures with Scriptures prayerfully written on them by UGM staff and contractors during the construction. They were the visible proof of God’s Word literally embedded into the structure of the Life Change center.
But what most struck me about the experience was that I was standing on a tangible sign of God’s faithfulness, not only to the women and children who would experience love and restoration in that space, but for the generations of Covenanters who had been praying that something of this magnitude would take place on that property. The existence of this new building was a reminder that their decades of plans, prayers, and ministry efforts meant something.
Their sacrifices were not in vain.
That experience was ringing in the background of my subconscious a few months later when I was performing at the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) conference in Portland this fall. The Evangelical Covenant Church is a sponsor of CCDA, and many Covenanters in local, regional, and national roles attend the conference.
So it was not exactly a coincidence that I met another Covenanter there, but it was a surprise that she came from the opposite coast. Kehli Woodruff is a communication strategist who co-founded Nehemiah Development, which specializes in community-oriented real-estate ventures in New York, to help bring to fruition a vision for affordable housing. First spearheaded by Rev. David Holder, pastor of New York Covenant Church, that dream had been 20 years in the making.
The building at 500 Main Street is a 26-story, mixed-use tower in downtown New Rochelle, a NYC suburb in nearby Westchester County. It’s a $200 million project with more than 600,000 square feet, including space for retail, residential units, a parking garage, and upscale amenities like a fitness center, rooftop swimming pool, and EV charging stations in the parking garage.
And 20,000 square feet for the church too.
New York Covenant will be able to host church services in a large, multipurpose gymnasium/auditorium that also functions as a venue for basketball games and other community activities. There will also be space for New York Covenant Academy, a Christian school for students pre-K through fifth grade.
New York Covenant Church, 500 Main Street, New Rochelle, NY
The ambitious project is par for the course for Holder, who in addition to earning his seminary degree from Fuller also earned an MBA from the University of California in Los Angeles. Woodruff says Holder’s desire to effect positive change in his community has become a hallmark of New York Covenant.
“He cultivates a culture of kindness, a sort of Midwestern, global, loving-your-neighbor ethos, actualized in the everyday culture of the church,” said Woodruff, in a recent video chat. “And he attracts people who also have it too.”
A fourth-generation pastor, Holder planted NYCC in the late ’90s, having worked out a deal to share space in a different church building by serving both as a church planter and pastor to the other congregation. The arrangement lasted for a few years until Holder, sensing that the downtown area was in transition, teamed up with National Covenant Properties to purchase a building previously occupied by the outdoor adventure chain REI, located at 500 Main Street.
NYCC began worshiping in that storefront, anticipating the potential for renewal and community development in downtown New Rochelle. As part of that vision, Holder wanted to see 120 units of affordable housing built so that more lower-income residents could flourish during the area’s eventual revitalization.
However, zoning restrictions prevented Holder from getting approval for the affordable housing project. So it remained on the back burner while New York Covenant served the community in other ways—soup kitchens, toy drives, and other programs for kids. He held fast to his vision.
Eventually, the political winds shifted. Around 2018 or so, new city leadership became more amenable to his plans. Because of Holder’s extensive alumni networks—in addition to Fuller and UCLA, he also has degrees from Harvard, Princeton, and UPenn—NYCC found a commercial developer willing to take on the project. In exchange for the sale of the land itself, the developer was willing to earmark the first four floors of the new building for church use.
Of the building’s 477 residential units, most would be priced at market rate, which in NYC is between $3,000 and $5,000 per month. Woodruff told me that many foundations are interested in funding affordable housing, but because of NIMBYism and other restrictions, there just aren’t many projects available to be funded. Through a partnership with another nonprofit, 500 Main Street is designating one-quarter of the residential units—or 119 total—as affordable housing.
Groundbreaking ceremony at 500 Main Street
As of this writing, 500 Main Street is slated for completion this fall, which means that two decades after they took the initial step of faith of buying that REI storefront, Holder’s vision is almost ready to come to pass. During the initial demolition and construction process, NYCC has been sharing space with First Baptist Church in nearby Bronxville, but it won’t be long before they’re in their very own space.
“To see this building rise gives me great joy,” Rev. Holder said via email. “It was a vision God gave me when I first saw the building in 2003—that we would build affordable housing and have an unprecedented impact on our city as a church who truly follows Jesus. I’m reminded how much I’ve learned through this arduous process, and I want to share my experience with other churches so we can see more projects like this across the country.”
The Scriptures are full of stories of servants of God who persevered to pursue a vision or a blessing that took a long time coming to pass. Some of them never got to experience these mountaintop moments firsthand, but only “welcomed them from a distance” (Hebrews 11:13) so that others could experience in their stead.
So take heart. God is still in the business of fulfilling his covenant promises even when those longings include big plans that feel a long way off.
Because right now, the people of Sunset Covenant Church and New York Covenant Church understand the power of a dream deferred.
