MIAMI -- Corner Coffee is not your typical coffee shop.

All the the usual suspects are offered: espresso, cold brews, pastries. But the distinct interior design offers some clues as to what is also on the menu: A ceiling mobile made of religious stained glass hangs over a seating area. A bronze sculpture of a life-size Homeless Jesus sleeping on a park bench is perched on the window sill. A sign at the register informs customers that for every drink purchased, a cup of coffee is donated to their “unhoused neighbors.”

Corner Coffee is the new entryway to one of Miami’s oldest congregations, the First United Methodist Church of Miami.

The coffee shop is just part of what makes the new home unusual. The historic church is now located in 49-story condo at the corner of Northeast Fifth Street and Biscayne Boulevard. It’s a business arrangement that has allowed the church to maintain a presence in the high-rent zone of downtown Miami.

“As we know here, development isn’t stagnant. It’s always changing, and the church has to change with it,” said Rev. Audrey Warren, senior pastor of First UMC of Miami.

Like with many new condos, there are a whole bunch of amenities you wouldn’t find in abuela’s old church. On a recent Sunday morning service, after valet parking their cars at The Elser Hotel next door, congregants filed into Corner Coffee and took the elevator past the podcast studio to get the sanctuary. After service, kids gathered in the church’s open gym, complete with air conditioned pickleball courts and a rock-climbing wall. Members, old and young, shared coffee and ice cream on the terrace overlooking Bayfront Park.

The congregation of First UMC, nicknamed First Church of Miami, is as old as the city of Miami itself and many early members were pioneers who built the city — including Dr. James Jackson, namesake of Jackson Memorial Hospital.

But the building is brand new. After years of struggling financially, First Church sold its one-acre property to a developer in 2018 for $55 million. The city gained another mixed-use condo and hotel tower with 646 micro-units. The church, as a part of the deal, gained a new 20,000 square-foot space with multiple floors.

The vision for the space was to be modern and flexible, so that it could meet the needs of the community around it.

“We wanted to provide a space that the people that lived around us were looking for,” Warren said.

“Through our corner court ministries, through our worship services, through our small groups, through our pickleball, we want to be a place where people can find each other and can find community, in a place where you can feel like you’re lost.”

Much of the space — the podcast studio or classrooms for example — can be rented out by the public. The building amenities, the gym and pickleball courts for example, are often used as a part of the church’s outreach efforts, but can also be rented by nonmembers. (It’s $10 for an open gym day pass). The church offers free yoga (“Corner Calm”), language classes as well as a variety of faith-based activities, like their music ministry and songwriting group.

First Church of Miami also aims to be inclusive. They voted to be a “reconciling church,” two summers ago, which means LGBTQ people can get married in the church and they openly accept LGBTQ clergy and members. They partner with St. John’s on the Lake, a Methodist church in Miami Beach, to host a monthly brunch event, “Big Gay Brunch Church,” specifically aimed toward members of the LGBTQ community.

Church stuck in time

When Warren first arrived to Miami in her role as senior pastor in 2015, she noticed that First Church was full of dedicated members, but that it was not financially stable — a common challenge for many older urban houses of worship across South Florida.

Earlier this year, for example, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, a historic church in Edgewater, partnered with a development firm to develop a portion of its property into a $225 million high-rise in exchange for a new cathedral hall and event spaces.

Evangel Church International, a Haitian-Pentecostal church in North Miami, sold its property to a developer and merged with a newer, social media-savvy church, causing a rift between old and new members. New condos are being built on the land overlooking the Golden Glades Interchange, where the church with 100-year-old roots stood not long ago.

And this month, leaders of Temple Israel of Greater Miami, a 103-year-old synagogue, announced a plan to move out of their current space by next summer due to a shrinking congregation and costly building upkeep.

At First Church, the challenges were familiar: The congregants were aging out, with the majority of the top 50 donors over the age of 65. The building itself, almost 40 years old, was also dealing with some costly repair and re-certification issues. On top of that, the church was barely using its own space. Miami-Dade College was renting out the church for much of the week, leaving only a handful of hours to its members.

“It just seemed like little by little the church was atrophying,” said Warren. “I’m not kind of a pastor that wants to be a chaplain, that just wants to, like, help a church slowly die.”

The church stood stuck in time, watching the downtown grow and change around it. As UMC Bishop, Kenneth H. Carter Jr. and Warren wrote in an article on old first churches: “Many of our downtown structures were defined and built for an earlier way of life. But church leaders were slow to adapt to change.”

Facing the reality of a dying church, the members formed a committee and explored options to sell to developers, ultimately deciding to sell to the New-York based Property Markets Group. The income received from the $55 million sale was used to buy the church’s portion of the condo-tower and the rest was placed in an endowment to fund the church for years to come.

“Making this big decision took a lot of faith. Now, living in this decision takes even more faith. I always said it’s going to get harder before it gets easier, and that’s the truth today.”

Downtown Miami mission

For over forty years, the church has been driven by its outreach efforts, like its service to the homeless population in downtown Miami. Through “The Breakfast Club” project, church volunteers provide a meal, coffee, hygiene items and a shower to the homeless 3-4 days per week.

“Most of the folks that we serve are like chronically and continuously homeless. Many struggle with mental illness, and many are veterans. It is hard work, but it’s a gift and an honor,” said Warren.

Even during the construction of the new church, when First Church members relied on their neighbors for a physical worship space, the work with the homeless continued. For four years, members met at The Greater Bethel AME Church, including two mostly virtual years during COVID. Then, at St. John’s on the Lake for two.

“We’ve been roaming around the beautiful Miami desert. So we may not be done roaming. Who knows. You never know where God calls you, but you just have to go,” she said.

The transition wasn’t always easy. The church lost some members along the way due to death and people moving away, and many still had fears about the future. Today, some of their biggest issues include finding parking in downtown and visibility, which should eventually be solved with new signage.

Warren is a pastor who is used to adapting and leading people through change. Before coming to Miami, Warren worked as a Methodist pastor in Florida City. The church burned down, causing the congregation to have to rebuild their house of worship from scratch.

“In the first eight months, we met under a tent, literally under a tent,” Warren said. “This is kind of my second rodeo of leading a group of people through the desert,” Warren said.

Enduring through past moves

The congregation has moved before and endured.

Before the Northern and Southern Methodists reunited, First Church Miami was split in two locations, the White Temple Methodist Church and Trinity Methodist Church South, which were about a mile a part. After a fire damaged the White Temple Church, the two congregations merged into one in the 1960s. Later, the church bought the property the condo sits on today and completed the sanctuary on Biscayne Boulevard in 1981.

Don Baggesen was one of the architects, along with his father and brother, who designed the old building — the same one that was torn down to erect the condo tower. He’s seen the church move locations and change over the years, and still attends service every Sunday.

“It wasn’t hard at all” watching the building get demolished, he said.

“We got enough money out of that [deal] to take care of us for another hundred years,” Baggensen said.

Warren said she believes the church’s upgrades are possible because of the the church’s storied history. She references what kind of “imagination” the church’s founders had to have in order to start a church on a muddied land with little to no development.

“That’s really, I think, what helped in so many ways for us to make this brave and bold decision, was having that spiritual imagination, God could do something that we haven’t seen before, building a church in a high rise.”

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This story was produced with financial support from Trish and Dan Bell and from donors comprising the South Florida Jewish and Muslim Communities, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.

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