You’ll forgive the Jane Galloway if she’s a bit excited. The Reverend of Third Street’s Immanuel Church has been on quite the media tour in the past few weeks, featured heavily in stories on television, in last week’s Grunion Gazette and yesterday’s Press-Telegram. She’s preached the troubles of her church to anyone willing to lend a hand, which has turned out to be a lot of people.
“People’s hearts are beautiful,” she says, after the television spot brought in calls of support from as far as Carona and San Diego. Like so many others these days, Rev. Galloway and her Immanuel Church are in danger of foreclosure, already more than a month behind in payments and looking for a way out of debt. And while Galloway trembles at the thought of having to leave the gorgeous design of the 87-year-old church, she fears that a future foreclosure would be even more devastating to the surrounding community.
Upon taking control of Immanuel in 2000, Rev. Galloway searched for a way to expand not only her church’s congregation (then only six members, now more than seventy-five) but also its impact in the neighborhood.
“Not only did we have to fix the place but we had to figure out how it could be useful to the community,” she says. “It’s about creating a place where people can come and discover who they are.”
These days, Immanuel holds several community classes and activities, rents their second-floor studios to artists and acupuncturists, and provides use of their 29-unit computer lab to Mann Elementary across the street. The young students also benefit from the H’artworks Program, which provides classes in arts, drama and technology to the kids. Mann’s administrators have voiced public support for Immanuel since news of their financial troubles surfaced.
Not one to hide her emotion, exasperation streams from Rev. Galloway – a former Broadway actress – and you get the feeling that she wears herself thin over the looming foreclosure not because of the pain it would cause her, but because of the opportunities and benefits that would be withheld from the community.
“We’re in this position that it would be insane for this to fall apart now,” she says.
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By Ryan ZumMallen, Managing Editor