This is an opinion column.

Historic 16th Street Baptist Church did not wait. It never did. Not in its infancy — founded 152 years ago in the belly of segregation. It didn’t wait to become the soul-saving spirit and bedrock of a Birmingham community facing hatred every day.

For generations, like myriad Black churches in growing cities nationwide, it did not wait to inspire and provide — and not solely for those who walked through its doors dressed in their best seeking peace and purpose amid a world that thought the worst of them.

In 1890, one of its earliest pastors, Rev. William R. Pettiford, founded the Alabama Penny Savings Bank as its members and neighbors were denied access to white banks. It was the first Black-owned financial institution in the state, and, for more than a quarter century, it remained a wealth-building lifeline for Birmingham’s Black residents.

“Rev. Pettiford used to say, ‘You can’t just stay within your walls,’” shares Ted Debro, a member of 16th Street Baptist for more than three decades who now chairs its board of trustees. “’You’ve got to reach outside to serve the community, to develop that community.’”

You can’t wait.

Not then, and not now.

Not with 16th Street Baptist standing regally on the corner of 16th Street and Sixth Avenue North as one of the most significant historical sites in the nation, a twin-towered beacon in Birmingham’s hallowed yet anemic Civil Rights District.

It is more than a church. It is a unique place where history happened, history that changed our city, our state and our nation.

It is a testament to the young lives lost to hate there in 1963, and to brave young heroes who marched in the face of hate’s fire houses and police dogs across the street in Kelly Ingram Park.

It is a place that, like the entire civil rights district, deserves to be elevated and supported by a comprehensive, focused public and private effort to again become a catalyst for change — this time as a tourism magnet that would spark long-overdue economic development for Birmingham and the region.

Instead, block after block surrounding the distinguished church sits idle and ignored. Lots are empty and void and buildings are wheezing ghosts of their past, deteriorating beyond repair.

And the church’s venerable yet worn and aged neighbor — the 33-year-old Birmingham Civil Rights Institute — is months into pondering a plan for restoration and revival. For “reimagining,” that’s its word.

So many seem to be waiting as the district remains a quilt of unfulfilled promise.

16th Street Baptist Church is not among them. It is not waiting for any of that to change.

“We are pushing and really trying to do things in the district,” Debro says.

Unfortunately, they are largely pushing alone.

In April, the church broke ground on a 13,000 square-foot education and visitors center that is rising on church-owned land adjacent to the parsonage on Sixth Ave North. The center will be an extension of the popular space in the church’s basement that conveys the dynamic history of the church and the community it once surrounded, and of exhibits in the parsonage highlighting former pastors who led the church’s growth as a community pillar of faith and fight.

“We’re trying to show how religion has played a part in people’s lives,” Debro says, “We’re creating spaces to encourage collaboration and drive community progress, for people to dialogue and have a chance to discuss what they experienced when they came through the church and how they can go back and make impactful changes in their lives and communities.

“Civil Rights is just a part of what we have done,” he adds, “but religion created the environment of sharing and building the community.”

The center will also house a restaurant (thankfully, so folks visiting the church, the civil rights institute or the restored A.G. Gaston Motel around the corner won’t have to board a bus and head elsewhere to digest their experience). It’ll be modeled after Monell’s in Nashville — family-style eating “with your neighbors,” says its website, around tables designed for up to a dozen or so. “There is an old saying here in the South,” it touts. “‘There are no such things as strangers, only friends we haven’t met yet.’”

Says Debro: “They pass food around and it creates a fellowship, a way for people to really start talking. It’s almost like the Last Supper, communing and sharing with one another. That’s the kind of environment we want to generate.”

Initially, the church thought it needed to raise $7.5 million to build the structure, support programming and fund an endowment to support ongoing maintenance and operations. Local and regional private and public entities contributed, and the church says it raised $7.2 million.

Alas, their math didn’t quite math. Bids based on the preliminary construction budget of $4.5 million to $6 million came in at $8.5 million before “other things added to that,” Debro says. The church received a $2.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc., but it’s earmarked for programming, not construction.

Alabama’s new market tax credits, Debro says, might provide funds “over time.” All in, though, finishing the visitors and education center will cost $12 million to $13 million.

That’s real math.

Through its history, 16th Street Baptist has raised millions to maintain and upgrade its historic facility, enabling it to host thousands who knock on its doors for tours. Those who want to know what happened there. Who want to honor the young lives lost and those who marched for equality and respect.

It also now lends grant-writing expertise to other area churches — still building the community as it’s done for more than a century.

Truth is, though, its modest and aging congregation is being significantly stretched.

“People think 16th Street is a large church with a large membership, but in reality, we are a small church, 250 or so active members,” Debro told me, while sharing that he recently celebrated his 80th birthday. “We probably can’t really afford all of what needs to be done to the church. The membership maintains the operations as a church. We see that as valuable, but we do need the assistance of the community and other sources to move things forward.”

The church secured a bridge loan from Regions Bank to ensure construction continues, Debro says. But that’s an expensive can looming somewhere down the road.

In the meantime, the wrenchingly powerful Legacy Museum and National Memorial to Peace and Justice (the “lynching museum,” as I and so many describe it) in Montgomery draw more than 500,000 visitors annually to that city and have sparked the development of hotels and restaurants around the sites.

In the meantime, Mobile has broken ground on a $5.1 million Africatown Welcome Center that will rightfully honor a community founded by survivors of the Clotilda, the very last slave ship known to have reached our shores. And last month, it unveiled the new Hall of Fame Walk, a dynamic collection of 9-foot bronze statues honoring sons of Mobile who are in the Major League Baseball and National Football League Halls.

In the meantime, Birmingham is losing ground on the ground that should be bearing much fruit as a master plan for the district, developed five years ago by Urban Impact and Rev Birmingham, sits. And waits.

Unlike 16th Street Baptist Church. Its building project, however, should not be a spectator sport.

Right now, the historic church is the primary tourism draw in the withering district. The city, county, state and Birmingham’s private sector should see it as such and collaborate to ensure the completion of the education and visitors center and the future preservation of the church.

“We have been given a big task,” says Debro. “Our pastor, Rev. Thomas Price, always says that we are not a megachurch, but we have a megaministry because people are coming in from everywhere. Everybody wants to come into 16th Street, so we are trying to meet the megaministry challenge.

“We’re just trying to show how the church, how religion still develops community,” he added, “how it must in our climate right now.”

And they must not do it alone.

Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.