Bricks and mortar are killing some churches–and opening opportunities for others.
Grand old edifices that once stood as prominent, physical religious symbols in their communities may now overwhelm their congregations’ ability to sustain themselves financially.
In the documentary When God Left the Building, a church leader says, “Within a quarter of a mile here there are five huge old churches. And those churches’ main objective–their mission project–is to keep the building standing and heated and all in repair. That’s a lot of money.”
That same church’s financial secretary says, “This church, it’s a beautiful old church. But easily half of the money that we collect every year goes to keep it that way.”
The national weakening real estate picture applies not only to existing, aging buildings. New construction rates have also slumped. Church construction square footage has declined 82 percent since 2002, according to Dodge Data & Analytics.
In addition to the crushing costs of maintaining these buildings, much of the space goes underutilized. Large sanctuaries sometimes enclose a handful of people at 11 a.m. Sunday, and then lie dormant for the next 167 hours, raising questions of stewardship.
UPSIDES OF CHURCH PROPERTY PRESSURE
With all the financial pressures, some churches are finding workable solutions that are actually expanding ministry in their communities. They’re adopting a time-share approach–housing multiple congregations in a shared facility. Sometimes these properties are jointly owned. And sometimes they’re owned by one congregation and leased out to others.
We’ve noticed this trend also growing in other countries that are facing church economic headwinds. In New Zealand, for example, the Christian population no longer makes up the majority. Only 5 to 10 percent of the country’s residents regularly attend church services.
Glenfield Baptist Church, near Auckland, felt the growing burden of sustaining its church’s facilities, so its people implemented a Kingdom-minded practice of sharing. They opened their facilities to a Spanish-speaking congregation on Saturday, a Korean church on Sunday afternoon, an Iraqi congregation on Sunday night, and a Chinese church during the week–in addition to a daily child care operation and other community groups. The various tenants contribute an additional $100,000 to Glenfield’s income per year. The building is a beehive of activity all week long.
Pastor Colin Hopkins said, “We believe churches need to question how they can grow finances by utilizing what they have. And that (for us) is the building.”
Colin’s wife Glenda added, “We believe the church is the people, not the building. So for us it is not a sacred cow mentality.”
That perspective may be the most powerful lesson here. Perhaps the current strain under the weight of brick and mortar will help the church reclaim its true meaning and mission.
Great article. One other approach that we took with our building: While we are in a very good place financially, we still did not want our building sitting empty and not being used all week. So, we looked for ministries (from outside our church) and community organizations that needed space but could not afford very much and offered space to them in our building.
Some of these groups/ministries/organizations pay a small “rent” but at best it’s a break even for us. Our perspective is that it is one of our investments in ministry to our city. In some cases, we are willing to give a ministry space and we just consider it a way that we can invest their mission.
One of the best side effects of what we are doing is the collaboration of churches and community ministries.
What impact, if any, Toby is on your tax exempt status for “renting” out space in your church to outside groups ? My understanding is that charging/collecting any money other than self-usage would jeopardize your overall tax status of the church property. I’m not an accountant, but that was my past understanding where there might be restrictions in spite of the good intentions to generate additional income to defer overall costs to operate. Is that correct ?
Terry and all, here are some articles that talk about some of the practical issues around renting/sharing church space:
http://www.churchlawandtax.com/blog/2012/january/before-you-share-your-space.html
And http://churchcollaboration.com/SharedCampus.htm
And http://www.joyfulheart.com/church/share.htm
Terry, I apologize for not being clear. “Rent” is not actually rent at all. We offer space freely with a usage agreement. There a few ministries whereas their by-laws require that they give some kind of monies toward any facility they use. In this case we have written the usage agreement in the same spirit and make room for them to make donations to our ministry.
I may be running around with “my pants down” on this but our accountants have looked over and approved what we have done thus far.
The link that Thom provided seems to have some good tips.
Hope that helps ~ Toby
Fact: Perhaps the current strain under the weight of brick and mortar will help the church reclaim its true meaning and mission.
Action: One of the best side effects of what we are doing is the collaboration of churches and community ministries.
Prayer: May more and more collaboration become the norm . . . people of the community in active fellowship together – the church in action.
We are doing all that we can to reduce our property investments and transfer those funds to community ministry investments. It is our desire to have a modern welcoming facility but not allow our facility to control our ministry. Any investment we make to our facility will need to take in mind the needs of our community and how can our facility meet those needs. These are challenging actions in a church that is going smaller.
Our church is a hub of activity all week long. We have an outside music school that rents out classroom spaces in our building to hold their lessons during the week. We have a group of Sikhs who play cards in our basement every afternoon and they make contributions to the church and also help out at our annual community fair. There are a number of condos near our church and many of them rent rooms here to hold their general meetings. A bus company rents rooms to hold training seminars for their drivers. People from the community rent rooms to hold birthday parties, showers and other events. We’ve also dug up a large section of our property that we rent out as gardens for our neighbours. Many of our neighbouring condo dwellers love the chance to still get out and garden. And the remaining portion of our lot is an open green space that people come and use like any public park.
I would like to propose a perspective on church buildings that will seem completely preposterous to any of us who have grown up in church in the US. My request is that you at least consider the evidence. Here it is: Church buildings were never God’s idea. And, He may be the one who is bringing their use to and end.
It wasn’t so in the beginning. Every church mentioned in the NT met in a home. This continued to be normative for at least the next 200 years. “When Christianity was born, it was the only religion on the planet that had no sacred objects, no sacred persons, and no sacred spaces. Although surrounded by Jewish synagogues and pagan temples, the early Christians were the only religious people on earth who did not erect sacred buildings for their worship.” Banks, “Paul’s Idea of Community”, p. 8-14.
“The Christianity that conquered the Roman Empire was essentially a home-centered movement.” Banks, “The Church Comes Home”, p. 49-50.
Where did the idea of church buildings come from? “Following (his mother) Helena’s trip to Jerusalem in AD 327, Constantine began erecting the first church buildings throughout the Roman Empire,some at public expense. In so doing, he followed the path of the pagans in constructing temples to honor God.” (Taylor, “Christians and Holy Places”, p. 309)
Recommended reading: Chapter Two of “Pagan Christianity”. “The Church Building: Inheriting the Edifice Complex”
The influence of King James. “In 1611 the translators of the King James Verion of the Bible chose to completely drop the Greek meaning of “ekklesia” and replace it with the English word “church”… “The English word “church”… meant a religious building or religious place or “the Lord’s house” and often referred to pagan worship circles”…The Greek word “ekklesia” has a totally different meaning… The NT definition of “ekklesia” would be “an open, participatory, interactive assembly of equal people called out of self-focus and invited to meet together in the pursuit of God’s government.” Simms, “Beyond Church; An Invitation to Experience the Lost Word of the Bible… ekklesia
“So Tyndale, in the first English translation of the NT from Greek in 1525, eliminated “church” (ie, religious building) in favor of “congregation”. King James I, having a vested interest in the word “church”, since he was the head of the Church of England, did not like the change, and so he ordered the fifty four translators of the King James version to use the word “church””. Simms, “Beyond Church; An Invitation to Experience the Lost Word of the Bible… ekklesia
“The Most High does not live in houses made by men.” Acts 7:48.
Something to think about.
Johnwhite: While I don’t disagree, the fact remains that many churches do have buildings. So, the question stands as to how to make best use of them as a tool for expanding the Kingdom.
We are always experimenting with ways to use our facility to engage the community and disciple people. I would be most interested in hearing your thoughts (from your aforementioned perspective) on how to best use facilities. How to best emulate the impact of the church ‘model’ that you advocate.
Thanks~ Toby
Toby, Thanks for your question! My proposal for church buildings is that we adopt the approach of the Chinese Church, There motto is “every home a church, every building a training center”.
So, stop calling the building a”church”. Begin considering every household a church. (At various levels of understanding of what this means.) The number one goal of the meeting in the building would be to equip each household to function like a true, healthy NT church. Teaching and story telling about things like this… What does teaching look like in the home? What does worship look like in the home? What does mission look like that flows from the home? How to involve children in a meaning way? You get the idea.
This moves in the direction that Roger Gehring (“House Church and Mission”) describes as the the purpose of churches in the NT. “The home was the base of operation for the Kingdom of God in that neighborhood.”
This is also consistent with the Hebraic picture of the home (not the synagogue) as the center of spirituality. The place of learning, worship, prayers, fellowship, etc. See “Our Father Abraham” by Marvin Wilson.
So, a current traditional church with 100 households would begin to redefine itself as a community or network of 100 churches. Each in the process of learning how to function according to this NT pattern. “Greet the church that meets in their (Priscilla and Aquila’s) home.” Romans 16:5
Steven commented, on Facebook: “I believe that the church must begin to ask itself why it invests in buildings instead of its community. All to often she (the church) turns, what starts out as a common place to gather, into an idol that sucks the life out of the body of Christ. The cost of maintaining the building alone is prohibitive. Plus you have to have a sinking fund for capital repairs ie; roof, driveways, and carpeting.. We have to remember that we are to take the good news out side the building. I suggest that new works look for long term rentals. Many inner city locations have facilities that could be rebuilt and used. But the overall mindset must always be about using the building as a tool, a launching pad for the real ministry, which always take place when we leave the building.”
Nothing new here. At least in the area in which I live, churches have been renting out facilities to other congregations for decades. I am sure this is more common in urban areas and ethnically diverse areas, but it is not new.
My church recently sold two parcels of prime real estate to pay back our foundation for, essentially, the money spent on maintaining our facilities. Our buildings are not as old as most of the big churches in our city (though the congregation is the oldest), but one of them was not properly constructed and has required a lot of repair.
However, we are located in a prime spot on a corner that is close to both the poorest and some of the wealthiest people in the city. Homeless people fill the doorways of buildings every night, while well-off people dine in pricey restaurants. We have a marvelous opportunity to both grow our pledge base (yeah, that’s a frequent topic) and minister to the community. And we just sold off property that would allow us to expand.
Property isn’t the problem. Vision and will are the problems. Ganos.
The situation in Kerala, India is the reverse of it. There is huge spending of money on building new Churches and expanding the existing ones. Hearing such news from the West is a lesson we need to be careful about at such times.
My wife attends an evangelical church that meets in a rented space with all the aesthetic appeal of a motel lobby. And yet- the place is packed because there is engaging preaching , and ministry that connects with the members and makes a difference in their lives. They focus on ministry not property management. So indeed , big buildings are not decisive and might even be an obstacle.