Congregations face challenges regarding church buildings

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/04/2024 (560 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By 2030, it is estimated that as many as 9,000 Canadian churches and other places of worship, out of about 27,000, could be closed. In the U.S., that figure is 100,000 out of about 380,000 that could close in the next 20 years. If that happens, what’s going to happen to all those buildings, and the land they sit on?

That’s the question being asked in Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition (2024, Eerdmans).

In the book, edited by Mark Elsdon, various authors highlight the challenges facing congregations in the years ahead as membership and attendance falls and interest in traditional forms of religion wane.

Nobody knows for sure how many places of worship will be lost in the U.S. — nobody is tracking it in a systematic way, Elsdon said. Despite that, the trends are clear.

“We have entered an era when more churches are being closed each year than are being opened,” he said. “Twenty years from now, there will be a lot fewer churches and church buildings in the United States than there are today.”

Upon hearing that, some might ask: “Who cares?”

“I care,” Elsdon said. “I care if 40 out of 100 churches in a community become something else. And I would venture to guess that many more folks will miss those churches and their buildings than they might initially think.”

What he means by that is the many ways churches are serving their communities now by hosting groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, offering space for food banks, and providing services to newcomers, seniors, families, children and youth.

“Churches in every corner of our country provide space and services for all those things and more,” Elsdon said.

He shared one study of 90 churches in a U.S. community where only nine per cent of 3.7 million visits in one year were for weekend worship services. The rest were for weekday community services and programs.

But if churches disappear, or they are torn down and the land developed into condos, not only would all those groups, programs and services be gone, it could end up exacerbating social issues in a community and widen the gap between the rich and the poor, he said.

Elsdon created the book to get congregations to start thinking now about what happens when there are no longer enough people to make their church viable. Rather than wait until there are few options on the table, “Let’s talk about it now, get in front of it,” he said.

One thing Elsdon wants congregations to know it’s not their fault; they aren’t doing anything wrong. Churches, just like schools and malls, were greatly overbuilt in the 1950s and 1960s in response to the baby boom, a time when churchgoing was more the norm. Society is different today. Even though many say they are still interested in spirituality, the way they want to pursue it has changed.

“People are engaging with faith differently,” he said of how more and more people are dropping out of attending religious services.

He likened the change in church attendance to what happened with video stores — consumer tastes moved away from renting videos to streaming at home. Similarly, “social norms” about church attendance have changed, he observed.

There are exceptions, Elsdon said; some churches, like those serving newcomers or some ethnic groups, are growing. But that isn’t the norm.

Overall, “we are in a season of right-sizing,” he said. “We don’t need buildings the way we once needed them. But they don’t all have to be bulldozed. They can be repurposed.”

The book includes ideas for how church buildings can find new life by offering childcare, providing education programs, serving seniors or as sites for personal care homes, developing lower cost housing or as healthcare centres — the latter something that could be especially useful in rural areas.

Congregations could also consider returning their land to local Indigenous organizations. That’s what’s suggested by Jim Bear Jacobs in a chapter titled “righting the wrongs.”

“Given the immoral legacy of how the land came to be ‘owned’ in the first place through the Doctrine of Discovery,” he wrote, congregations could right that wrong by giving their property back to Indigenous people. This would, he said, be a real, just and viable way for them “to lean into the Gospel.”

Whatever happens to church buildings in the future, the time for congregations to think about this challenge is now, Elsdon maintains.

“This is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities facing churches in North America over the next 20 years,” he said. “Those of us who use the language of ‘good news’ should be thinking about how our buildings can be good news for our communities.”

Gone for Good can be purchased at http://wfp.to/y88

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