Faith groups examine ways to survive, serve community

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This article was published 07/02/2026 (255 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If your church died, would anyone in the neighbourhood notice or come to the funeral? That’s the question Brian McKenzie of Reframe Concepts in Kelowna, B.C. is asking.

“If your faith community vanished from the neighbourhood map, would your city feel the loss in its gut, or just notice a fresh piece of real estate on a realtor’s website?” he said.

The goal of Reframe is to help churches — many of which have uncertain futures due to falling attendance, aging memberships and decreasing financial resources — explore ways they can not only survive, but find new ways to serve their communities.

“We walk with a church from start to finish,” said McKenzie of how Reframe works with a congregation by helping them research new ways to serve the community, and how it can use its building to support that mission.

By working with Reframe, churches can get expert help to learn if their dreams are viable, what partners might be available to help them, where funding can be found and what outside groups can be involved in developing those dreams.

“Our goal is to go beyond mere survival to talk about what the community needs a church to be and what it needs it to do,” McKenzie said.

Reframe is one of several Canadian organizations helping churches discover a new purpose. Another is Relèven, based in Montreal.

“Churches have served their communities for decades, but now they face challenges,” said Dave Harder of Relèven. All they can see is failure and loss. They can’t see the possibilities. We want them to know they don’t have to do it alone.”

Relèven utilizes a three-step listening exercise to uncover a congregation’s hopes and dreams, along with discovering what their building and property can do to make them sustainable as they serve the community.

Relèven’s goal is to help congregations avoid selling their property to a developer and then seeing it torn down. Instead, they want to help churches find buyers or developers whose vision aligns with the church’s mission.

This might involve creating a community hub where various nonprofits share space, developing affordable housing units, or a mixed-use commercial and residential property. It doesn’t always mean a church has to stop worshipping on that property.

A Winnipeg congregation on that journey with Relèven is St. Mary’s Road United Church. At present, the building is too big for the 100 or so active members, and its future is uncertain.

“We needed to think about what comes next,” said Shaun Loney, a longtime member who is part of a team working on plans with Relèven to build two residential towers and commercial space for social enterprise businesses on the church’s property.

“They’ve been a big help,” he said of the organization. “They knew how to talk to us as a congregation, providing us with a thorough report about what is possible.”

This includes conducting discussions with the city, and finding a developer that is a good fit for the church.

Nothing is approved yet, and it will be years before the project is completed. But, Loney said, “it feels good as a church to be working towards something significant. The timing is good. Affordable housing is a top issue in the country. We are excited to be part of the solution.”

More than that, Loney said, Relèven “helped us understand what God is calling us to do, how we can become more relevant, reconnect with the community, redefine what it means to be a church in Canada today.”

St. Mary’s is just one of thousands of places of worship, most of them churches, facing the same challenge in Canada today.

“Faith spaces across Canada are disappearing at an alarming rate,” said the Canadian Urban Institute in a 2025 report titled Sacred Spaces, Civic Value: Making the Case for the Future of Faith-Built Assets.

“With congregations shrinking and maintenance costs soaring, nearly one-third of the country’s 27,000 churches and faith-built spaces could close within the next decade,” it said, adding that these buildings are often vital hubs for childcare, food banks, cultural events and essential social services.

The Institute went on to say there is an “urgent need for collaboration between religious and secular leaders to preserve these spaces as critical community infrastructure,” adding the loss of these spaces would be catastrophic for communities across Canada because of the many ways they serve beyond religious services.

“Their potential for adaptive reuse gives them strategic value for broader urban development goals, especially as cities look for ways to house people, support services and preserve local character,” it said.

The report urged a shift in thinking to seeing these properties not just as places of worship, but as multi-purpose civic assets that can adapt to changing community needs.

“The decline of Christian faith properties is not a fire sale, but it could quickly become one if new partnerships cannot be forged quickly among faith-based organizations, faith property owners, developers and civic partners,” the Institute concluded.

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