Case Studies That Interrupted My Reading of the Book Gone for Good—Part Two

The book subtitle is "Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition"

Case Studies That Interrupted My Reading of the Book Gone for Good—Part Two

Keep Wishing and Hoping While Our Buildings Crumble

I first visited this church almost 50 years ago. It once had around 1000 in attendance but had been in significant decline for more than a decade. The pastor in the mid-1970s told me their hope was for a proposed interstate highway that would spill out a block from the church into the downtown. This was their hope of reaching people from the suburbs.

I knew then it was a fantasy.

Ten years later I moved to that town when I accepted a denominational staff position. The headquarters building was three blocks from this church.

Since my earlier visit with the pastor, the interstate was not built due to citizen protest, the oldest education building was close to losing its occupancy permit due to disrepair, the pastor was forced out due to his inability to turn the church around, and the next pastor split the church and took out 300 people with him to start a new church.

Now a congregation of a few hundred in attendance, I led them through strategic planning in the late 1980s, but they were unwilling to do the things necessary to turn their situation around. They wanted cosmetic tactics that would not really change them or mandate sacrifices.

Year after year their main sanctuary building and their remaining educational building did not benefit from needed maintenance and upkeep. They did not have the income to keep them up and were not open to innovative uses of their facilities.

It was already Too Late for this church in that a heavy culture of survival and hoping for a miracle clouded their judgement. They simply keep going out of habit hoping a silver bullet miracle would transform their situation without significantly changing them.

About 25 years later they again asked for my assistance. Who knows why? I did not have a new answer for them.

By then they were under 100 in attendance. They also provided space for a small non-English language congregation, but they were not necessarily happy about it. What allowed this group to remain in their facilities was that a key layperson’s wife was a member of the congregation nesting in their facility.

At this point they did not have enough leadership to engage in a turnaround, and they were not open to what it would take. They had multiple offers from other—primarily new—congregations to take over their facilities. They rejected all of these as they were not the right kind of congregation with which the existing church could co-exist.

They rejected all turnaround actions, and the current pastor decided to retire.

Five years later I became the denominational staff person responsible to minster alongside the churches in this city. Because of my role they came back to me again. Now they were under 50 in attendance and were rapidly spending their reserves. Soon they were one roof and an HVAC system failing from having to close the church.

We negotiated for another church to adopt them, start a satellite campus in their facilities, and attempt creative ways to reach the neighborhoods around them. The remnant church voted to be adopted and close as a church.

The adopting church took four or more months to repair the church facilities, make modifications for how they would conduct worship and programming, and then were read to launch the new campus.

Their start-up costs were just under a million dollars. Long-term they recouped their costs by the construction of a half-dozen new houses compatible with the neighborhood around the church. This was on unused land the adopted church owned.

They launched with a highly interactive and engaging approach to providing spiritual services and compassion ministries to the neighborhoods around the church facilities.

Less than a month later the pandemic closed all churches for a while. Momentum was lost and it took a while to regain needed momentum. The rest of the story is now being experienced.