Closing Costs: Reimagining Church Real Estate for Missional Purposes

Introduction

If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re going.

—Irwin Corey

A friend of mine recently told me about his experience at a state-level pastor’s conference. Dozens of Christian leaders joined together to focus on issues facing the local church. As the conference began, a phone rang. After an awkward pause and a few polite laughs, the speaker moved on.

A minute or two later, another phone rang out.

Then another.

Within the first fifteen minutes of the conference, a steady stream of phones chimed, buzzed, and chirped across the room. Within an hour, more than half the room was empty as many were outside on their phones, handling pressing church business.

I can count on one hand how many pastors tell me they have the space and time to pray, brainstorm, and strategically plan for the long-term vitality of their church. There’s always another call.

When pastors are available to their congregants, it’s beautiful and symbiotic, truly a picture of Christ and the church. But most of these shepherds are overworked, exhausted, underpaid, and facing expectations to grow a church that, if the statistics are to be believed, is likely shrinking. If you’re in a ministry position, you know this well. As your brother in the Lord, I see you and your struggle. And, more importantly, God sees you.

This book is an invitation to hope again in the God who comforts the weak, raises the dead, and offers sufficient grace for each unique moment in the life of God’s people, especially if we are willing to walk new paths.

Crossroads, Not Dead Ends

The Gospel of Luke’s story of the Emmaus Road tells of two disciples commiserating after Jesus’ death. The risen Christ joined them without revealing his identity, listening as they discussed their sadness and doubt. How could the Messiah be cut off from life by Jewish leaders under order of their Roman overlords? Jesus revealed a hidden truth as he explained how they had misunderstood the nature of his mission. After all, Jesus was always to be a suffering Messiah. As they sat down to eat, the pieces fell into place: the suffering Messiah was now the vindicated Lord and was in their presence. What appeared to be Christ’s failure was the path to resurrection life. That’s the payoff for us today: when we follow in Christ’s path of self-sacrificial suffering for others, obstacles are cleared, new insight and purpose are given, and we discover authentic, resurrection life along the way. Failures are transformed. Death isn’t an end.

The calls my pastor friend and his colleagues received at that conference were from church secretaries, deacons, spouses, and denominational leaders. Those calls ultimately stemmed from the same question: What are we going to do?

It was March of 2020, and the state had announced massive restrictions on public gatherings. Sunday services were to be canceled. COVID-19 was racing across the globe, and it was no longer safe to gather. How can a shepherd care for sheep they cannot see?

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have come to a greater understanding about our vulnerabilities, both spiritually and physically. In our exhaustion, we look to the Lord for direction. Our services have fewer worshipers. Our neighbors are suffering and seem less interested in faith, at least in its American expression. Our church budgets are even tighter—and often giving is less than expected.

I’ll readily admit that this book is not a comprehensive answer key to the troubling questions facing the Western church today. But I do know that in God’s economy, our inadequacies are used to make us dependent on the Spirit, who speaks to us in a still small voice (1 Kgs 19:12). The nature of our faith remains the same, for Christ does not change.

An Invitation

I believe we are all being called to discern God’s answers to the questions that every generation of believers must ask anew. What is the Spirit saying to the church today? How does God want us to navigate our world now?

Personally, I was wrestling with these big questions long before COVID-19, primarily because of my work. As President and CEO of Dutra Realty, I managed a team of nearly three hundred real estate professionals and staff, making our company one of the most successful real estate brokerages in the country. As an elected community leader, I began to recognize that educational institutions, faith-based communities, governmental agencies, and nonprofits were failing to fulfill their missions. Many were struggling financially or experiencing the pull of mission drift as they attempted to keep their doors open and services available. I came to realize that my knowledge of real estate could be a huge asset to these struggling organizations, so I founded a company that focused on helping community organizations fulfill their missions by utilizing real estate to become more financially stable.

For the past few decades as a real-estate consultant, I’ve been serving leaders of dying congregations as they decide how to use their property in ways that make the most sense for their specific situations. For the scores of closing local churches, I often can be perceived as playing the role of an undertaker. As churches decline, church leaders call me to help them decide how to handle the sale of their property. Almost daily I hear from a new pastor: How do I go about selling our building? I never thought that I’d ask this question, but my congregation is dying.

But over the years, just as the travelers on the Road to Emmaus, I’ve come to understand that what can be perceived as a death of a church is an amazing opportunity for rebirth. In fact, this message of life resurrected from the throes of death is at the heart of the Christian faith.

In the most recent stretch of my career, I’ve experienced the privilege of assisting church leaders as their congregation comes to an end. I’ve become their trusted advisor as I help them see more clearly how their real estate can be a fount of hope as they assess their options for the future. They see and feel the passion I have about the opportunities for growth that often follow death. And they inevitably come to embrace this same vision and hope. In that way, my role is akin to that of a master gardener, helping churches cultivate their land and usher in new life through renewed use of property, most often for larger, previously unimagined kingdom purposes. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. (John 12:24 NIV).

This book outlines three ways churches can reimagine their mission through merging, leasing, or selling. Each section of this book retells the experiences of various congregations that have gone through one or more of these processes. These churches have done the hard work of dying to their own deflating dreams and goals to serve the greater church by using their space differently or giving it up altogether. We can learn so much from these stories about how our local churches don’t have to die alone and without having impacted a suffering world that so longs for the love of God. There is a different, life-sustaining path.

These courageous leaders and fading congregations are choosing to not go on life support. They are choosing to not use their dwindling resources to comfortably support themselves as their remaining congregants fade away. Facing shrinking budgets and membership rosters, they are choosing to walk with the Spirit in a renewed posture of faithful reliance and intentional, outward-facing missional practice. Every single one of them heard a calling from the Spirit to act out God’s love for the life of their neighbors—and thus, the world. So, with faith and imagination, they are moving towards their communities, serving them, and inviting them to share their lives, their spaces, and the wealth of their real property resources.

As I’ve witnessed this extraordinary movement of God in many different faith contexts, I’ve come to believe that more congregations should prayerfully explore if they are called to take this path. By implementing the missionally driven real-estate strategies of merging with another congregation, leasing out space, or selling altogether, congregations have a chance to move with God in deeper ways.

No matter the size of a declining church, every congregational leader has the chance to rally their people, calling them to look out from the place God has brought them and envision a further land of promise. The congregation may not fully arrive, but through intentional, spiritually rich practices and service, the life of Christ can be shared in new, thoughtful ways. In the words of the ancient philosopher Seneca, We should strive, not to live long, but to live rightly.¹

Living—and Dying—Rightly

Granted, there are a lot of books that suggest ways for churches to revitalize. Even before our national crises, many of you probably read books about transformational churches, turnaround churches, and visionary leadership. While sometimes inspiring, those visions are too often byproducts of what Eugene Peterson calls the Americanization of the church, in which churches are treated like businesses that cater to the religious needs of their consumer base.² That gimmicky, consumer-driven model is not the way forward. Most church redevelopment literature starts off by wrongly assuming every struggling church needs to live.

That may sound caustic. But track with me: why must a dying church survive?

Why put a congregation on inwardly focused hospice care if they are hoarding wealth and space? How does it benefit the kingdom of God when a dozen congregants refuse to lend out their large building? How can such a congregation justify living when financially struggling minority churches down the street are growing but have limited space?

Let me put it even more broadly, even for larger, more sustainable churches: how can we justify not sharing buildings that remain unoccupied six days a week?

In many cases, children in our surrounding neighborhoods don’t have a safe place to be cared for in after-school programs. Unhoused neighbors sit on the street, stifling in the heat. Yet we turn them away and keep the doors of our empty buildings closed over 80 percent of the week. Why? Because we are missing