Shrinking Churches
This article explores things that shrinking churches could do to juggle finances. Some of these are good ideas.
1. Consider a smaller building.
While this is unlikely to appeal to congregations housed in gorgeous historic buildings, anything built much after WWII probably has much less character, not to mention lifespan. Here's an old church with skyscrapers grown up around it. I'm sure a congregation would fight tooth and nail to keep that place. This one is from 1970. It's okayish ... at least it's brick. It's not particularly distinctive and could just as well be replaced by any other brick-shaped pile of bricks with a steeple on top. This one is from 2000. Ugh, what a barn. I've seen prettier garden centers. You'd be better off moving out of that.
Just looking at the houses people build for God tells you a lot about how they feel toward God. It's pretty clear that, while they still value religion, they don't value it anywhere near as much as they used to.
2. Merge with other congregations or find a way to share space.
This is a great idea, and many churches have done it. The challenge is that, when you merge neighborhood churches, they stop being neighborhood churches for most attendees. That makes it harder to build and maintain ties among the congregation, and especially, carry on events when all of those require driving farther and farther.
If people aren't too stuffy to share, swapping off between religions that worship on different days is fantastic. Interfaith churches often do well because they can hold a different type of service every day of the week and thus draw a larger audience than any one group -- and everyone gets a bigger facility than each could afford alone. In fact if they're cosmopolitan folks, they may find more friends and allies this way. If one group runs a thrift store, one a food pantry, and one a soup kitchen then they've greatly increased their local support network.
3. Turn the building into a revenue generator.
Many churches already do this, but many could consider it, or do more of it. As I mentioned earlier, most churches have empty offices and even whole wings that are unused. Fill those spaces with rent-paying tenants like schools, daycares, or businesses (small-scale companies with minimal space needs like law offices and accountants can be a great fit). If your church has a rectory that is no longer housing the parish minister, rent that out to a residential tenant.
This is the closest to my main interest here. There is no benefit to having a big, fancy building stand empty most of the time. That's very wasteful. If you believe in religion, it's also disrespectful, unless that building has staff who actually are doing something all the time even if it's not crowded. Old Catholic churches often have a priest, nuns, etc. who keep candles lit and are available to care for anyone who wanders in. Most modern churches don't.
So it's better to have a multipurpose space that is sometimes a hall of worship, other times an event venue, has children's classes in the day and adult classes or support groups in the evening, whatever you can get to fill the space. Just be careful about mixing business with religion because lots of people are touchy about that. If the business relates to the religion, however, it may be fine -- plenty of churches have a thrift store, spiritual bookstore, or other business run by someone from the congregation in the same building.
One final note I want to add is less a material suggestion and more an emotional one: Don’t tie your identity to a building.
*headdesk* That kind of modern thinking will make it harder to maintain a congregation over time, even if it makes "money" sense in the short term.
Here's the thing: people only save what they love. They won't really love a pole barn church. They probably do love that old church, which is why it's still standing among all those skyscrapers. It is gorgeous and lovable. The beauty of a building says something, not just about what they think God is worth, but how they feel about themselves and each other too.
Sure you can roll up your religion because you can't afford to have a church or invaders burned them all down. That's Paganism, and every Native American tribe for a while although some have subsequently recreated ... well, something, with whatever they had. At various times in the past it was Judaism too. But Pagans don't typically have congregations of thousands anymore. We have whatever we get in whatever space someone has to spare. This matters.
Down the block from me, in my dense urban neighborhood, a church recently opened up in an old commercial storefront. They’ve made impressive use of the space with a combined entry-area/gathering space, a small kitchen, some classrooms and offices, plus a simple but inviting central worship hall. They turned a small parking lot out front into a public seating area.
Totally creative use of space, and I'm sure people appreciate that while it and they are in the same space. But it doesn't have roots. The lack of roots pervades modern culture, driven by and feeding into many other problems in a giant snarl. This hurts people. They feel lonely and blown around and half of them don't even understand why let alone how to fix it. Sure, some people are nomads and are fine with this. Not everyone is, and it can be very stressful. A good church is shelter in the storm precisely because it has deep roots.
This sort of model is, I believe, the future for religious communities in the twenty-first century. For churches that currently occupy crumbling old buildings, the path to get there may be winding and challenging, but active efforts to become more financially resilient will surely lead to a better outcome than treading water.
Well, sure. They could buy a hideous pole barn church with a life expectancy of 39 years. This does not seem like a good investment to me. They could rent one, but nothing says "rootless" like renting. That puts the whole church at the mercy of the landlord. Perhaps worth considering in an urban church that can't afford anything better, but poor churches don't really inspire confidence either.
What none of this mentions is the root problem: WHY are most congregations shrinking?
You can't take spirituality out of humanity. Gods know, despots have tried. It respawns. You can wipe out a given religion, stamp out its details, if you burn all the books, kill all the people, or at least terrorize them into no longer performing their own rites. But the teenagers will go out in the back alley and ... somehow ... wind up doing a whole bunch of shamanic things. The same things in totally unconnected places. Desperate people will scream "Why" or "Please" like they're talking to Someone, even without being taught. So it's not like we're losing spirituality.
What we've lost, somehow is relevance. A church used to be the center of community, so every community -- every small town, or city neighborhood -- had to have one. It wasn't just for praying, unless it was fancy enough to be important in its own right and somewhere that could afford other public spaces. In a village, the church was the public space. That was where everything happened. Where there were overlapping faith communities, you might see several churches, each serving a different congregation.
Today, plenty of people grow up going to church because it's what their family does, but after they move out, they don't find one they like -- or don't even bother to look. Because it's "okay" but it's not essential to their survival or happiness. It isn't relevant enough to their life that they feel a deep loss and a compulsion to replace it if lost. The problem is, most people today are disconnected and miserable.
Used to be, there was a set of mostly stable connections in people's lives:
- 2 families, their birth family and their married family, and these were extended families so that's about a monkeysphere worth of people right there if you crammed them all together.
- a neighborhood, often 2 again, birth and married; people used to move much less often.
- an employer, with a boss and coworkers; many people used to keep the same job for most or all their mature working life, though they might have starter jobs as a teen or a hobby-job after retirement.
- one or more social clubs, charities, hobby groups, etc. full of friends with whom they shared favorite personal interests.
That is a lot of support, and very little of it remains. Families have fragmented from extended to nuclear to the ones and twos we often see now. More people move frequently, especially chasing jobs. This doesn't just affect the people who move: if everyone else is moving around you, then you have less stability even if you don't move. Same with jobs. Few people keep the same job long-term, or even the same career. The big social clubs and charities are dwindling as bad or worse as the churches.
Yet most people are desperately, miserably lonely to the point it damages their health. Part of that is lack of skills; with smaller families and more frequent moves, it's much harder to learn long-term relationship maintenance. Another part is sheer exhaustion. You put effort into finding, making, and maintaining friends only to have them move or you have to move and then you have to start all over. You might keep in touch with a few, but mostly not, and long-distance relationships are hard to maintain over time. With fewer skills on average, remember. Social networking helps; online friends can be very close ... but they can't help you pack your books to move. Again.
In order to survive, churches must be relevant -- they must be essential to their members' lives. That means the church has to figure out what people need the most, and provide it, or in some other way connect it to the church. Do that, and you've got them.
Right now, the most critical human need is connection. People are starving for it. If you can make them feel like that church is their family, like the church is a vital part of the community, like they matter to the people in the pew ahead and behind, like you've got their back come hell or high water, like you will help them put out the garbage fire of their life, then you've got them. They will cling to the church like a life preserver in stormy waters.
So if you want to salvage a church, look for needs. Start with your religion's core commentary on this topic. For Christians, Jesus said a lot of things that most people ignore, like "Love one another" and "Give everything you have to the poor and follow me." Well, the world has plenty of poor people in desperate need of care, Jesus loves poor people, so if you care for the poor then it'll be good for them, good for you, good for your church, and make Jesus really excited. For Pagans, the focus is on nature; since it's being torn apart right now, there are tons of opportunities to work on that. Even non-Pagans are starting to get really uneasy about this situation, so that's an opportunity. Jews have tikkun olam, world repair. Throw a dart at the world and you'll hit something that needs help. Go work on that.
You could list common worries and address them. People fear homelessness; have an emergency residence or network of members with spare rooms in case someone loses a job or has a house fire. People fear hunger; many churches have a food bank and/or soup kitchen. (Bonus: there's almost zero support for special dietary needs, so do that and it should attract lots of desperate folks.) People fear poverty; you could have a program to help with bills. Those are all old. Here's a new one: cache some fans and air conditioners so when somebody's cooling system breaks, you can loan them a spare until they can get theirs fixed. This will save lives in the ever-hotter future. In fact, turn part of your facility into a cooling center in summer and a warming center in winter. Listen to members; if they have a problem, try to find another member who can help with that. If a tree falls and all the tree services are busy, then surely someone has a chainsaw and a couple spare hours. Offer spiritual activities for anyone who wants it, but don't pester; just take care of people. It'll stand out in a world where everyone else is making demands of them.
Use those needs and values to create connections among people. Here's a great rule of thumb: a new member needs friends, responsibilities, and spiritual nourishment. So concentrate on weaving them in. There are some general guidelines on attracting and retaining new members. Followup with guests or new members can help a lot. But what you really need to do is help them make friends -- lots of friends (for extroverts) or a few really close friends (for introverts). There are lots of articles on how to make friends at church; that's backwards. You should never make new people exert effort; instead, invite them in and introduce them to compatible members. Making good friends will encourage them to stay. To accommodate those who are shy or uneasy about attention, suggest church activities for introverts and know how to make introverts feel valued in church. Your visitation team needs to identify new people's traits, know congretation members, and match up potential friends. You also need to know why your new people came to church and what they want from it. Ask about their interests and match those to your volunteer opportunities.
EDIT 10/20/21:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
erulisse pointed out: "In Texas it is very common for congregations to expand by adding an additional service in a different language to serve immigrant/refugee populations." In a rapidly diversifying world, this is an excellent approach to expanding a congregation or using the same building for several congregations. Language is intensely connecting. If your church offers a public language environment that is rare or absent elsewhere, then its speakers will flock there.
Of course, it's not just churches that can use this approach. Any organization that wants to bring in new members can do that by identifying needs, meeting those needs, and creating connections. Just imagine that everyone is wearing a sign that says, "Make me feel important."
1. Consider a smaller building.
While this is unlikely to appeal to congregations housed in gorgeous historic buildings, anything built much after WWII probably has much less character, not to mention lifespan. Here's an old church with skyscrapers grown up around it. I'm sure a congregation would fight tooth and nail to keep that place. This one is from 1970. It's okayish ... at least it's brick. It's not particularly distinctive and could just as well be replaced by any other brick-shaped pile of bricks with a steeple on top. This one is from 2000. Ugh, what a barn. I've seen prettier garden centers. You'd be better off moving out of that.
Just looking at the houses people build for God tells you a lot about how they feel toward God. It's pretty clear that, while they still value religion, they don't value it anywhere near as much as they used to.
2. Merge with other congregations or find a way to share space.
This is a great idea, and many churches have done it. The challenge is that, when you merge neighborhood churches, they stop being neighborhood churches for most attendees. That makes it harder to build and maintain ties among the congregation, and especially, carry on events when all of those require driving farther and farther.
If people aren't too stuffy to share, swapping off between religions that worship on different days is fantastic. Interfaith churches often do well because they can hold a different type of service every day of the week and thus draw a larger audience than any one group -- and everyone gets a bigger facility than each could afford alone. In fact if they're cosmopolitan folks, they may find more friends and allies this way. If one group runs a thrift store, one a food pantry, and one a soup kitchen then they've greatly increased their local support network.
3. Turn the building into a revenue generator.
Many churches already do this, but many could consider it, or do more of it. As I mentioned earlier, most churches have empty offices and even whole wings that are unused. Fill those spaces with rent-paying tenants like schools, daycares, or businesses (small-scale companies with minimal space needs like law offices and accountants can be a great fit). If your church has a rectory that is no longer housing the parish minister, rent that out to a residential tenant.
This is the closest to my main interest here. There is no benefit to having a big, fancy building stand empty most of the time. That's very wasteful. If you believe in religion, it's also disrespectful, unless that building has staff who actually are doing something all the time even if it's not crowded. Old Catholic churches often have a priest, nuns, etc. who keep candles lit and are available to care for anyone who wanders in. Most modern churches don't.
So it's better to have a multipurpose space that is sometimes a hall of worship, other times an event venue, has children's classes in the day and adult classes or support groups in the evening, whatever you can get to fill the space. Just be careful about mixing business with religion because lots of people are touchy about that. If the business relates to the religion, however, it may be fine -- plenty of churches have a thrift store, spiritual bookstore, or other business run by someone from the congregation in the same building.
One final note I want to add is less a material suggestion and more an emotional one: Don’t tie your identity to a building.
*headdesk* That kind of modern thinking will make it harder to maintain a congregation over time, even if it makes "money" sense in the short term.
Here's the thing: people only save what they love. They won't really love a pole barn church. They probably do love that old church, which is why it's still standing among all those skyscrapers. It is gorgeous and lovable. The beauty of a building says something, not just about what they think God is worth, but how they feel about themselves and each other too.
Sure you can roll up your religion because you can't afford to have a church or invaders burned them all down. That's Paganism, and every Native American tribe for a while although some have subsequently recreated ... well, something, with whatever they had. At various times in the past it was Judaism too. But Pagans don't typically have congregations of thousands anymore. We have whatever we get in whatever space someone has to spare. This matters.
Down the block from me, in my dense urban neighborhood, a church recently opened up in an old commercial storefront. They’ve made impressive use of the space with a combined entry-area/gathering space, a small kitchen, some classrooms and offices, plus a simple but inviting central worship hall. They turned a small parking lot out front into a public seating area.
Totally creative use of space, and I'm sure people appreciate that while it and they are in the same space. But it doesn't have roots. The lack of roots pervades modern culture, driven by and feeding into many other problems in a giant snarl. This hurts people. They feel lonely and blown around and half of them don't even understand why let alone how to fix it. Sure, some people are nomads and are fine with this. Not everyone is, and it can be very stressful. A good church is shelter in the storm precisely because it has deep roots.
This sort of model is, I believe, the future for religious communities in the twenty-first century. For churches that currently occupy crumbling old buildings, the path to get there may be winding and challenging, but active efforts to become more financially resilient will surely lead to a better outcome than treading water.
Well, sure. They could buy a hideous pole barn church with a life expectancy of 39 years. This does not seem like a good investment to me. They could rent one, but nothing says "rootless" like renting. That puts the whole church at the mercy of the landlord. Perhaps worth considering in an urban church that can't afford anything better, but poor churches don't really inspire confidence either.
What none of this mentions is the root problem: WHY are most congregations shrinking?
You can't take spirituality out of humanity. Gods know, despots have tried. It respawns. You can wipe out a given religion, stamp out its details, if you burn all the books, kill all the people, or at least terrorize them into no longer performing their own rites. But the teenagers will go out in the back alley and ... somehow ... wind up doing a whole bunch of shamanic things. The same things in totally unconnected places. Desperate people will scream "Why" or "Please" like they're talking to Someone, even without being taught. So it's not like we're losing spirituality.
What we've lost, somehow is relevance. A church used to be the center of community, so every community -- every small town, or city neighborhood -- had to have one. It wasn't just for praying, unless it was fancy enough to be important in its own right and somewhere that could afford other public spaces. In a village, the church was the public space. That was where everything happened. Where there were overlapping faith communities, you might see several churches, each serving a different congregation.
Today, plenty of people grow up going to church because it's what their family does, but after they move out, they don't find one they like -- or don't even bother to look. Because it's "okay" but it's not essential to their survival or happiness. It isn't relevant enough to their life that they feel a deep loss and a compulsion to replace it if lost. The problem is, most people today are disconnected and miserable.
Used to be, there was a set of mostly stable connections in people's lives:
- 2 families, their birth family and their married family, and these were extended families so that's about a monkeysphere worth of people right there if you crammed them all together.
- a neighborhood, often 2 again, birth and married; people used to move much less often.
- an employer, with a boss and coworkers; many people used to keep the same job for most or all their mature working life, though they might have starter jobs as a teen or a hobby-job after retirement.
- one or more social clubs, charities, hobby groups, etc. full of friends with whom they shared favorite personal interests.
That is a lot of support, and very little of it remains. Families have fragmented from extended to nuclear to the ones and twos we often see now. More people move frequently, especially chasing jobs. This doesn't just affect the people who move: if everyone else is moving around you, then you have less stability even if you don't move. Same with jobs. Few people keep the same job long-term, or even the same career. The big social clubs and charities are dwindling as bad or worse as the churches.
Yet most people are desperately, miserably lonely to the point it damages their health. Part of that is lack of skills; with smaller families and more frequent moves, it's much harder to learn long-term relationship maintenance. Another part is sheer exhaustion. You put effort into finding, making, and maintaining friends only to have them move or you have to move and then you have to start all over. You might keep in touch with a few, but mostly not, and long-distance relationships are hard to maintain over time. With fewer skills on average, remember. Social networking helps; online friends can be very close ... but they can't help you pack your books to move. Again.
In order to survive, churches must be relevant -- they must be essential to their members' lives. That means the church has to figure out what people need the most, and provide it, or in some other way connect it to the church. Do that, and you've got them.
Right now, the most critical human need is connection. People are starving for it. If you can make them feel like that church is their family, like the church is a vital part of the community, like they matter to the people in the pew ahead and behind, like you've got their back come hell or high water, like you will help them put out the garbage fire of their life, then you've got them. They will cling to the church like a life preserver in stormy waters.
So if you want to salvage a church, look for needs. Start with your religion's core commentary on this topic. For Christians, Jesus said a lot of things that most people ignore, like "Love one another" and "Give everything you have to the poor and follow me." Well, the world has plenty of poor people in desperate need of care, Jesus loves poor people, so if you care for the poor then it'll be good for them, good for you, good for your church, and make Jesus really excited. For Pagans, the focus is on nature; since it's being torn apart right now, there are tons of opportunities to work on that. Even non-Pagans are starting to get really uneasy about this situation, so that's an opportunity. Jews have tikkun olam, world repair. Throw a dart at the world and you'll hit something that needs help. Go work on that.
You could list common worries and address them. People fear homelessness; have an emergency residence or network of members with spare rooms in case someone loses a job or has a house fire. People fear hunger; many churches have a food bank and/or soup kitchen. (Bonus: there's almost zero support for special dietary needs, so do that and it should attract lots of desperate folks.) People fear poverty; you could have a program to help with bills. Those are all old. Here's a new one: cache some fans and air conditioners so when somebody's cooling system breaks, you can loan them a spare until they can get theirs fixed. This will save lives in the ever-hotter future. In fact, turn part of your facility into a cooling center in summer and a warming center in winter. Listen to members; if they have a problem, try to find another member who can help with that. If a tree falls and all the tree services are busy, then surely someone has a chainsaw and a couple spare hours. Offer spiritual activities for anyone who wants it, but don't pester; just take care of people. It'll stand out in a world where everyone else is making demands of them.
Use those needs and values to create connections among people. Here's a great rule of thumb: a new member needs friends, responsibilities, and spiritual nourishment. So concentrate on weaving them in. There are some general guidelines on attracting and retaining new members. Followup with guests or new members can help a lot. But what you really need to do is help them make friends -- lots of friends (for extroverts) or a few really close friends (for introverts). There are lots of articles on how to make friends at church; that's backwards. You should never make new people exert effort; instead, invite them in and introduce them to compatible members. Making good friends will encourage them to stay. To accommodate those who are shy or uneasy about attention, suggest church activities for introverts and know how to make introverts feel valued in church. Your visitation team needs to identify new people's traits, know congretation members, and match up potential friends. You also need to know why your new people came to church and what they want from it. Ask about their interests and match those to your volunteer opportunities.
EDIT 10/20/21:
erulisse pointed out: "In Texas it is very common for congregations to expand by adding an additional service in a different language to serve immigrant/refugee populations." In a rapidly diversifying world, this is an excellent approach to expanding a congregation or using the same building for several congregations. Language is intensely connecting. If your church offers a public language environment that is rare or absent elsewhere, then its speakers will flock there. Of course, it's not just churches that can use this approach. Any organization that wants to bring in new members can do that by identifying needs, meeting those needs, and creating connections. Just imagine that everyone is wearing a sign that says, "Make me feel important."