Flipping the Script on Stewardship:

COVID-19 & the Shift from Church Property to Kingdom Building

For more than a year, your church’s building has been unused.  Yet, not having access to it didn’t stop your faith community from being a church.  You never stopped gathering in worship, you never stopped loving God and loving your neighbors as yourselves, you never stopped joining God in God’s mission, you never stopped praying, but your building did.  It stopped, and sat empty and unused.

What if COVID-19 is an opportunity for your church to reimagine property stewardship?  God has a beautiful way of transforming pain into beauty.  This article invites you to question your church’s post-pandemic property priorities by flipping the script.  

Flipping the Script on your Church’s Property

Imagine your church’s building funding ministry, rather than your community raising money to fund the building; that’s the “flipping” we’re talking about.  There is already a growing movement of churches doing exactly this and the pandemic is accelerating its momentum.  Regular churches like yours and mine are exploring exciting ways of leveraging their property to strengthen neighborhood life, promote peace, justice, and community in the Jesus Way while generating funds to help cover operating expenses… they are flipping the script on how they steward their property assets.   

An important stewardship question you may wish to discuss with your faith community is: How might you begin to reimagine the stewardship of your church’s building so that it fund the church’s operating expenses? 

Some expressions “flipping the script” are already familiar.  You have likely seen churches hosting schools, daycare centers, or serving as concert/event venues… these examples are just scratching the surface of what is possible. 

My life’s work is to learn from local communities of Christ followers seeking to discover a way of Shalom in our changing times.   Through my collaboration with Parish Collective and the Urban Shalom Society in service of UN Habitat, I have visited churches and their neighborhoods all over the world.  While I didn’t set out to study church own-property and emerging economic models moving beyond “voluntary donation” I have stumbled upon examples worth listening to. 

I have encountered a church that turned its parsonage into an Air B&B that now pays the majority of the church’s operating budget.  Other churches have negotiated with developers to tear down and rebuild the property providing a brand new – more accessible – home for the church while being financially viable for the developer and meeting a growing need for affordable housing. 

As other church communities have listened to their neighborhoods they have reimagined their buildings as centers for multiple non-profit organizations, others have become home to farmers’ markets, or co-working spaces, and even entrepreneurial hubs.  Other have created alternative revenue streams by turning their parking lots into pay lots during the week, still others have rented to Wi-Fi cafes, coffee shops, restaurants, teaching kitchens, laundromats, or even bars.  I could go on-and-on.  In times of crisis, our churches can be amazingly creative and adaptive.

If you’re thinking this all sounds amazing but my church could never do this; consider your history.  Think about all the changes and innovations your community of faith has engaged since just March of last year!  While flipping the script on church-owned property may sound odd, or even a little complicated.  It is quite doable!  And well worth the small investment. 

Let me offer just a few business considerations, followed by some questions for your church, before concluding with a dare:

Business Considerations

If your church might wish to explore flipping the script to supplement to current giving there are a few things to consider:

• Consult Legal Counsel in determining what your State permits regarding church building usage.  State laws vary considerably.
• Unrelated Business Income Tax.  If your State permits churches some measure of freedom with their properties, then it’s important to know this new revenue stream will be subject to “UBIT”, rent is never a donation. 
• Fair Market Value.  Invite a realtor to help you determine fair market value.  If your church undercuts local fair market value, it may actually have a negative impact on the local economy.

Of course, there are many other details to attend to, but honestly, this is a relatively small investment toward flipping the script on your church’s management of its property. 

A Few Vital Questions Toward Flipping Your Church’s Script

Who are you as a church community?  What are your church’s important stories?  What values do y’all hold?  What aspects of your collective past can you lean on to help you move with faith in your future?

Where is your church property?  Whether it’s in a city, or a small town, or surrounded by farmland, your church has neighbors.  Your church’s property is somewhere, and that means its building is in a specific place, with real neighbors who have real needs.  What might your church’s parish and its residents need from your church’s building?  How can your church’s building be bless your local context?

Who most needs to be listened to?  Who are the people, cultures, or groups in your place who most need to be heard, resourced, and supported?  How might your building be a resource? 

How might you as a church love your neighbors with your church’s property?  How can your church build on its collective history of hospitality, justice, and service?

A Kingdom Dare

Imagine giving your building away!  Not the deed.  Imagine this whole process as learning to love your neighborhood as you love yourselves through your church’s property. 

Flipping the script on your church-owned property isn’t about getting your church members to buy in on some “new way” of using your building to fund ministry.  Rather, church communities who have flipped their script in mutually beneficial ways, engage in deep and careful listening to the people and groups impacted by their church’s property.  

These churches listen to identify real needs within the people and the place where their building is located.  The church group doesn’t just dream-up a new vision and impose on their context, instead they wonder together – with their neighbors – how their church’s building could make their lives, their neighbors’ lives, and life in their neighborhood better for all. 

These churches listen deeply to local businesses and farmers, local schools, other religious groups, and local residents.  They listen to children, teens, young adults, mid-aged, seniors, and everyone in-between.  They listen to minority voices and majority voices, paying special attention to those whose voices are least likely to be heard or honored.  They listen to other non-profits, local government, and community councils.  They listen for how they could love their neighbors with their property as an expression of their faith.

As you are well aware, your church’s building doesn’t really belong to your church.  It is a kingdom building.  It just so happens that God has given your church its building to steward until the Master returns.  The question is never how much has God given you, rather how are you using what God has given you?  How might you steward it for the greatest kingdom yield?

Jesus famously summed up all the teachings of Scripture by saying; love God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.  Seems like an important stewardship metric.  How are we stewarding our church owned property so that our building is loving God and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves?

Flipping the script on your church’s building may be one way to love God by loving your neighbors while finding some economic freedom in the process.

I am available to help your church or organization shift your conversation about its property stewardship. You can reach me here.

Peace, dwight