What to do with underused or empty church buildings? 11-28-18

It surely cannot be news to most Americans that weekly attendance at worship services has been dwindling for decades. This is a pattern that began to establish itself some 50 or more years ago and has accelerated since then.

Because most Americans still identify as some sort of Christian, this decline in attendance and membership has created the add-on problem of what to do with largely empty church buildings.

As columnist Jonathan Merritt reports in this Atlantic piece, "Many of our nation’s churches can no longer afford to maintain their structures — 6,000 to 10,000 churches die each year in America — and that number will likely grow. Though more than 70 percent of our citizens still claim to be Christian, congregational participation is less central to many Americans’ faith than it once was. Most denominations are declining as a share of the overall population, and donations to congregations have been falling for decades. Meanwhile, religiously unaffiliated Americans, nicknamed the 'nones,' are growing as a share of the U.S. population."

He notes that some vacant churches get taken over by developers who turn them into condos or businesses. And others simply sit idle waiting for someone to come up with a winning idea for reuse.

Some currently active congregations that are housed in large and expensive structures find innovative ways to use the space on weekdays when there is no worship service. The congregation to which I belong, for instance, Second Presbyterian Church of Kansas City, is in the midst of a $2.6-million renovation project that has as its goal, as our slogan puts it, "Creating Space for All People." (The image at left today shows some of our interior plans. The top photo shows outside work on our new elevator and other projects.) Our goal is to develop more internal space for community and church groups to use in various ways. Well, that and fix our iconic tower that was having some issues and install an ADA-compliant elevator to replace the inadequate one we had.

Our congregation is not unique in its effort to make wise use of our building, which now is more than 100 years old and is in a prime location just southeast of the Country Club Plaza. Other worship centers, too, are finding ways to use their space for purposes beyond weekly worship services.

But that's never an easy or simple process. As Merritt writes, "Closure and adaptive reuse often seems like the simplest and most responsible path. Many houses of worship sit on prime real estate, often in the center of towns or cities, where inventory is low. Selling the property to the highest bidder is a quick and effective way to cut losses and settle debts. But repurposing a sacred space for secular use has a number of drawbacks. There are zoning issues, price negotiations, and sometimes fierce pushback from the surrounding community and the parish’s former members."

It would be fascinating to check back in 100 years or so to see what has happened to the building currently housing my congregation -- and to check on other large worship centers in the KC area. What I know is that things inevitably are going to change. Whether congregations like the one to which I belong can adapt and use their buildings creatively is still an unanswered question.

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THE RISKS OF RELIGIOUS SCHOLARSHIP

You might think that being a scholar of religion and speaking about all of that in public would be a pretty safe job. Think again. As this Religion News Service article reports, that is an increasingly dangerous job and likely to bring you into all kinds of danger, including death threats. Sort of makes you ashamed of being human.