church buildings

Bekah McNeel 7-11-2023

Little Engineers Day Nusery at The Engine Room, community centre and and church at the heart of the new housing development in the Hale Village, Tottenham Hale, North London, U.K., 2017. Via Alamy. 

As congregations age and shrink across the U.S., churches find their sizable buildings often become underutilized. The solution might be found in addressing the child care crisis. 

Christian Piatt 9-23-2013
Ball and chain holding person back, Air0ne / Shutterstock.com

Ball and chain holding person back, Air0ne / Shutterstock.com

I’m often asked about what trends I see within Christianity, both good and bad. So in my ongoing effort to help name trends and offer an alternative way of thinking about our faith, here are the five biggest things I’ve seen that tend to keep us from doing our best work as the living, breathing body of Christ in the world today.

1. Church Buildings — Many of our church buildings were established in a time when Christianity was booming numerically in the United States. We could hardly keep up with the growth happening all around us. Understandably, churches popped up where the people were too, drawing many away from their old downtown churches to a more convenient suburban community. But as our numbers have dwindled – combined with the fact the we’re a much more mobile society now that ever before – many churches are becoming monuments to what has long since passed. They have become an albatross rather than an asset.

Christian Piatt 7-17-2012
Collapsed church, Pattie Steib / Shutterstock.com

Collapsed church, Pattie Steib / Shutterstock.com

I was having lunch with another couple in ministry that shared a disturbing story with us. The problem isn’t so much in the uniqueness of the story they told, but rather in how incredibly common it is.

The couple had connections to a congregations several hours away that is located in the heart of a thriving urban center. The aging congregation was down to only 40 regular attendees and had released all of their paid staff, opting instead for volunteers to lead worship for them when they could secure them.

Meanwhile, they gathered in a building, valued at roughly $9 million, which they could not afford to maintain.

This church, like so many others, seeks answers to questions about how to survive in an increasingly secular, disparate, and religiously wary culture. Their hope, like plenty of other churches, is that something or someone will come along to save them, keep the institution going and propel them into the future for another century.

Oh, as long as they don’t have to change.

Sven Eberlein 3-01-2012

In the wake of last year's Fukushima disaster, German chancellor Angela Merkel announced the country would phase out nuclear power. Churches are at the forefront of Germany's new solar revolution.

Aaron Taylor 8-14-2009
A few days ago, radical Muslims in Pakistan began terrorizing the Christian minority in the town of Gojra.