When you start a business, you have a strategy in place. When you go on a trip, you create an itinerary. When you buy a house, you go in with a clear plan, budget, and strategy.
The same principle should apply to church real estate. But our team at Ministry Solutions Group consistently finds that when churches buy physical land and buildings, they do so with their priorities misaligned and their plans out of whack. In a word, they lack a good strategy.
If you want your church to thrive, you must approach its real estate activity with the right mindset, which isn’t easy. Here are some thoughts I have developed throughout a decade of work in the church real estate space on why strategy matters for your ministry’s brick-and-mortar investments.
Before we talk about real estate specifics, we need to start with faith and finance in general. Finances and church often mix like oil and water — but they shouldn’t. Instead, you need to learn how to see them as complementary pieces of how a church functions.
The truth is, there is a moment in every church’s history when the culture shifts from reaching new people to paying the bills. I’m not being cynical. Once you have people coming, the natural transition is to make sure you can maintain the structure that is already ministering to them.
That means you need to bring together (rather than exclude one at the cost of the other) business concepts and faith-based priorities. This is why Ministry Solutions Group’s business plans factor in things like Biblical stewardship of resources and protecting the purpose of the organization.
Pastors don’t go into ministry to become project managers. A strategy helps you identify needs and create ministry capacity that enables meeting demands in the present and leaves room for growth. One great phrase we use at MSG to maintain perspective with our clients is the goal of moving from asking, "How do we fund a building?" to "How do we build buildings that fund ministry?"
Factoring in faith is one thing. What about risk? Does God call churches to take risks? I would argue the answer is yes, but within the bounds of Biblical stewardship.
Larry Osborne once said, "Faith is not risk-taking. Faith is being obedient even when it's risky." The focus of God’s calling for any ministry isn’t to raise money. He calls them to be good stewards of the resources that they’re given.
At times, you have more resources, and at others, you have less. Every pastor will have moments where they are required to have a lot of faith as their churches make big financial and building-related decisions.
The critical factor here — and the one that I try to emphasize for every ministry that we work with — is that there is a difference between making a decision based on blind risk and making an educated and informed risky decision.
If you do your homework, crunch numbers, and align church real estate strategy with God-inspired vision, you can shift the narrative from building a physical kingdom to bringing physical buildings in line with Kingdom building. When that happens, you have the knowledge and insights to let your strategy define your opportunities as a church rather than the other way around (which is too often the case).
Another factor that an informed strategy gives you is financing options. Banks typically look at historical numbers and look for ways to fit church real estate financing into pre-existing boxes.
At Ministry Solutions Group, we approach the problem of church meeting space with the question of how we can build a box to fit the church’s needs, both now and in the future. In other words, we don’t fit these needs into a box. We build a box to fit those needs.
Before we go to a banker or even an architect, we have a solid plan in place. We’ve figured out financials, including finding ways for a building to pay for itself and conducting thorough forecasting based not just on established givers but also on developing giving units. This empowers our clients to go to bankers and architects with a strategy that conveys confidence and capability. They know what they want, and they know they can do it. That opens up the door not just to being approved for financing but to having banks and designers fight over serving them.
Let’s look past the hypotheticals and consider what a good church real estate strategy looks like in action. In the past, the philosophy was to build large facilities up front and then try to fill them.
Half a decade ago (before the pandemic), this was already being replaced by a desire to build smaller facilities, fill them up quickly, and then launch more campuses. Rather than building auditoriums for 2,000-plus crowds, churches opened satellites with 500-1,000 seats each. This approach makes it easier for churches to grow in crowded urban centers where real estate is at a premium. It also falls in line with trends that are finding smaller groups lead to higher engagement, greater participation, and better giving.
Post-pandemic, the church real estate market continues to evolve for obvious reasons. Remote-church initially gave many the opportunity to move from crowded city centers to the suburbs. Now that people are craving in-person connection again, Zoom Towns are beginning to redefine the church attendance narrative. As churches face hybrid attendance and less overall demand for larger buildings, they are also utilizing their buildings for ministry and community events as a way to help them support their congregations — rather than the other way around.
Churches continue to struggle to connect post-pandemic. This is due to a number of reasons, including digital transformation, shifting demographics, and rapid growth.
Regardless of the reason, every modern ministry needs to invest in a real estate strategy that aligns with the need to connect people both with your church and each other. Remember, the idea behind a facility is to facilitate experiences.
This ongoing challenge to balance practicality with God-given mission is why we created our Building Activation strategy. This service solution focuses on monetizing your building for ministry impact. If you’re looking for ways to turn your brick-and-mortar structure from a liability that you have to pour into to an asset that pours into your ministry, let’s talk!
As you look for the best ways to invest in real estate, ask yourself, are you helping create more investors and fewer consumers in your church? The answer can be one of the most important things that guide your next step.