Church real estate is at a crossroads. As digital tools improve and online attendance remains strong, ministries are facing the reality that a healthy church doesn’t always mean a full sanctuary. While you can adapt your ministry to meet this shifting church model, you can’t change the fact that you still have to pay the mortgage (and probably at a higher interest rate these days, too).
If you’re a church just shifting from a portable to a permanent setting, your bills might be relatively small. But what about a multisite ministry? What if you have more than one mortgage or rental across a larger geographic footprint? What if that’s been the case for years, and you’re struggling to adapt to the seismic shift of online attendance with such a large congregation?
At Ministry Solutions, our answer is Building Activation. This is the efficient use of church real estate through utilizing your unused spaces to meet the needs of local community members. If you’re a church leader juggling multiple payments and buildings, here are three tips to make sure you’re optimizing the impact of every brick-and-mortar structure your church owns so that, as we say, your building pays for your ministry and not the other way around.
Each local community has its own needs. These aren’t always obvious, and they’re not just what your church leaders think the community wants. (E.g., another VBS is fun, but no one outside of your church is begging for one!)
When you’re looking for effective ways to activate a church structure, you always want to start by considering what the local community needs. It’s a nice gesture to open your Sunday coffee shop called “He-Brews” from 2-4 PM on Mondays and Wednesdays, but don’t expect your local community to show up. That is a church-first, church-focused plan that, in the majority of cases, doesn’t consider real needs — and it won’t get you far.
Instead, gauge what your community actually needs. Is it a legitimate coffee shop (with a better name)? A daycare? A community center? We’ve created a downloadable guide to help you identify community needs. Use it to discover what kind of investment will genuinely serve the people living around you.
When it comes to a multisite setup, the demographic of “people living around you” changes. You need to consider the needs of each individual community that you serve. For instance, a church in the inner city might be able to use a parking lot for low-budget parking during the week, whereas parking on campus in the more spacious suburbs would have no appeal. As you look for ways to fund your ministry with your buildings, match individual opportunities with unique community needs in each location.
As you consider the needs of the individual local communities your multisite ministry serves, you also want to assess how each option integrates with your ministry’s regular activities. When we say look for “non-compete” partnerships, we aren’t talking about other ministries. We’re talking about business models that don’t compete with regular church activities.
A daycare, for instance, is a weekly need with non-competing high-traffic times compared to typical Sunday services and weeknight programs. The same goes for an indoor playground, cowork space, or cafe.
Again, with the multisite aspect, consider the traffic flow and needs of each campus. On the one hand, a city church located in a corporate area might not be as attractive as a daycare center candidate due to commutes and location.
On the other hand, if you’re a church in a more sprawling geographic area, community programs and services could be in high demand during the week. In the case of Chase Oaks in Plano, TX we helped them set up things like professional childcare, pickleball courts, and a cafe. This met local community needs so well that it immediately attracted dozens of volunteers. The facilities ended up generating upwards of 3,000 unique visitors per month and hundreds of thousands in net profit, too. This optimized the church campus’ previously dormant real estate by meeting the needs of its largely rural community.
One of our favorite sayings is that the easiest way to get more square footage is to use the same square footage more. Building activation takes your existing church buildings and repurposes them for other, non-competing activities. While effective, you need to approach building activation in the right order.
There are two stages to the building activation process: the information-gathering phase and the decision-making phase — in that order. Often, churches dive into the process backward, creating chaos and subpar results.
The idea here is that you should take your time to gather information and assess options. Then, make data-backed decisions that activate your building in ways that genuinely serve your community. Here’s the thing, though. You want professionals involved in both phases, especially when you’re working in a multisite system. No one on your staff will know everything about all parts or locations of your ministry. Don’t fall for the “we have a guy” syndrome that plagues so many church boards and eldership teams, too.
You can work with a team like Ministry Solutions Group for the information-gathering stage. We can bring expertise, updated knowledge, and church real estate experience to bear as we assess each campus.
Once you have a plan in place, don’t break ground on a new initiative yourself. When building a new structure or renovating for building activation, hire an architect to ensure you address specific programmatic needs as you execute your vision. This ensures that you are repurposing your spaces wisely.
Efficiency and optimization are critical parts of church administration, especially in the post-pandemic age. As ministries struggle to keep butts in seats on Sunday mornings, building activation offers churches of all sizes — including multiple campuses — a way to improve outreach and address financial pressures.
If your multisite church needs relief from mounting expenses and decreasing building use, we’d love to connect. Let's get started with a free consultation to see where your ministry stands. From there, if your church qualifies for building activation, we can visit your campuses, assess the details, and come up with a plan to help your church buildings pay for your larger ministry, — not the other way around.