The Top 5 Churches Utilizing Buildings for Ministry

Your church’s building is an important and practical part of your ministry but it’s not your ministry… it’s a tool for ministry. It can do so much more than host your Sunday services, facilitate Bible studies, or accommodate youth events. Your church building is an asset for the community — at least, it can be. 

Churches often spend millions of dollars on buildings that sit empty six days per week, and those buildings typically sit in the middle of communities comprised of the people with whom they want to engage. What we’ve found at Ministry Solutions Group is that too often, churches focus on becoming large enough to fund buildings when, in reality, the bigger opportunity to serve the community is to focus on buildings that fund churches. The Church has an opportunity to turn its underutilized brick-and-mortar structures into an empowering tool that can simultaneously impact its communities and unlock additional streams of income. 

Don’t think it can work for your church? We challenge you to think again.

Across the nation, churches are reimagining their spaces to create greater impact. Here are the Top 5 Churches in the United States that have revolutionized their building use, setting a new standard for innovative ministry:

These trailblazing churches have transformed their physical structures into dynamic hubs of community engagement and spiritual growth. By thinking outside the box, they've turned their buildings into powerful tools for ministry, inspiring churches nationwide to reconsider how they utilize their spaces. From urban centers to suburban communities, these top 5 churches demonstrate how creative building use can dramatically enhance a church's relevance and effectiveness in today's world. 

1. Liquid Church’s Clean Water Cafe

Liquid Church is a multisite ministry in New Jersey. Along with a robust online presence, it has seven different physical locations, all of which cost money to maintain. One way the ministry is utilizing all of this real estate is through the Clean Water Cafe.

Located at Liquid Church’s site in Parsippany, the Clean Water Cafe is a coffeehouse that provides a variety of handcrafted hot and cold beverages. Breakfast and lunch are also available, and the cafe is open from 8 AM to 2 PM Sunday through Thursday. That means it’s available for churchgoers during Sunday services and then uses the space in the quieter portion of the week before shutting down in the lead-up to the next weekend.

The cafe doesn’t just bring in an income for Liquid Church, either. It’s also used as an opportunity to provide employment for adults with special needs. A portion of the sales also goes toward providing clean drinking water for children and families in Africa. 

This year, Liquid Church also integrated a childcare operator to manage a childcare center on behalf of the church, which will serve over 100 families and generate six figures of income for the church.

2. Chase Oaks and a Fully Integrated Experience

Chase Oaks Church is another multisite ministry, this time with three campuses located around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Part of the church’s community-oriented focus is expressed through its Local Good Collective, a series of initiatives that seek to bring the community together.

Along with its own coffee shop ministry, Chase Oaks opened pickleball courts adjacent to the cafe and the church. The courts remain occupied almost all day long, six days per week. 

Chase Oaks also opened the Local Good Center, which has multiple ministries that serve children and families in the community. 

In June, Chase Oaks also integrated a childcare operator to manage a childcare center on its behalf. The center will serve over 150 families and generate well into six figures of income for the church. Churches are often set up for childcare on Sundays, and extending those safe, effective spaces to help parents during the week is a powerful way to impact local communities.

3. 2/42 Community Church Doubles as a Community Center

2/42 Community Church is a thriving ministry in Michigan. While the entire 2/42 family of campuses is committed to Michigan (one of their mottos is “For you, for your family, for Michigan), we want to call out their Brighton campus here.

The Brighton 2/42 team has fully embraced getting the most out of their campus on a daily basis. They say right on their site, “Our building doubles as a Community Center.” This allows the church to impact the community through a restaurant and deli, a School for the Arts, and kid-friendly activities, like rock climbing, playscapes, turf fields, and basketball. The campus even has reservable gathering spaces and is planning to roll out onsite childcare soon.

4. National Community Church’s State-of-the-Art Event Center

For our next example, we turn to a major ministry located in the country’s capital and nearby Virginia. National Community Church engages in a number of onsite activities like childcare during the week. What we really want to emphasize here is their event center. 

Capital Turnaround is a reclamation project that the church turned into a state-of-the-art event venue themed on the building’s traditional use: a Navy Yard Car Barn. It comes replete with a main hall, auditorium, green rooms, and gathering spaces. This makes it ideal for everything from conferences and corporate events to retreats, weddings, and performances — all of which can take place outside of Sunday service hours.

5. Willow Creek’s Increasing Onsite Weekday Community Presence

Willow Creek is a multisite church in Illinois. The ministry already has a vibrant series of community initiatives that include a cafe, care center, and indoor play area — all of which are open to the public during the week.

Willow Creek also has a weekday childcare ministry that has been run by in-house operations in the past. Our team is currently working to revamp the structure of this program to help them pass the reins to a third-party operator. This will allow them to maintain the impact of the weekday ministry without putting unnecessary stress on internal staff and resources.

Thinking Big Picture With Your Ministry’s Buildings

Your ministry should never exist for your building. It should always be the other way around. When you can truly embrace that perspective, it opens up a whole new world of opportunities outside of your typical Sunday service. 

That’s why we created our Buildings That Fund Ministry service. If you or your staff are struggling to find that path forward, but you know it’s there, that’s where Ministry Solutions Group can help. Our team of experienced counselors and advisors can help you develop a ministry-focused weekday strategy for your brick-and-mortar locations.

Let’s get in touch. Together, we can turn your ministry’s buildings from expenses into assets.