Tracking Closed Church Assets

David Schoen is Minister for Church Legacy & Closure, UCC Church Building & Loan Fund, dschoen@ucc.org.

The UCC Closed Church Legacy Survey has been compiled by Taylor Russell, Senior Data Analysist and Rev. David Schoen, Minister for Church Legacy & Closure in the UCC Church Building & Loan Fund.

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In the newly published book, Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition, Eileen Lindner writes that ‘as many as 100,000 buildings and billions of dollars of church-owned property, are expected to be sold or repurposed throughout the United States by 2030.’ ‘It is difficult to get precise data on exactly how many church properties will be sold’ she writes ‘because no one is tracking that in any systematic way.’

In order to track closed church assets, a Church Legacies Survey was created by the UCC Church Building & Loan Fund to study the legacy of 104 UCC congregations that closed between 2020-2022. The survey was distributed to UCC Conferences, Archives, Seminaries and National Organizations to discover what happened with church members, church histories, church property and financial assets. The survey gathered data on eighty-four of the closed congregations. An initial report on the survey responses was published in the Vital Signs and Statistics blog, The Significance of Church Legacies which primarily focused on what happened with church members, records and archives. This blog will focus on church property and legacy financial distributions.

What happened with the property of closed churches.

The survey discovered that the greatest number of closed church properties, thirty-four were sold. Seventeen were sold to other non-UCC congregations or religious communities, including immigrant/refugee congregations – Karen (Myanmar) Baptist, Moldovian Baptist, Falam (Myanmar) Christian, Coptic and Hispanic, as well as Holiness, a Baptist new church start, independent evangelical congregations, a Catholic congregation, and an Islamic Society. Two properties were sold to tax-exempt service agencies: a local community center, and a clothing/food distribution center. Six were sold to developers or businesses and one was sold as a personal home. The purchasers of eight of the congregations are unknown.

The property sales included three sales above $1M and twenty $1M or less.

Property Sales Prices	Number of Churches
$0 – $100,000	1
$100,001 – $250,000	8
$250,001 – $500,000	8
$500,001 – $1,000,000	3
$1,000,001 – $2,500,000	2
$2,500,001 – $5,000,000	1
Don’t Know	10

Six church properties were donated to tax-exempt organizations. Two churches were donated to organizations which provide community and recovery services. Three were donated to non-denominational congregations, including a church that was renting from the closed congregation. Two church properties were donated to UCC conferences of which one was sold to a Hispanic congregation for $150,000 and the other is for sale. One was given to the local township to be a community center for local service agencies. One recipient of a church property is unknown. The estimated value for each of these five donated facilities ranged from $100,000 to $1,000,000.

Combining the sold and donated properties, the closed church became twenty-one other congregations, five community service agencies, six businesses or developments and a personal home. Nine properties are still for sale, one was steeple jacked (a group infiltrating an existing congregation, pulling it away from its denominational moorings), two were abandoned and/or torn down. What became of church property was unknown in twenty-two situations.

What happened with church financial legacy and distributions?

The total known legacy distributions of church finances amounted to at least $9,059,400 from thirty-eight congregations. The largest amount of funds was given to thirteen UCC Conferences totaling $4,259,175 from twenty-six congregations. Nearly equal to the amount given to the Conferences were gifts given to other tax-exempt organizations totaling at least $4,051,775 from twenty-four congregations in thirty-four recorded gifts (but total number of gifts not known). $748,450 was contributed to UCC organizations including the UCC National Ministries (Local Church Ministries, Wider Church Ministries, Ministerial Financial Vitality), UCC related Seminaries, a UCC Archive and the UCC ONA Coalition.

This is the breakdown of the amounts received by the thirteen conferences.           

Dollar amount received by each conference	number of conferences
$1 – 10,000	4
$10,001 – 25,000	2
$25,001 – 50,000	3
$50,0001 – 100,000	4
$100,001 – 250,000	6
$250,001 – 500,000	1
$500,001 – 1,000,000	3

Gifts to conferences were designated for refugee resettlement, multi-ethnic and Hispanic churches, anti-racism/racial justice issues, OCWM, UCC Christmas Fund, One Great Hour of Sharing, local community service organizations, conference 21^st Century Fund (re-imagination grants), new church development, Threshold & Legacy Church fund, grants to local churches, camps, and general endowments.

Legacy contribution to other tax-exempt organization were given to local feeding programs, youth and family services, recovery services, a UCC-related senior center, housing programs, a new UCC congregation birthed out of closed church, other UCC and non-UCC churches, the closed church cemetery, animal welfare shelter, a Federation of North American German congregations, and dismantling/shipping & reassembling a historic organ to a Catholic Seminary in Philippines.

One closed congregation used its sale and financial distribution to pay off its building loan. In several situations, buildings were still for sale and/or legacy contributions were still being decided. Unfortunately, the asset distributions of twenty-nine congregations are unknown.

Reflections on the Closed Church Survey
With the expectation that the reality of churches ending their ministries will continue in future years, here are some reflections and a resource on what this survey suggests for congregations, conferences, national ministries, organizations, and communities.

• Great appreciation for the congregations, church leaders and pastors who worked diligently to create these faithful legacies with their property and financial contributions.
• Encouragement and support for church leaders not to wait until the very end to consider just and faithful legacies and building transitions that will make the greatest impact for the common good and Gospel mission.
• Collaborative work among congregations, conferences, national ministries, communities, and other organizations is needed to enable creative strategies to address concerns on how to sustain missional services and properties in communities even as congregations close.

An excellent resource for facilitating these discussions and actions is the new book Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition. Edited by Mark Elsdon, Gone for Good? draws upon the experience and expertise of a diverse and interdisciplinary group of contributors including UCC Colleagues, Rev. Dr. Shelly Stackhouse and Rev. Dr. Patrick Duggan. The book highlights ‘what we are losing as church property usage changes at an unprecedented speed and scale and helps us imagine the innovative possibilities that can emerge. This book encourages church and civic leaders to engage in thoughtful, intentional church property (and legacy assets) transitions so this once in a lifetime shift leaves us not gone for forever but gone for good.’