PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS

NC nonprofit helps churches convert property from liabilities to assets

EVEN STRUGGLING CONGREGATIONS CAN THRIVE IF THEY SEE THEIR PROPERTY IN NEW WAYS

The reckoning came five years ago when Park Street United Methodist Church needed a new roof for its sanctuary and education building.

The bill came to $38,000, which was a stretch for the church. But then five months later, another building the church had used as a Boy Scout meeting place also needed a new roof. The cost? $34,000.

The two roof replacements put a real strain on the 99-year-old church and wiped out whatever funds the congregation had set aside for capital improvements.

"That began the conversation -- 'If something big goes wrong, how do we pay for it?'" said the Rev. J. David Hiatt, the pastor of the church located in the growing community of Belmont, North Carolina, about 15 miles west of Charlotte. "You can't patch things forever."

The church, which has about 275 members and a Sunday worship attendance of 150, did have one valuable asset: a campus of 4.5 acres on a central street corner just a few blocks from downtown Belmont's commercial heart.

In 2017, the congregation began to consult with a community development corporation set up to help United Methodist churches in the Carolinas develop or repurpose church-owned real estate.

Formed with support from The Duke Endowment, Wesley CDC guides churches to think strategically about how to maximize their property assets to ensure that they remain financially stable and strong at a time of rapid social and cultural change.

RELATED: ALL COMMUNITIES HAVE ASSETS

Most people and institutions that want to serve poor communities are focused on what the residents lack. "What are the needs?" is often the first question asked.

John McKnight says that approach has it backward.

"I knew from being a neighborhood organizer that you could never change people or neighborhoods with the basic proposition that what we need to do is fix them," he said. "What made for change was communities that believed they had capacities, skills, abilities and could create power when they came together in a community."

Read the interview with John McKnight Â»

FROM THE ARCHIVE

What to do when money gets tight

Don't begin the conversation with the expenses to cut. Instead, focus on your organization's assets and how they can be leveraged in service of your missional impact, writes the executive director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.

Read more from Dave Odom Â»

Empowering communities

Poor neighborhoods usually lack more than money. They lack leaders. John M. Perkins has spent five decades strengthening disenfranchised communities by raising up leaders from an often-overlooked location -- within.

Read the interview with John Perkins Â»

FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY

Discovering the Other: Asset-Based Approaches for Building Community Together

by Cameron Harder

What is God's mission? Simply put, says theologian and field educator Cameron Harder, God's mission is to form communities that reflect and embody the life of the Trinity.

Discovering the Other is an introduction to two tools that community builders have found helpful: appreciative inquiry and asset mapping. These tools help congregations see that all of life is saturated by the sacred and give them energy to begin living as if it were so. Instead of asking, 'What's wrong?' appreciative inquiry asks, 'What's right?' Asset mapping asks, 'What resources do you have personally that we could bring to our future together?' Out of these questions can arise a sense that every congregation is rich in history, people, and resources. Ideas emerge as people, inspired by the Spirit, listen and talk to each other. The leader's task is to facilitate, coalesce, and connect ideas, to catalyze and stimulate the development of vision. The creative connections lead to programs and projects that will enrich your congregation's mission. But most importantly, in the process they will engage you with others, with their stories, their hopes, their gifts - to build community.

This book looks for God, not only through the lens of such tools, but in the tools themselves. It is an effort to understand how processes like appreciative inquiry and asset mapping reflect the character and community-building style of the God whom Christians worship as Divine community.

Learn more and order the book Â»