Churches are closing. What should they do with their assets?

There is a powerful paradox in American church life these days: individual churches are going broke, while collectively they control trillions of dollars.

The last comprehensive study of church closings, published in 2019, revealed that American churches were closing at the rate of 4,500 per year—almost 90 each week. Although more recent empirical data is not available, one gets the sense that this trend is only accelerating. A Hemingway character, asked how he went broke, replies, “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.” Lately it can seem as if we have moved from the gradual part to the sudden part of what has been called “the great de-churching” of America. Churches are closing at an accelerating pace due to membership decline and its attendant financial woes.

At the same time, religious institutions in America have more in assets than Apple, Microsoft, and Google combined. Many of those assets are in the form of church buildings, which are both the source of considerable wealth and often the cause of financial strain as well. Churches also control other resources. Endowments are the most obvious, and often the largest, source of many congregations’ wealth. Then there are the miscellaneous funds: special funds established for organ maintenance or cemetery care, funds held by the women’s fellowship or the missionary union, funds designated for the support of ministries that are no longer active. The list could be extended almost endlessly. Some funds may be so small that they are easily overlooked. Considered together, however, they make up a story of great wealth and great potential.