1 of 3

When a congregation outgrows a church building, it may have to relocate. If it does, what will it do with the property that it leaves behind?

The facility can be sold, of course. But selling a church is not an easy task. For one thing, there are so many people involved. An entire congregation of people will have questions and opinions about how to sell the church and what the terms of that sale should be.

Who buys the property is another issue. Should a building dedicated to the Lord for church ministry be used for other things, such as a school or daycare center? What about selling to someone who just wants the land your church rests on for commercial development?

Besides those difficulties, there's the matter of how to do it. Selling a church usually happens only once in the lifetime of a congregation. Most church leaders thus know little about the process.

To prepare for the task, here are some suggestions from pastors and professionals.

Westside Baptist Church in Fort Pierce, Florida, had maxed out its facilities. "When I arrived at this church, we had 120 members," says Dale Ingersoll, pastor of the church. "Within a few years, we had more than 1,200 members. We were conducting two church services and two Sun day schools. We had a serious parking problem. We needed a new church building."

Ingersoll wouldn't make that decision with just a handful of leaders, however. Rather, he approached the task of deciding what should be done by submitting a proposal to the congregation, listing some options that would help alleviate the problem of overcrowding. "I made the case for each option, but by the end of the document, it was so obvious that we needed to sell and relocate that the job was easy," Ingersoll says.

Each member of the church got a proposal, which also included a ballot. Ingersoll advised people to go home, read the proposal, and pray for guidance before voting the next week about what to do. The next week Ingersoll chose three women from the congregation to count the ballots. In a vote that only took 15 minutes, the congregation unanimously decided to relocate.

Getting the clear support of everyone in the congregation was also critical for Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, Texas. "In 1996, we had 1,200 members. We were growing to the point that we couldn't fit everyone in," says Carl Hefton, a member of the church. The church was crowded onto six landlocked acres. When church leaders were offered the opportunity to obtain 20 acres with freeway frontage, the decision to relocate seemed obvious.

Still, the leaders took the time necessary to get full congregational approval before proceeding. They did that with information: analysis and long-range planning showing how the congregation could expect to grow to more than 5,000 by the year 2005. They also discussed how people at Heights Baptist Church should see themselves as important participants in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. What was especially convincing was explaining how the congregation was a church, not a building. "That got people excited about moving," Hefton says.

next page... |  1 of 3