Across Mainline Protestant denominations, the last 40 years have presented a continuing challenge: how to maintain fiscal solvency in the face of steadily declining membership, attendance and tithes? The leadership of the liberal-dominated California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church has explicitly pivoted to look to buildings rather than people to “allow the Annual Conference to run on endowed money instead of apportionment giving,” according to a report on the 37th Annual Session of the California-Pacific Annual Conference.
Bishop Grant Hagiya, known as a strong progressive within the UMC, made the announcement during the conference on June 18th. As he explained: “the [California-Pacific] annual conference is cash poor and property rich. The Phoenix Fund will turn properties into development programs, which will provide a stream of long-term endowment income” (see page 7).
This shift in revenue for the California-Pacific conference of the UMC may foreshadow potential future developments for a number of other declining mainline denominations. With fewer and fewer members, it seems an attractive alternative to usual donations is the leveraging of existing property. This presents hard choices: for example, as the number of Episcopalians decline, should they begin renting out beautiful empty old church buildings as restaurants to support ever-aging congregations? The situation is reflective of pessimism among mainline ministers that there’s no expectation of any radical turnaround, no shift in mission that could lead to a rebound in church attendance.
The situation is strange to consider, with the image of a healthy church usually entailing monetary growth in step with congregational growth. But the Cal-Pac Conference leadership’s vision is the inverse: an ever more disproportionately large bureaucracy connected to smaller and smaller congregations supported by more and more income from sold or redeveloped properties. This model could result in the total budget per member of the U.S. portion of the UMC holding relatively steady, or even (at least temporarily) increasing, despite the precipitous decline in church attendance. Large amounts of property-related income for a numerically shrinking American United Methodism could actually mean American United Methodists in the short-term future might actually have more resources per capita, if not overall. However, such a lopsided picture is likely unsustainable in the long run, especially as the continued losses of income and volunteer manpower from declining membership outpaces the costs of maintaining large, old, and decaying buildings.
There are limits to the leveraging of property for income. United Methodist annual conferences across America have found that often empty church buildings are more of a burden than an asset. It can be difficult to find buyers even willing to pay very minimal token prices for some abandoned church buildings. Even when other church buildings are sold for large amounts, this may help an annual conference to patch holes in its budget for a year or two, but then liquid cash from such sales runs out. And there are limits to how much large church buildings can be leveraged for rental or other income, particularly in a context of dramatically increased tele-work.
The California-Pacific Conference faces a particularly steep decline in membership that may have prompted Hagiya to rethink how his conference budget is funded. According to UMdata.org, from 2010 to 2019 the California-Pacific conference underwent a 25% reduction in membership, contracting from about 80,000 members to about 60,000. In that same timeframe, worship attendance in the conference decreased by nearly 10,000, from 47,551 to 37,670, a reduction of about 20%.
In apparent conjunction with this decline in membership, the California-Pacific Conference has also permanently closed three of five district offices just this year, as announced here, here and here. The Conference also closed a retreat center on August 22. Only time will tell how much more church property is sold or redeveloped to support the UMC as it continues to lose members.
Comment by David on August 25, 2021 at 5:57 am
Fraternal groups that one could often not consider “liberal” are facing the same situation. Masonic temples are frequently up for sale as their memberships age and die. I think we must view this as a general trend and not specific to particular groups. Even the conservative Southern Baptists have faced membership decline.
Comment by Dan W on August 25, 2021 at 7:36 am
Many of us who grew up in United Methodist congregations have fond memories of UM retreat centers. Methodist Youth Fellowship, Methodist Intermediate Fellowship, United Methodist Men – all of these had real impact on lives and spiritual growth. I won’t second-guess the Cal-Pac conference on how they go forward, but I pray we all figure out how to continue the good work of the faithful Methodists who came before us.
Comment by Reynolds on August 25, 2021 at 12:07 pm
This is why there will be no vote next year. Liberals need the orthodox money. They won’t allow churches to leave because money only last 2 years. They don’t believe in growing the membership. They just want enough for themselves. It is all about the Benjamins
Comment by Steve on August 25, 2021 at 12:13 pm
As far as Masonic Temples go, they are not tax exempt. As for selling those, presumably they use the money to wind up their affairs, as opposed to setting up a perpetual tax exempt real estate holding company.
Comment by David S. on August 25, 2021 at 12:43 pm
Definitely brings truth to the now old saying that the mainline denominations, particularly those with trust clauses (UMC, PC(USA), TEC), are nothing more than REITs. As much as I have come to fully reject the PC(USA)’s brand of liberal, progressive, Democrat-affiliated PAC Christianity, which is not Christianity at all, I do have to commend the current Stated Clerk for acknowledging the reality that the denomination must rethink how the future looks because of finances. One benefit of the pandemic for a number of organizations facing dwindling finances, it has helped forced decisions to change things by bringing to light what can be done differently that the leadership may have previously been adverse to do for whatever reason.
Comment by David S. on August 25, 2021 at 12:50 pm
I should add that it seems that in regards to finances, this particular bishop would rather continue on like the proverbial ostrich rather than the Stated Clerk, who despite being an ostrich on the continuing, declining numbers, is at least realistic that finances have changed and therefore business decisions must adjust accordingly. (Of course, the best business decision would be a return to Reformed orthodoxy for the PC(USA), Anglican orthodoxy for TEC, Methodist orthodoxy for UMC, Lutheran orthodoxy for ELCA, or Baptist orthodoxy for the relevant Baptists, but these people have demonstrated that they will not do that.)
Comment by Gary Bebop on August 25, 2021 at 3:17 pm
Managing decline is what mainliners do best. Denominations do not collapse overnight like Afghanistan. They age and wither, taking a long time to die even if the process accelerates for some reason (like COVID effects). The mainline is no longer a vessel of evangelistic fervor (contra periodic enthusiasms). Growth by “decisions of faith” is actually a church culture anomaly. Too much of the sap of youth flows into social justice warriorship that self-consciously eschews traditional evangelism.
Comment by Loren Golden on August 25, 2021 at 7:25 pm
“Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” (Ps. 128.1)
For well over half a century now, the Protestant “mainline” denominations have striven to build their churches apart from the God of the Bible, scorning His Word and endeavoring to sow mistrust therein by claiming that it is only the word of man, and therefore subject to the scrutiny of unbelieving “scholars”, and on this basis ignoring (or “reinterpreting”) those passages most out of favor with the unbelieving world. The Jesus they put forth is a mascot, not the Master, and the god they put forth is an idol.
Now an unbelieving officer in one of these so-called “mainline” denominations has crassly proposed to hawk the denomination’s property. However, the Church belongs to the Lord (the word “church” is derived from the Greek wordkuriake, which means “belonging to the Lord”), not to the earthly bureaucracies that are intended to oversee her. In the days of the latter kings of Judah, the Lord through the faithful Prophet Jeremiah excoriated false prophets and faithless priests who led His people astray, foretelling dismal ends for them. If their latter day successors are doing the same thing, how will they escape the same judgment?
Comment by Brian Nelson-Munson on August 26, 2021 at 1:45 am
John the Baptist was beheaded for speaking truth to the controlling political and religious elite. Jesus was crucified for threatening the successful and profitable religious establishment with the sacrificial power of God’s love.
Wealth in numbers of people, power and money while ignoring God’s eternal love for all us sinners may find you on the wrong end of eternity.
Comment by Anthony on August 26, 2021 at 11:58 am
Loren,
AMEN. Liberal “intellectual scholars” did mainline Protestant denominations in. Most seminaries were throughly liberalized as they competed with each other in hiring “world renowned Biblical scholars”—- meaning theologically liberal secular leaning professors. These scholars competed to see which could do the best job of critiquing the Bible, followed with their multiple publications. Publishing Biblical critiques was the way up the peer review intellectual ladder. Into the denominations flooded their seminary graduates to instill the notion that laypeople should identify with this liberal push so as to appear informed and intellectual Christians by reading and studying these publications as opposed to becoming, first and foremost, Biblical literate.
Question — how can any denomination keep its tax exempt status if it shifts into the real estate business to help underwrite its budgets?
Comment by Lee Cary on August 26, 2021 at 10:07 pm
1. “The situation is reflective of pessimism among mainline ministers…”
-It’s not ‘pessimism’; it’s realism.
2. “However, such a lopsided picture is likely unsustainable in the long run, especially as the continued losses of income and volunteer manpower…”
– Likely unstainable? It’s absolutely unsustainable. Full stop.
3. “United Methodist annual conferences across America have found that often empty church buildings are more of a burden than an asset.”
-There’s a simple explanation for why that statement is true. New churches being constructed today don’t look like the traditional structures. They’re built to be multi-functional so that when the church relocates for more space or better access, they can be marketed to concerns other than religious enterprises.
4. “Only time will tell how much more church property is sold or redeveloped to support the UMC as it continues to lose members.”
-Yes, and ‘time’ will not be kind to the UMC. The money is circling the drain.
Comment by Palamas on August 28, 2021 at 5:15 pm
Within the boundaries of this conference are more than 25 million people, and yet the conference membership has fallen by 25% over ten years to around 60,000. And now, because they have no idea how to reach people with the gospel–or, more likely, have no gospel to offer–they are going to use the proceeds of sales and rentals of buildings others paid to build, in order to keep ministries that are nothing more than baptized secular wokism going despite the utter lack of need for them.
As Gov. William J. Le Petomane once eloquently put it, “we’ve got to protect our phony-baloney jobs!” That’s all that this is about.