Bob Jaeger and his team at Partners for Sacred Places want struggling American congregations to know there are numerous ways to preserve and use aging facilities beyond just seeing them become pieces of commercial real estate.
But doing so requires an openness to change and a willingness to accept input from surrounding communities, civic leaders and other local stakeholders, said Jaeger, president of the only national, nonsectarian nonprofit dedicated to helping faith communities and neighborhoods revive and sustain older religious properties.
Bob Jaeger
“Congregations are being more creative in terms of sharing space and moving toward some kind of civic-minded or performance use rather than tearing down or having the space partitioned into apartments,” he said. “The goal is to retain the public value because so many churches are changing hands.”
Historic churches, synagogues and other religious buildings must be viewed as national and local resources serving entire communities in addition to their congregations, Jaeger said. “However, many congregations are shrinking and it’s becoming harder and harder for them to sustain themselves, so we get involved in transitioning and rethinking how to share these historic spaces.”
The Philadelphia-based organization has several tools for accomplishing that mission, including full- and part-time staffers made up of clergy from a variety of traditions, architects, city planners and other experts capable of restoring the character of sacred structures in ways that meet congregational and neighborhood needs.
The nonprofit also offers capacity-building training to transform how congregations understand themselves and their places in the community. The sessions serve the double purpose of cultivating new relationships and using church heritage as a recruiting and fundraising tool for restoring infrastructure and revitalizing surrounding areas.
Those new connections enable congregations to identify new stakeholders and, in some cases, creative professionals and nonprofits in need of affordable spaces to rent. The training program walks faith groups through the process of setting baseline rents and connecting with groups whose missions align with their own.
The National Fund for Sacred Places awards millions in grants annually to cover asset mapping, training and consulting costs along with financing urgent capital projects at historic churches, synagogues and other religious buildings.
“We are working with clusters of churches, denominations, associations and dioceses on new ways to resource congregations through training, capacity building and grantmaking,” Jaeger explained.
And the need is much greater today than when Partners for Sacred Places was founded in 1989, he said. “We are talking about congregations that have five to 10 years left unless something is done quickly. We must act now and think in new ways.”
A new report by the nonprofit group found 81% of congregations own their own buildings and 70% of religious buildings in the U.S. were constructed before 1975. Many are considered to have architectural, cultural and historical value.
“Shrinking membership and costly maintenance of aging buildings are squeezing congregations, putting them — and their community contributions — at risk,” the report says. The trend includes 52% of faith communities reporting declines in worship attendance during the past five years, and 26% of congregational budgets being used for facilities maintenance. A third of members are 65 or older and two-thirds of faith communities have fewer than 100 worshipers.
The good news is two-thirds of a congregation’s capital funds can be raised from outside sources if church or synagogue members know and communicate their value to the community, the group says. Partners for Sacred Places also reported “$1.7 million is the annual positive economic impact, or ‘halo effect,’ the average urban congregation has on its community.”
While declining congregations often are resilient, the emotional attachment to sacred buildings can cause resistance to new ideas, Jaeger added. “We often say churches are grieving for what has been lost, and that space represents what they still remember with great fondness and great loss. It’s important to talk about that and face that, but it has to be done in order to bring this alive again.”
Elizabeth Mangum Lott
Elizabeth Mangham Lott said she became a part-time consultant with Partners in Sacred Places for the opportunity to guide overwhelmed pastors through the stress of fundraising.
“I’m helping pastors with capital campaigns, mostly, which is increasingly a huge part of the work of any pastor,” said Lott, who served as senior pastor at St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans until stepping down in 2023.
The challenge is pastors must continue their pastoral and administrative duties while trying to pull their churches back from the brink of extinction through fundraising, she explained. “Most pastors are not equipped for this. The weight of shrinking congregations and the burden of the building isn’t something that was taught in seminaries because they didn’t see it coming.”
Lott knows the feeling. She led a capital campaign that raised more than $594,000 in matching funds for a $250,000 grant St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church received in 2019 from the National Fund for Sacred Places. The funds were used for improvements including cast stone repointing, masonry cleaning and repairs to handrails, stair tiles, ironwork, doors and roofing.
“The increasing complexity of having to raise money can be a big part of why some clergy consider leaving ministry altogether,” she said. “And now that I have transitioned out of parish ministry, I have this skillset that can benefit clergy.”
Lott emphasized that landmark preservation alone is not her passion when consulting for Partners for Sacred Places. “I’m not interested in creating a museum, but if this building can be a vehicle for a movement, then I can fundraise and talk about plaster and brick and mortar all day. For me, there has to be a missional heartbeat behind the project. It’s why we exist in the first place.”
In 2023, the nonprofit provided $18.7 million in direct assistance to 593 sacred places in every state.
Participating churches run the denominational gamut from Mainline to evangelical to Pentecostal.
To broaden the scope of sacred space restoration, the organization hosted a gathering in April to educate leaders from a wide range of public and private organizations to lay out the challenge facing historic religious structures.
“We are trying to broaden the movement to a much greater array of stakeholder groups including foundations, arts groups, dance, theater and music groups and social and human service programs,” Jaeger said. “City planners and architects also have a stake. Our part is to be a voice for sacred spaces across the country. We are kind of a canary in the coal mine on this issue.”
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