As I drive around Dallas for my carpet-cleaning job, I can’t help but notice how much land is tied up in church real-estate. I drove by one mega church today that must have had 50-40 acres in land, and a good 20 of it was nothing but grass. Think of the tax revenue the city is losing! But I’ve written on that before.
With just a tiny bit of creative thinking, churches could be redeeming their land and buildings in ways that would truly benefit the community. Take the Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Pleasant Grove, Texas as an example. It’s a church of only 30 people, but they recently divided their four acres of land into garden plots, and rented them out to area residents for $30 a month and an agreement to donate 10% of their produce to a local charity.
Since 2003, they have donated 18,000 pounds of produce to area food pantries.
So what are you growing on your church property? Who uses your church building Monday-Saturday? Can you think of any better uses for both?
Uh….we use our building for plays for the community put on by students.
Oh yeah…they actually rent to us, not the other way around. Oh well. I tried playing.
🙂
Stephen,
I was thinking somewhat of Mosaic when I wrote this post. I know you don’t have your own building yet, but I really like seeing your thinking process about what you will do with your building if/when you get one.