This is Keith and this is Ben and this is Main Street Lutherans. Today on the show we have the, the church property resource hub of the elca. We're going to talk about church property and different ways we can use it and some of the resources that the ELCA is providing for the last year at least to help congregations figure out things like maintaining churches and how to be creative with our property. And so that sort of sparks this idea of multi use facilities. And I think the pandemic created a lot of new opportunities and new necessities to have our congregations, our spaces, be used in multi use ways. Right. Well, we've already had the ELA on to talk about early learning schools and other schools that the ELCA congregations have, have put together. And that's certainly one multi use way for daycares and things like that. What are some ways that I wanted to talk about some ways that our churches have, have done multi use and then maybe what some of those effects of the pandemic, what that might have had on those things.

Yeah, it's funny, you know, part of me thinks when we hear multi use, we're really simply talking about ways that our congregation uses their building and creative ways of ministry. But there's also sort of, you know, finding other organizations, whether it's churches or non profits or schools or whatever to sort of cohabit those spaces. And we'll hear a little bit about that in this episode. Yeah, you know, like St. Matt's you know, we have a, we have a youth center which has been in place since the 1950s, but that is very much considered, you know, an outreach program of the congregation. It's, it's funded by the congregation, the staff are paid by the congregation. Happens in our building. And then there's a number of other community groups that use our facility. You know, Al Anon, there's a garden club that meets there routinely. Today the Central Penn Food bank had a training session for volunteers in our building. And there's always a question of, you know, are these organizations paying for the, for the facility usage? Are they covering our own costs or not? And you know, we're going to get into that a little bit in the episode. The pandemic did definitely change the way we see our buildings. We were talking about live streaming a little while ago, off before we started recording. And I had somebody joke with me a couple of months ago that one of the worst things we ever did for church attendance was start live streaming our services because people watch from home now instead of coming into the Building on a Sunday morning. And he was joking when he said it. But yeah, it's definitely impacted attendance. And the pandemic, you know, I'll speak for St. Matthew, but I think it's true in a lot of other places too. The pandemic definitely made a huge, it didn't create any change, but it did speed it up quite a bit. The, the, the downsizing that was going on in attendance, in finances, etc. And so while our building is, you know, both, you know, it's got some years on it and it's been fairly well maintained, it is expensive. And so the idea of trying to find some creative ways to not just generate income, but faithfully utilize this resource. I'm really excited to hear what this new ministry from the ELCA has to offer. Yeah. What about Unity?

So Unity has, you know, it has Alcoholics Anonymous meetings several days a week. They also have a. It used to be esl, but now it's called ell, English Language Learning instead of English as a Second Language. And so that ELL program gets grants from other, from outside groups that fund that program. And so part of that is for the rental, you know, to pay for the facilities. And so that's helpful. But it's staffed by members of the congregation who get paid to do that work. But it helps pay for the congregation space a little bit. Also, we have a preschool that's a third party preschool. And so they operate out of the education wing there, which I think is a common thing for congregations. It certainly is in our area. Either they're owned by the congregation and managed by the congregation, or they're a third party organization that's expanded from somewhere else. And there's certainly advantages to that. We'll talk about in the interview. We talk about an opportunity that came up to leverage some property and be able to get it sort of off the books as far as maintenance for the congregation goes. And so that's kind of an interesting thing that's come around. But at the same time, I am kind of being torn away from unity. I'm going to a congregation that's new to me, Good Hope Lutheran Church in Garden City, where I will act as a synodically authorized minister. As a part time but vocational call. I don't know if I can call that a call, but it feels like one. And so I'll be there partly as an interim, maybe as some more than that as we go forward. Good Hope has used their property in different ways. They have been renting to two congregations, one of them as we're talking today has just moved out. That congregation has shrunk to the point where they can't afford even renting the building as it is. And so Good Hope has a unique opportunity because they have a two level fellowship hall space. So there are these two identical rooms at the end of the congregation at the end of the building. And so about a third of each floor of that space is sectioned off with just dividers. And there are two congregations. One's a black Pentecostal church and the other one is a joint UCC and. And Disciples of Christ congregation. And the UCCDOC congregation has left now, but the Pentecostal church is staying there. And so they have their service occasionally on Sundays, I think every other week is how they do it in the afternoons. And so both of those places have been renting the space from Good Hope. But I'm looking to see what synergies we can create from that. But they do some interesting things with that. They used to have a food bank that they ran out of there, but when the congregations wanted to move in, they sort of dialed back their stuff and started cooperating with another place. But we're looking at ways that we can make this happen. So, yeah, we're looking at all sorts of new opportunities with this. Actually, Good Hope has a congregation that was nearby and they had to decide to close. And so a large portion of that congregation merged into Good Hope. And the result of closing that congregation led to a large endowment for that region that can be used for servicing the needs of the region that we're in, the Downriver and Dearborn region. And so I'm looking at ways that we can tap that resource to provide services to the community, particularly because members of the congregation, that's their legacy from their prior membership. And so hopefully being able to let them use some of that resource to better the community around us. And so, yeah, and all of that plays into this Church Property Resource Hub.

So let's turn to that interview and hear from Sarah Jones and the Church Property Resource Hub.

Well, here with us today is Sarah Jones from the ELCA Church Property Resource Hub. Thanks for being with us today, Sarah.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

So the Church Property Resource Hub, what is it? How does it sit within the ELCA ecosystem?

Great question. So we're a new program coming out of the churchwide organization, so the national office, and we provide support to congregations and synod leaders who are navigating the opportunities and challenges of church property in the 21st century. And that runs the gamut from how to guides for auditing your space, to maintenance checklists, to guidance on how to share space and share space well. To thinking about how to build a mission driven stewardship strategy for your land and buildings, all the way to what do you do when your congregation doesn't fit the building anymore? What are your options and how can you move forward faithfully? So if there's a question about any aspect of property, we can probably help you out with our resources, with our success stories, and with our connections to other folks, both within the elca, but also outside to the or many organizations and groups that are thinking about church property in new ways.

Sure, we'll have a link. Well, we already have a link to the Church Property Resource Hub in the episode notes, so everybody can go check that out. Notice that there were documents. So there were lots of documents, including those churches checklist that you, you mentioned. And then there are success stories. There's a support forum. Tell me about the support forum.

Yes, so the support forum is something we're really excited about. So that is on the leadership network of the ELCA, commonly called LeadNet, which anyone can sign up for. It's a platform that's kind of like Facebook for Lutherans, but without the dumpster fire conversations. And you can join our group, the Church Property Resource Hub Group. And that's a place where you can ask direct questions and get direct answers not only from us, but from your peers and colleagues. We've had people ask questions about community gardens and about floor sealant.

Right.

And folks from all over jump in, bishops jump in, A to Bs, jump in, other folks just from like lay leaders from their church jump in. So it's a great place to get advice and get some questions answered.

It sounds like this old church.

Maybe. Maybe that's what we should call it.

Oh my. I wonder if Bob Vila would let us license that. Hey, you mentioned, Sarah, that it's a fairly new organization. Can you tell us a little bit about where did it come from? What inspired the ELCA to create this resource hub? Was this an internal drive? Was it something congregations were asking for?

For?

It was very much something congregations and synods were asking for. The churchwide organization was hearing from all corners of the church that property questions, property issues were front of mind for everyone. And there wasn't a centralized place for folks to go for guidance and answers and networks to different organizations. So a lot of people were spending a lot of time on Google trying to figure this out. Right. And the ELCA was able to identify a generous grant that provided funding for three years for U.S. to build up this church property resource hub to provide that kind of guidance for ELCA congregations and synod leaders.

All right, so are you in the second of those three years now, or did that start, that clock start before the organization sort of launched?

Yeah, so we're in our second program year right now.

Okay. All right.

All right. So. So congregations in the LCA own their property, right?

Yes. Yes, you own your property, and I

think that's one of those important things. I've been in a few congregations that weren't quite clear on that because the synod does often have a say in things. What is the connection, the property connection, to the synod?

Very good question.

And does it change between synods?

It's a great question. I'm so glad you asked it. So in the elca, congregations hold title and deed to their property. That means that as long as the congregation is an active charitable organization, they can make any decision they want about their property, as long as it follows the guidelines of religious and charitable organizations within their state. Right. The confusion often comes when a congregation closes. Different states have different laws and different guidance around the dissolution of assets for nonprofits. Right. And so when a congregation is considering closure, what happens to your assets is determined by your constitution, which is basically your bylaws in the eyes of the state. If your constitution says that your property automatically goes to the synod, that's what's going to happen. Right. If you want to dissolve your property before you make the decision to close, that is usually totally fine. Right. But what happens a lot of the time is that congregations don't take a look at their constitution before they take the congregational vote to close. And so then they go to their constitution and they find out that according to their bylaws, then they need to give the property to the synod. And I will also say that I have not met any synod leader who wants this to happen. Depending on where synods are located, some synods get a lot of property. Sometimes they know they're going to get the property, and sometimes they don't. I've heard synods getting calls basically that say, hey, we closed the church, we sent you the keys in the mail, and that's not a good situation.

Right.

And so the synod leaders that I've talked to have been really excited about how the church property resource hub can help congregations and have critical decisions about the future of their assets before they close so that the synod isn't kind of left holding the bag on it.

Yeah. And I know, you know, it's certainly not the most pleasant topic and it's probably not as commonplace as sometimes it feels like, you know, the idea of congregations closing, but congregations closing graciously, you know, in a, in a way that, you know, as best as they can in their final days, you know, constructively, creatively, you know, utilizing that, that real estate resource in a, you know, trying to steward that in a responsible way can, can really be forward thinking for some other body in the community, whether it's another church or, you know, whatever else happens to that facility can be something that's really a great gift that a congregation can make rather than, you know, what you suggested of just closing doors and mailing the keys off to the Senate office. Can I, can I back up and ask a detailed question? How when you, when you mentioned that some congregations in their constitution, you know, it's, it's baked in there that they're building returns to the, to the Senate should they close. How common is that in the elca? That wasn't something that I had really heard of before.

Oh, so I'm not going to be as detailed as maybe I could be just because I'm newer to the ELCA as a denomination. Part of it depends. I've heard on the legacy of the congregation, what branch of Lutheranism they came from when the big merger happened. Right. Because different branches, branches had different templates for their constitutions and bylaws. Right.

That makes sense.

So that, that's part of it. And like I said, like where you are located, your state can have pretty strict rules around this. Right. So I'm not in, I'm not in like familiar detail with the laws in Pennsylvania, but the laws in Pennsylvania are such that it's actually very hard for, for the church to dissolve its property assets in a way that it doesn't revert to the synod because of how all of those congregations are incorporated. Right. That is a quirk of being in Pennsylvania. So yeah.

Okay.

So the resources are targeted to every size of congregation. Is there, you mentioned from small to large. Is there, is there prevalence among the people that participate in the discussions? Is it a certain size?

I think it would be hard to tell. I think we hear from a lot of congregations that are in that like we're still stable. We still have a good number of people coming to worship on Sundays. We might have a little bit of a deficit in the budget every year. And so we're starting to think of new ways to use and manage this space so that it's not, it doesn't feel like A drain on our resources. Right. We get a lot of questions from those kinds of congregations. So. And it's hard to put like a label on, like who those congregations are.

Yeah.

But it's, I think folks who are, who are stable, who are kind of seeing that, like we might need to change something that are really proactively reaching out and asking a lot of questions about different strategies, different models for creative stewardship of property. And of course, we also get questions from congregations of many different sizes about property development because that's becoming a really big conversation across the United States.

Say a little bit more about what you mean by property development. Yeah.

So we mostly hear about this in the terms of affordable housing development. There has been a large movement across the United States and in several states in particular to make it easier for affordable housing to be developed on church property.

Right.

On church held property. And so that has opened up the conversation about, well, does it always have to be a church building that's here.

Right.

Are there other possibilities beyond a parking lot that has 50 spaces that could maybe both support the community in some way, but also create another income stream for the congregation? Right. Those ideas and those development plans are like very varied and they're very complicated. But I think that they're. Because the conversation is so active across the country, it's generating a lot of ideas in congregations. And if they start thinking about, well, maybe housing development isn't right for us, but can we do something else? And so start thinking more creatively around different ways to use what they have.

So maybe for example, like, you know, some other form of nonprofit utilizing part of your space, whether that's a community center or, you know, other. Other agencies. I don't know what, you know, I can't think of any concrete examples offhand.

But yeah, no, we have a lot of. We hear from a lot of congregations that are renting out, like their education wing, which they don't use anymore, to a nonprofit organization.

Like a dig here.

Preschool. Yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah. It makes me think Reformation Lutheran Church on Capitol Hill did, did a housing development on their property. So that's right. Right near the Capitol building. And so they have rental properties there, you know, right in the middle of D.C. so, so we've got a history of doing these things, but I imagine they're mostly, up until, up until now maybe are done on a very regional basis, if not just locally. Like a church gets an idea to do something and they use their resources within their congregation to do those things. And now when we're down to Congregations that have maybe 60 or 70 worshiping members. For some of our congregations, there might not be enough selection of people that can do those things or have the time to do it. Right. And so being able to reach out on a church wide basis to ask for help is really smart.

Yeah. And we're available for all of those questions. And I think, like as you were saying, Ben, congregations have been building housing and doing property development for a very long time. Right. But it was that model of the congregation leading property development, leading that kind of economic investment in their neighborhood. And we're seeing fewer and fewer congregations with like that amount of capital to invest. But that doesn't mean that you can't do something creative and really impactful. It just means we have to think more creatively about how you would do that in collaboration with others.

Yeah. I want to move on to talking about success stories, some of those, but I've got one actually in my own backyard. So Unity, where I go is in the process of facilitating a sale of a large portion of the lot that they wanted to do some development on and put a playground and do some other things there. But there's just not enough resources in the congregation to do it. And the city has a grant that they're in Southgate, Michigan, can get a grant from the county to do that to put a playground in, but they have to buy the property. They can't lease it. And so they're going to sell the property over. That allows the church to perhaps improve their parking lot, which will be the parking for this park. But it'll be a nice neighborhood park with a well tended playground. About half the church property no longer has to be paid. They don't have to pay somebody to mow it anymore because the city will come in and do that for that large lot. And so it, it's a win win for the congregation and for the city and the neighborhood. So I think that's a nice big win there.

Yeah. And a really great testament to how even if the congregation is not stewarding the property, the property is still doing the mission of the congregation. Right. And so it's still living out God's love and God's work in a different way. And I think that that's really great to highlight that. There are many ways to do that.

Yeah. And I would suspect that, you know, it's not the reason for it, but there's probably some way that the congregation can get some recognition in the naming or the, you know, the signage of the park or something, you know.

Well, for that congregation. It's. It's going to help people see it. It's. It's in a. It's in a place where it doesn't get recognized because people are driving by at 50, 60 miles an hour. And it doesn't look like church because of various historical things to it. So the cross is buried in a tree, and so nobody can see the cross that's outside the church. And when they're flying by so fast, there's just no. No time to see it. So actually going to that park means people are going to actually be on the property and see what the building actually is. And so just there, the exposure might be helpful, but that's great.

So, Sarah, tell us some more success stories that you've had through the resource hub.

Yeah, so one that I'm really excited about, where it's not published yet, but it should be published in the next couple of weeks, is All Saints Lutheran Church in Port Orange, Florida, which is like near Daytona Beach. Small congregation, aging congregation, called a pastor who they were like, you know, we might need to be talking about closure. You know, that's where we kind of are. And the pastor's like, okay. And so she had them worship in a couple of different spaces on a regular basis.

Right.

So they could get used to not worshiping in their sanctuary. Some of them worshiped at a park on a regular basis. Some worshiped at another congregation. Some worshiped in house church. Right. And the pastor really thought that, like, this was going to be the thing to detach them from their building. But what it made them realize was the asset that they had in their land and in their buildings and how those could be assets for ministry. They just needed to think about how they could do that better. And so they started looking for an anchor tenant, some. Someone who could move into the education wing and kind of make more use of that. And they found a school that works with students on the autism spectrum and helps them kind of get ready for public school, which worked out great. The school was like, you have a great parking lot. This is easy for pickup and drop off. Your layout of the education wing is exactly what we need, you know. And so they entered into this lease agreement. The school is, you know, paying a good chunk of money to be there every year, which has stabilized the congregation's finances. But more importantly, it's opened up a new field of ministry. The congregation has learned much more about these kids and these families. It inspired them to build kind of a sensory friendly worship space. They offer sensory friendly worship services They've had families from the school attend service. This is a congregation that didn't have a lot of kids. And suddenly they're doing Trunk or Treat. Suddenly they're doing graduation celebrations. Suddenly they're doing all of these programs that they had wanted to do for so long because they now have families, young families to serve. Right. And so that has actually brought new energy and vitality to the congregation, even though, like, their membership size hasn't really increased. Right. But they found new meaning and new purpose, and their campus is getting new life as well. So I'm really excited to highlight that story soon on our website.

I should have asked this before we got into the success stories, but I just wonder if, you know, I'm sort of putting on the ear of some of our listeners and just asking maybe the cynical question of, what is this? What is your agency able to do except perhaps delay the inevitable for congregations that are closing or, you know, or just coming up with ways to help

their churches kick the can down? I don't know.

It's that not be churches anymore. It sounds kind of cool, but, you know, if they're not being churches, then what's the point? I guess.

Yeah, you wanted to talk about the existential stuff.

That's my poorly worded question that I don't really have, but I suspect other people.

So let me add to that, though, that at our synod assembly, the church that hosted it this year has lots of other. A charter school that uses the property and has expanded the church to be able to include more stuff for them. It's a K12 charter school that operates there, and they have a congregation that's not ELCA that uses the sanctuary, I think, on Saturdays and things like that. So they have a policy for doing this. And he was explaining their policy, and it has to go toward their mission. And so explain what the requirements are, because one of the documents on the hub is about the tax implications of rental agreements. Right. And I think that plays into that.

Yes. So for many reasons, one of them legal reasons and tax reasons, we recommend that congregations continue to utilize their space in a way that enhances and expands their mission. Right. And we help congregations think more expansively about what their mission might be beyond worship. Right. So that they can find partners in the community who may not share their faith, who may not have any faith at all, but who can still see themselves as partners in some sort of mission that the church is engaging in. So a very common example is, like, many congregations have feeding programs, right? They care about feeding people that doesn't mean you have to find another church whose admission is about feeding people. You can partner with the local food pantry. You can partner with a mutual aid organization that does food distribution. Right. So finding those points of connection and making sure that your building continues to serve the mission of the church in the ways that you define it. Right. And in ways that continue to benefit the community. That's important in one end because it is our calling as Christians to continue to do the work of God and whatever, wherever we are, in whatever ways we can, with whatever we have. Right. It is important for legal and tax reasons because as a charitable or religious organization, activities that are tied to your mission generally protect you from property tax. Not always. Every state is different, but in general would still be tax exempt uses of the property.

And I think we've seen in southeast Michigan at least, that the local governments are really auditing those things a lot tighter because they want to find a way to increase their tax revenue without raising taxes. And so finding ways to tax untaxed land is one of their cheat codes to finding that tax base. And you know they should.

Right. And you know, one of the things I also say to congregations is like, even if you were renting out some of your space to a for profit business, that doesn't mean you're going to lose your tax status entirely. Right. It just means that that particular portion of your property might become taxable. And if it does, then you wrap that tax into the fee that you're already charging the business. Right. So that they're paying the tax burden that they're incurring.

So how would people share their success stories? Do they get on that, on that forum and share things there? I've been afraid to make an account because I wasn't sure just how public it was or what it entailed, but it sounds like it's a bigger system than what I was thinking. So is there space for people to share their success stories?

You can definitely share your success stories there. You can also share them by emailing us. Our email address is cprh l c a.org super easy to remember. And we do, we are looking for success stories, Right. Because we want to highlight the wide variety of what success can look like. Right. Not every church is the same, not every community is the same. And so we want to have lots of different reference points for inspiration, but also like, you know, maybe connections and roadmaps for congregations that they. I think we, maybe we could do

that too, if there was a congregation, you know, let's say A congregation that has a slightly larger staffing situation, like, who would be the best person to reach out to you for an initial contact? Would it be the pastor? Would it be a property manager or a business manager of some kind? Would be the problem property committee?

Yeah, I think it would depend on the question. Right. So if there's questions about like, hey, we've, like, our roof has given us real trouble, like, maybe it's the property committee that reaches out. If it's questions about, like, we're really rethinking how we relate to this space, it might be the pastor who reaches out. Right. We can usually from a brief email correspondence or a conversation, we, we can usually figure out, like, who's going to be the best points of contact within the congregation and how can we best help them.

And you're going to be the, your group is going to be at different, different events. I'm assuming you've been around to some of the synods.

Yes, we've done some synod assemblies in the fall. We're already getting booked for various education days that synods are having. Will be at the Roster Ministers gathering, which is in two, three weeks in Indianapolis. We'll be doing a workshop there. But you can also find our table. We love to connect and we're, we're also available by sending requests to host, like, workshops, webinars, anything that they think their congregations would benefit from.

Are there any webinars that just happen generally? Would we find those on the, on the page?

Yes. So we do have monthly webinars. Each webinar focuses on a different aspect of church property stewardship and also is an opportunity for congregations to get introduced to other folks within this larger space who might be able to help them with these very specific questions. Right. So just a couple of weeks ago, we had Mission Investment Fund Fund do a webinar all about financing for church property improvements. Some folks are not familiar with Mission Investment Fund and some folks, I think thought they only did like, new church construction. It's like, no, we can finance deferred maintenance improvements too. We can finance, you know, sustainability upgrades. So learning about that in July, in late July, we'll actually have one of the co founders of Rooted Good. He's going to be talking about how congregations can leverage their property for social enterprise. So a business strategy that both has a mission impact but also creates a sustainable stream of revenue. And then in August, we're going to be having the director of Rural initiatives for Partners for Sacred Places come and talk about best practices for property stewardship in Rural and small town congregations, because those. That looks very different than it does in urban and suburban contexts.

Yeah. And. Well, we talked before, before the podcast. You have a connection to that, that organization. And there's an element of preservation that both rural and urban churches have historic value in a lot of ways. And sometimes if we let maintenance issues go too long, they get to the point where they're destructive. And so we can't preserve the building. And so I think this is a good way. It's hard for us to look at doing small improvements and investing in the sustaining of the building when we're struggling so much to keep things going. But in the end, the cost of trying to save a building could undo a congregation, I imagine.

Yeah. And that's one of the big things that we see when congregations, like, suddenly are looking at a laundry list of maintenance that's going to cost them $2 million. A lot of it was just put off and put off and put off and put off. Right.

Yeah.

And so, you know, helping congregations tackle what they can tackle now is really going to pay off in the future. And not just for the congregation. Congregation, but for the neighborhood. Right. The neighborhood doesn't want to see shuttered churches. The neighborhood doesn't want to see raised churches. Right. Especially if it's a really historic building. I kind of actually want to respond, Keith, to your existential question.

Oh, yay.

So I think when we are talking about church property and the future of church property, that necessarily leads into conversations about church closures, membership decline, all of that. Right. And how I've come to think about it is I think in the United States, we don't understand that everything has a lifespan. Right. And that congregations, any congregation has a lifespan. Some are much longer than others, but everyone does. Right. In the same way, every congregation is going to have to move out of their building at some point. That could be because they're merging, that could be because they're closing, that could be because they're relocating. And that's not uncommon. And it's not different than how church has always been in the United States. Right. And so thinking about how we steward these assets is an important conversation and how we use them, partly because it's going to be the legacy that every congregation leaves, right. At some point in their life, that every congregation is going to have to figure this out. They're going to have to figure out how do we leave that legacy of mission here within the physical space or within the equity that we've been able to get out of it. And how do we make that something that's like a joyful responsibility. Right. There's always going to be a generation that closes a church, and how do we help that generation make their decisions faithfully and joyfully and remove the shame from it? And so I think that that's something we think about a lot at the Church Property Resource Hub.

It makes me think of, you know, the notion of, like, paying your electric bill. It's not the most exciting thing that you do, but it's just one of the costs of doing ministry and sort of that healthy existential detachment away from your building, because can be, you know, buildings can become a great drain on resources. They can also become, I think, idols to our congregation at times in unhealthy ways that, you know, we focus so heavily on preserving the facility because it's a tangible thing that we can see, and it's a tangible responsibility that we can't unsee. Right. But then forgetting the. That that only, you know, whatever bandwidth is assigned to that in terms of resources to that building, then is bandwidth that you're not able to assign to what might in some ways be considered more faithful ministry than just maintaining your pretty building.

Yeah, yeah. And so.

So that idea of. Sorry to. Back to the light switch, back to the. The electric bill, so that just paying your electric bill, you know, is. Is a part of doing ministry. And so is figuring out what to do with your building when it's no longer suiting your needs. And to. To be able to disassociate, like the example that you were sharing earlier from. From Florida, to be able to disassociate your congregational sense of identity away from the building, may or may not actually remove you from the building altogether, but it will help you to have a healthier attitude towards your physical building and physical plant structure and how to better manage it.

And maybe more creative.

Yeah. And more effective.

Exactly. Yeah.

Sarah, I'm so thankful that we had the time to talk with you. I first learned about the Church Property Resource Hub from a really pretty glossy flyer that I got in my mail about a month or two ago. But it was also at the same time that we'd already started the email exchange of trying to schedule a date. So I've been really intrigued along the way, and I'm really grateful for the time to have this conversation. So thank you for joining us.

Yeah. You know, at either of your churches, when the property questions come up, you know where to find us.

Absolutely. And they're going to come. They're going to come pretty fast. So I don't know about Keith's. They've got a, you know, radio station and all that, so.

No, just a radio show. We don't actually have a station.

All right, well, thank you so much.

Thank y'. All.

Well, thank you, Sarah, for being with us. This was a great eye opening thing. I think the resources that are in the church property resource hub will be very helpful to folks and the more folks that know about it, the more use we'll get out of it and probably the more information will get contributed to make this a better resource for all of us.

You know, my wheels are turning. St. Matthew and some of my other congregations in my conference that I've talked with about some struggles. So yeah, we'll be looking her up. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fot and the show is produced by Folk Media Productions. You can find all of our contact information, links and a transcript in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.