Shared Ministry Locations

By Kent Hunter

I was working with a Presbyterian church in the Midwest. It’s an inner-city church that conducts some ministries with an Anglican church (that has left the Episcopal Church) about eight blocks away. Both churches are declining rapidly. Both churches suffer from seriously deteriorating buildings that they couldn’t possibly afford to restore. I recommended they relocate and share a new facility somewhere else. This is not a merger, but two churches serving the same building. I recently met a pastor in Lansing, Michigan, who leads a Vineyard church and shares a building with a Free Methodist church and an Independent Charismatic church.

With the cost of construction and the tough financial times, I think we’re beginning to see a trend where many churches share the same building. For years I’ve known about a church in Palm Desert, California, that is a Lutheran church, but uses a Seventh-Day Adventist facility. These types of economical arrangements are not mergers into one church, but two or more separate churches using the same building. I predict we’ll see a lot more of this in the future and I think it’s not a bad idea at all. The church in Palm Desert has even designated 50% of its budget toward missions and can afford to do so because it doesn’t have a mortgage. The money that’s paid to the Seventh-Day Adventist church has allowed them to build an additional youth facility, which the Lutheran church can also use on Sundays. This is a trend not unlike a gas station and convenience store that has a Dunkin’ Donuts on one side and a McDonald’s on the other, all wrapped into one building.

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