New uses for places of worship: Stories about ways congregations are responding to needs in their communities

 

I’m working on a feature about churches that are creatively converting their buildings and properties into community hubs and affordable housing. It got me thinking about the various articles I have written on this topic, going back 15 years. In that time, I wrote nine articles about this topic. 

It’s an important issue; sometime in the next five to ten years, a third of Canada’s estimated 27,000 places of worship (most of them churches) are slated to close due to falling attendance.

What can be done? And what is already happening? If you want to learn more, check out some of the links below. 

My first article on the topic was in 2010, when I wrote an overview of the situation in Canada titled Keeping Faith in Historic Churches. 

I did another one in 2015, titled Does it Matter if a Historic Church Closes? The answer, unsurprisingly, is yes—for various reasons, including all the community, newcomer, arts and recovery groups that would lose space. 

In 2017, I wrote about The Halo Effect, or What are Places of Worship Really Worth to a Community? It’s about a way of calculating the economic value of places of worship in a community—and what would be lost if they disappeared. (I wrote about it again in 2023 for Canadian Affairs; according to the Halo Effect, places of worship are worth over $18 billion to the Canadian economy.) 

In 2019, I wrote about a church in Ottawa that had been converted into a meeting and convention space. “We worked with the community to repurpose it,” Leanne Moussa, president of allsaints Development Inc., said of how the building became a popular venue for weddings, funerals, parties, conferences, theatre, concerts and other events. 

In 2024, I interviewed Mark Elsdon, editor of the book Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition. Elsdon created the book to get congregations to start thinking now about what happens when there are no longer enough people to make their church viable. Rather than wait until there are few options on the table, “Let’s talk about it now, get in front of it,” he said. 

And this year I interviewed leaders of some Lutheran churches in Canada who are converting their buildings and properties into affordable housing. I was taken by the words of Jennifer Hoover, the congregational redevelopment advisor for the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, about a new way for congregations to view the changes they are experiencing today. 

“We need to reframe that narrative, away from one of having failed,” she said, explaining that it is a chance for congregations “to think about what new thing is possible, about new ways they can use the building in ways that are consistent with their mission, vision and values.” 

Also in 2025 I did a story about Winnipeg’s Lutheran Church of the Cross, which closed so its building could be converted into apartments for seniors. And one about how Gordon King Memorial Church in Winnipeg has reimagined itself as a community hub, including a popular coffee house named “Gordie’s.”

It’s an ongoing story; with so many buildings slated to close, there will be many more opportunities to write about this topic.

Photo above: St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Kitchener, which is converting its Christian education wing into affordable housing.