Book 6 of 2022 --Keys to the Kindom: Money and Property for Congregational Mission in The United Church of Canada

 Seemingly out of nowhere, this book arrived in the mail a couple months ago. The cover letter named that as we prepare for the 100th Anniversary of the United Church of Canada in 1925 a free copy was being sent to every community of faith across the country. After looking at it for several weeks I decided it should be read (a free book is almost always worth the cost after all).

The question of how best to use the assets of the church for ministry is always a challenging one. The question of how best to fund the ongoing work of ministry is a challenge in many congregations. The question of how to grow our mission and ministry in new ways often gets lost in the worry about funding what is already happening.

In almost every church I have worked with the biggest single asset is the property and the building. It is true that sometimes the building is a source of concern due to aging structures and/or deferred maintenance. It is also true that in many United Church congregations the building is a gift shared with the wider community. For many of us part of how we live out our faith is by offering our space to community groups.  Some of those groups would have a hard time finding a space without that opportunity.

Looking forward into the future, we need to ask how we will fund, sustain, and grow our ministries, both as individual congregations and as a denomination. How can we ensure that our communities of faith are around for future generations? This book tells stories that might help us understand how it has been done in the past, is being done in the present, and could possibly be done in the future. The push for all communities of faith to create a multi-million dollar endowment seems overly optimistic to me, as do some of the hopes for events around the 100th Anniversary weekend in June of 2025. However if the book makes us think and dream and vision then it will have done its job.

Of special interest to me was the discussion of how some places are redeveloping and making new uses of their properties. I know of several congregations where this is a needed discussion, one that needs to grow out of a discussion of how they can best help meet the needs of their communities. A lot of us are in buildings that we would not build now, either because the design does not let us gather as we would prefer to, or because they are bigger than we need/space is not used as we would like to use it now. In the United Church of Canada (and many other denominations) we have a lot of value in property, how can we best use those assets to participate in the work God is doing in/around/through us?

PS: in the middle of the book we learn how it is that all congregations could get a free copy. It is part of an endowment agreement made within the authors' congregation.