Buildings and money

This post is from the defunct blog “Dying Church”

We've tried to ignore it, but it's getting harder every year. Richview's church building is now over twenty years old. We've never had to put a lot of money into it, so it hasn't been too much of a problem. We don't have any debt. The building has just been there. Yesterday, we received a report that outlines the amount of money it will take to maintain our building over the next thirty years. The numbers are staggering. It is going to take a third of our current budget to adequately fund this facility – not to add to it, but just to maintain it. That is a lot of money, six figures every year. I still don't know what we're going to do, but the numbers don't make sense. With 1.3 billion people living on less than a dollar a day and 3 billion people living on less than two dollars a day, we (and many other churches) will have some tough questions. Can we justify that money with for how we currently use our facility? Is this investing in the Kingdom? Lots of questions, not as many answers.