Our church had a fire in the 50's and while not destroyed, it was heavily damaged.

The church was huge and within days they had congregational commitment for money to rebuild.

We often talk at Stewards if that would occur now. I don't think so. I think we would rebuild, we are a large congregation, but differently and our neighbourhood is extremely expensive so it would make final sense to sell our double lot and build somewhere else.

But .....

Oddly, we did a service once at a Jewish community centre, the conceit being that our building had been destroyed and this was our backup location. The focus was on what defines us as a community and how we would rebuild and function in the face of the event. Rather interesting service.

Mendalla

A church is a community of people, of course, not a building. I'm sure that if our building was to burn down, our community would continue. We would pray first for wisdom, guidance, and provision. Next, we leaders of the church would meet and discuss our next step. We do have insurance, and may or may not also seek some financial help from our Fellowship. In terms of meeting space, we would have to see where we believe God is leading us. There are a few options in the area - including renting space from other Fellowship Baptist congregations.

Dcn Jae - this is a serious question - why rent space from another Baptist Congregation?  Why not join them?

I'm sure this would be seriously looked at if we lost our building.  There is another UCC only a few blocks away (history - one Presbyterian, one Methodist).  Logic, and Presbytery, would probably say to join them and form one congregation with our clergy staff doing joint ministry.   The money from our insurance could be used, in part, to renovate their building to accommodate our needs (making it wheelchair accessible, for instance).   

But I am almost sure a sizable number would agree with me that we need to retain our identity and our location - which is perfect for our outreach.   So, if they offered us temporary space, we would accept it (or alternately space in any other down-town church or building).  Then we would work out a long term plan, and fine-tune it to meet the needs of our congregation and our community.

I see trying to partner with the city to build a sanctuary/concert hall, salvaging whatever we could from the old and incorporating it into this room.    

Alternately we could build an efficient high-rise (in this city that might be 8 to 12 stories).  We would use the ground floor for outreach and programs, another floor for worship space, and the remainder could be developed into office space or apartments (preferably low-rental).

Of course this is just me visualizing.  Whatever we choose would require a lot of prayer and discussion and hope and conviction that we were following the course we were called to follow.

In our previous congregation (Lumby, BC), the lot is too narrow to permit re-building.

Our building is a rental. If it burnt-we would miss our "stuff" cahirs, tables, books, baptismal font etc. We have a standing offere from the Christian school of temporay sunday worship offere for the short term. Long term-we are  working on establishing a space that we own.

That certainly wouldn't be off the table. We would pray first, and that might be the direction that we feel God wants us to go in. About a couple of years ago, a smaller Baptist congregation near us considered joining us for a time. Nothing had happened to their building - they had just become too small a group for it. It's now being run as a mission of the Fellowship, but we might perhaps join with them if something happened to our building. We also might not - we cherish the family feeling our small church has now, and of course there would be leadership issues to work out.

Sounds logical. Would your UCCanada head office help pay for the staff salaries? Our Felowship doesn't normatively do that, as we operate using a congregational system of government. That's why working out leadership issues with another church might prove thorny for us. We might have to vote to eliminate at least one pastor's job.

Sounds good.

Nice visualizing. I love different concepts for church structures.

Jae - except in a few cases (where the church is a mission) each congregation pays the minister's salary.    It is not unusual for a large city church to have two clergy (some have more).  

Same with us ('cept we call our leaders pastors rather than ministers). Even our little Baptist church currently has more than one pastor.

If we lost our building my hopes would be that we would rent space rather than rebuild as we are facing financial difficulties in the near future already.  But I don`t think the majority of the other congregants would agree with me about renting.

Beloved - I wouldn't have any problem with renting, if we were able to continue our worship and outreach programs.  I'm just wondering what the advantage would be.  If we rebuilt we could do so with our needs in mind - a thorough Joint Needs Assessment would be the first step.  And our insurance settlement would hopefully cover at a good part of the building costs - I hope.   If we rented, that settlement could be invested and the income put towards paying the rent - but I am not aware of any building in our area that would be available for rent and would meet our needs.

Every situation is different.  What are the advantages/disadvantages of renting over rebuilding?  

While I know that the UCC is facing difficulties, I hope and believe that there will be a place for my church for some time to come.