Didn't mean to leave that last sentence hanging...

For example, have any congregations been successful at building sustainable support through donations (not grants) from their neighbouring community - in addition to givings from congregation members?

Interesting to see if anyone bites. The real question is "What does your church provide that the community needs?", causing them to offer support in return. "Doing church" takes big bucks, with HR and physical plant costs being the most. In our "value for money" world, the onus is on those who are a part of the community to support the church. Otherwise, it's a tough, if not impossible sell.

In my first pastoral charge, one congregation did door-to-door caroling before Christmas, and many made donations at that time.  Generous donations came from members of the Orthodox Church as they thought it was important to keep a church presence in the community and their church was a 1/2 hour drive away.  As DKS noted, when members of a community see a church as providing significant service to the community, they will support it even if they do not belong to it.  Look at all of the support provided to the Salvation Army from people in the community at large.

If a congregation is fulfilling a mission of God's in the community, financial and other support will happen.

Observer girl, there are a whole bunch of questions about your question which simply raise more questions for me.  What is "doing church in a new way"?  Does it mean, as DKS assumes, ownership and operation of a building?  Does it mean full time staffing?  What sort of programming makes church church?  We have a congregation in the city for whom doing church simply means having worship on Sunday morning.  They are still looking for a minister willing to work 0.1 time to lead the worship - I'm not even sure whether that works out to be equivalent to the amount required for Sunday Supply in the United Church's salary guidelines.  Bottom line is always that revenue must equal or exceed expenses over the longer term for "doing church in a new way" to succeed.  Once expenses start exceeding revenue over the longer term it's going to eventually fail because sooner or later the person carrying those expenses, whether someone from within the group trying to do church in a new way, or someone outside that group (someone who owns the space, supplies the water, or heat, or something which seems inconsequential) will say, "The heck with doing church in a new way, I want to be paid or else."  CRA is the least of your worries at that point, unless they are that creditor (trust me, there's no better way to get permenantly into debt than owing the CRA GST or payroll expenses like an employers EI or CPP contributions)...

Thank you, everyone, for your responses.

I agree that we need to frame the question in terms of finding the community need that we can serve. And I agree - as does everyone in my congregation - that any viable plan requires our revenue to equal or exceed our expenses.

My use of the phrase "doing church in a new way" wasn't meant to be confusing. But I did hope that keeping the scenario fairly undefined would encourage more ideas from other congregations' experience. I know we aren't the only congregation trying to determine the best way to bring in the money we need to pay for the mission we feel we are called to provide. It would be wonderful to be encouraged and inspired by  what other congregations have tried and succeeded at.

If the congregation doesn't pay for its mission itself through donations to it, or is funded by endowments, the only funding model is through grants. And that is problematic for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least of which is that secular bodies like the United Way will absolutely not fund religious groups, no matter how good their mission is. So you are now begging for money from other, similar charities...

I am entirely for "doing church another way" although I do not exactly know what that would be.  If we do not have ministers and presbytery with a different vision, then I don't know how it would happen.

For one thing, our "physical facility", or building, is a chain around our necks when it comes to maintance and upkeep.  Yet, this building is a heritage site and we do not just want to let it go.  There seems to be no one that would take it over in our small town.

Worship as we know it, no longer fits my needs, yet the gathering of friends and family on a Sunday, does fit my needs.  Along with this, we need another reason for being, something that other groups in community do not fill.  For myself, I need a chance for intelligent discussion and study as well as a facility to do good works for others in need.  We need better trained leaders and not just for those in the larger cities and centers. 

Sounds like opportunities for small group ministry.

How about this:

There is a little church, that can no longer fund a paid minister.  They have old building in a small town.  the nearest other United church with a minister is 35 miles through the woods, and that group is averse to cooperation. That little dedicated group was going behind $2k a month.  so what to do.  What is being done, is a minister - candidate from that congregation decades ago - is providing worship and such via email and skype.  Sacraments and such are yet to be worked out.  But they are talking cooperation with the Anglicans up the road.  they will meet as a group, and use the worship materials and sermons sent to them from thousands of kms away.  Worship and ministry will contiue.  Is this doing church - a new way?  It may be the way for some.  Why could ministery types in positions not help out these little churches in locales where there is no alternative?  With all the money spent on studies and things, maybe this would be a good thing into which  we could invest a few resources.  peace.

Already in place in Toronto Conference. Congregation contracts with a nearby minister for services. Minister is in Hamilton Conference. No Skype, tho'.

It's not a new funding model, but it does show the changes happening in the US around new models of being church.

http://nyti.ms/TqC5Hw

Matt81 - your description brings to mind, for me, the Telehealth model now being employed by many smaller communities to access health care consultations.  Internet video communication by appointment with specialists in distant communities.  Could be quite interesting I think, in terms of provision of worship & education services for churches - but still the mission & service would be operationalized by and in the local community.

There is a congregation (I think in Georgetown, ON) that holds "Messy Church/Fresh Expressions" once a month on a Friday evening - they are located near the GO train (commuter) station - people come off the train, pick up kids nearby, and come to church for supper and family activities and worship.  I think these expressions of church hold a lot of promise for the future.

There is also a 'newer' form of church growing  in Milton, ON - The Annex -  http://theannexmilton.ca/  - young leadership, meeting in community locations rather than church buildings - doing some great work.

Halton Presbytery is also experiementing with having a 'free range' minister (my words not theirs!) in the Mississauga city centre area (growing VERY quickly with influx of high rise condos) - supported by Presbytery, not linked to any specific church as far as I understand it, visiting various community locations & existing community groups to see what's going on, gain an understanding of unmet needs in the community etc.

One of the ways our church is looking at is sharing space / sharing expenses.  There are certain expenses incurred whether space is used or not.  So if another non-profit organization needs space and your gym is only used on weekends, or during the day, and another organization needs the space they might be able to off-set some of your heating and maintenance expenses.  If you have rooms that are only used for nursery or Sunday School, they might also be used to teach literacy to adults - or a mother/child group for social service families might play with the toys and discuss how to manage on $100 a week.  The kitchen might be used to prepare meals-on-wheels, or breakfasts or lunches for a nearby school, or cooking classes. 

Sharing space / sharing expenses seems like a win/win situation, and may raise your church's profile in the community and help you to reach out to more people.

Given that a telehealth suite costs $40,000 per setup (I know this because the non-profit board I am on just paid the bill for an Ontario telehealth suite), plus requiring a high speed internet connection plus central co-ordination, it's not a cheap model for the church to use.

Works until the money/contract runs out. We did that for years until the county stopped providing subsidized daycare spaces because of government funding cuts and terminated their lease.

St. George's Anglican, Georgetown.

http://www.edge-ucc.ca/webinars/recorded/messy-church/

That's great DKS that you're on a board involving telehealth - I'm sure there are many healthcare related issues such as confidentiality & transfer of other information that factor into the cost.  It was more the idea of distance sharing that I was referring to - via podcasting, skype etc.  There are a number of churches that already podcast their services I think.

Our church generates quite a lot of income from rental of our space - almost $50K/year.  We have one major tenant (an Indian Orthodox church), many regulars such as exercise groups, weight-watchers, music lessons, a ballet school, some short-term special concerts, events, community meetings and some gratis community service (AA etc.)  It does take a committed individual (volunteer) to be constantly marketing the building & managing the rentals.  We also incur additional costs for janitorial services etc.  It does many people from the community into the building.   This works also because we are in a large city - likely would not be feasible for a small rural church.

Actually, no. Telehealth is not cheap, although it is less costly than one on one physician care.

Podcasting is not skyping. Skype is live. Podcasting is not. I also happen to know that the budget for podcasting in one American church is $100,000/year. I belive the United Church has fronted some experiments in remote access to worship in MNWO conferecne. The cost was well into five figures.

We earn $7,000/year in rentals. but you can never, ever assume this will continue.

DKS is correct in saying that this works until the money runs out.  The other caveat to renting is that it means the space is no longer available to the congregation for other purposes at the time that it is rented out.  The management of the rentals is a significant task.  In one congregation I worked with recently the lease rates were not properly calculated and the congregation was actually losing money on the rental.  Add to that the person "managing" the relationships was 89 and handing out keys to anyone from the rental group that asked because he didn't want to seem "unfriendly"  We have been very selective about the rental of space.  The board and property committee review rates yearly.  Money from rentals gets handled separately from congregational funds so that we do not delude ourselves into thinking that we are covering the expenses of being "church" when in reality the rentals are covering that cost for us.  Long Term leases of the sanctuary to Seventh Day Adventists or other denominations is not something we are interested in entering into because of the loss of the space for our use (in the case of Seventh Day Adventists it means Saturday becomes unavailable for weddings)...It isn't necessarily a win/win even in a large city.

Hi jmlochhead - I agree with much of what you've written.  Rental arrangements need to be managed in a careful manner.   And yes - the congregation needs to sort out its own scheduling issues - there was some grumbling initially, but we have adapted just fine now.  

In terms of sharing with another congregation - it has worked well in our case - we have in fact had some joint events, both social and worship related, and this has been very positive in many regards.

Thoughtful engagement is the key - as always I suppose.

Our congregation doesn't share our building with any other congregations, but we do have a large number of rentals from community groups. In order to get around the problem of not having places for our own groups to meet, we have one room, in addition to the sanctuary, that we do not rent out. Our rentals are handled by the office administrator and she also deals with the keys. We are one of the few buildings in the area that do rentals at reasonable rates for community groups, so our facilities are in high demand at this point. It's not uncommon for us to have three community groups using the space at the same time - and perhaps a church committee meeting also. 

Thank you everyone for the helpful suggestions and discussion!