What Is a Church Building For? A Review of Loren Richmond Jr.’s The Church as Community Hub

Churches have a lot of space.

Increasingly, they have a lot more space than they need.

That is one of the realities behind Loren Richmond Jr.’s new book, The Church as Community Hub: Sharing Spaces to Help Neighborhoods Thrive. Across the country, congregations worship in buildings constructed for a different era of American Christianity. They have classrooms that once held packed Sunday schools, fellowship halls designed for large church suppers, kitchens capable of feeding a crowd, offices, parking lots, and sometimes substantial pieces of land. Meanwhile, the neighborhoods surrounding these churches may be struggling to find affordable childcare, housing, gathering places, meeting rooms, or simply places where people can be together.

Loren’s book asks what might happen if churches began to connect those two realities.

What impressed me most was that The Church as Community Hub never felt like another attempt to help struggling congregations grasp at the straws of relevance. There are plenty of ideas circulating about how churches might become more innovative, more entrepreneurial, or more attractive to people who have stopped attending. Loren is interested in something deeper. He wants congregations to think differently about the resources they already have and to ask how those resources might contribute to the flourishing of their neighbors.

That makes this a book about church buildings, but it also makes it a book about vocation.

Martin Luther had a remarkably ordinary understanding of where Christian faith leads us. Faith turns us toward God, and then Christian freedom turns us toward the neighbor. We do not need to spend our lives proving ourselves worthy before God. Grace takes care of that. And because grace takes care of that, we are free to spend our lives asking a different question: what does my neighbor need?

I kept returning to that idea while reading Loren’s book. What would happen if congregations asked that question about their property? Not, “How do we get more people into this building?” Not even, “How do we generate enough cash from this building to keep it open?” But, “What does our neighbor need, and what has God already placed in our hands?”

Sometimes the answer may be surprisingly mundane. Maybe the neighborhood needs a commercial kitchen. Maybe it needs affordable childcare. Maybe a nonprofit needs office space. Maybe people need a place for recovery meetings or English classes. Maybe the community needs housing, and the congregation happens to own several acres of land. Maybe teenagers need somewhere to go after school. None of these uses is particularly flashy. That is part of what I find so compelling about them. Lutheran theology has always insisted that God has a habit of working through ordinary things. Bread and wine. Water and words. Parents and teachers and farmers and public servants. Why not classrooms, kitchens, parking lots, and fellowship halls?

I also found myself reading Loren alongside the late Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall. Hall, the favorite theologian of one of my theological vocational mentors, spent decades urging North American Christians to stop treating the decline of Christendom as though it were synonymous with the decline of Christianity. The loss of the church’s cultural power could certainly be painful. Institutions would shrink. Buildings would become difficult to maintain. Clergy would lose some of the social status their predecessors enjoyed. But Hall also wondered whether disestablishment might free the church to become the church again.

That seems like an important theological backdrop to The Church as Community Hub. So many of our church buildings were constructed during an era when Christianity occupied a very different place in American life. Their scale tells a story about that era. Their sanctuaries, education wings, bowling alleys, gymnasiums, and parking lots were built with the expectation that people would come. For a time, they did.

Today, many do not.

We can experience that primarily as loss. In many congregations, that loss is real and deserves to be grieved. But Hall would push us to ask whether there might also be an invitation hidden within it. Perhaps the task is not to figure out how to restore the institutional church of 1965. Perhaps we can loosen our grip on some of the things associated with that era and discover a different way of being present in our communities.

Loren gives that theological possibility some very practical expression. An empty Sunday school classroom can become something other than evidence of decline. A fellowship hall used throughout the week by community groups can be something other than an underutilized church asset. A congregation that develops some of its land for housing has not necessarily surrendered something that once belonged to the church. It may have discovered a new way for that property to serve the church’s vocation.

This is also why I hope this book finds its way beyond pastors and property committees in established congregations. Bishops and denominational leaders should read it. So should people who oversee church foundations and grant programs. And I especially hope it is read by people involved in funding, planting, and supporting new congregations.

We tend to associate these questions with old churches that have too much building. But there is an equally interesting question on the other end of the congregational lifecycle. If you have funding and denominational support to start something new, why recreate the conventional church campus in the first place?

Imagine beginning a new ministry by asking what kind of shared space a particular neighborhood actually needs. Maybe it is childcare. Maybe it is affordable housing with community space on the first floor. Maybe it is a coffee shop, coworking space, community kitchen, counseling center, garden, or arts space. Instead of building a church and eventually asking how the neighborhood might use it, what if we created something the neighborhood needed and asked how a worshiping community might live within it?

I think that possibility deserves considerably more attention, particularly from denominations investing significant resources in new starts. It also shows why Loren’s argument should not be reduced to a strategy for managing decline. There is something here for churches that are just beginning.

One question I was left with concerns the theological depth underneath Loren’s argument. Loren draws from an impressive collection of contemporary thinkers and researchers, including people like Ryan Burge, Andy Root, and Scott Thumma. Their work helps us understand the institutional and cultural conditions churches are navigating. But I would be interested to see this conversation pushed further into the Christian tradition itself. Loren’s proposal seems ripe for conversation with Luther on vocation and Christian freedom, Hall on disestablishment and the theology of the cross, and other theological voices that can help us see the community hub not simply as an innovative ministry model, but as an expression of what the church has long confessed about its relationship with God and neighbor.

I also found myself wanting to hear about a few failures.

Church innovation literature tends to feature success stories for understandable reasons. But anyone who has spent time around congregations knows that partnerships fall apart. A church can spend money creating something its neighborhood does not actually want. A nonprofit partner can turn out to be the wrong fit. Volunteers can burn out. A great idea can become unsustainable. Sometimes the faithful decision is to keep going, and sometimes the faithful decision is to pull the plug. I have seen versions of this happen here in Madison. That does not disprove Loren’s thesis. If anything, I think those stories could make the case stronger. Congregations need permission to experiment without assuming that every experiment must become a permanent ministry. I would love to hear more stories from this movement about what went wrong, what people learned, and what they did next.

Those questions came to me because I think Loren is onto something important. The Church as Community Hub offers congregations a way of thinking about decline that is neither nostalgic nor defeatist. It does not tell churches to accept irrelevance, nor does it give them another program for clawing their way back toward cultural significance. It asks them to look again at what they have been given.

There is something deeply pastoral about that invitation. Many congregations are tired. Their membership is older than it used to be. Their budgets are tighter. They remember when the Sunday school rooms were full, and they feel the absence when they walk past them today. It is easy to look at an empty classroom and see only what has been lost.

Loren invites us to look again.

Maybe the room is not empty because the church has failed. Maybe the room is simply available.

Available for a neighbor. Available for a partner. Available for an experiment. Available for a form of ministry nobody imagined when the building was constructed fifty or seventy-five or a hundred years ago.

That is ultimately why I am so enthusiastic about this book. Loren has written something practical, but he has also given the church a hopeful way to think about stewardship in a time of institutional change. He reminds us that the question facing a congregation is not simply whether we can preserve everything we inherited. The more interesting question is what all of these things we inherited might now be for.

Leadership in a Tech-Shaped Culture: Three Book Recommendations to Ignite Your Year

Sam Bankman-Fried doesn't read.

Before his fraud trial, Bankman-Fried suggested that anyone who has written a book has "expletive upped," suggesting that they should have instead written a blog post. Perhaps the recently convicted king of crypto will change his mind on literacy as he awaits a maximum sentence of 110 years. And while the literary world enjoys a schadenfreude moment, it's worrisome that his sentiments are becoming increasingly widespread.

Americans are reading 20% fewer books than they read in the 1990s. They are also spending less time reading for pleasure. The average American reads just 16 minutes per day. By contrast, the average teen now spends 4.8 hours per day on social media, mostly on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. If Donald Trump captures the presidency this November, the country will be led by a non-reader who can't be troubled to read daily intelligence briefings, let alone books.

The decline of pleasure reading in our tech-shaped culture is a complex trend exacerbated by the explosion of algorithmic digital content, the constant acceleration of technology, and the proliferation of click-bait summaries in the news media. Too many of us lack the time, patience, and focus to read long-form writing.

Still, I was raised in an elementary school that taught that "readers are leaders" (or maybe it was the other way around). I developed a love of reading because I sensed how it contributed to an ongoing process of reflection and formation - and also because I earned a PizzaHut Personal Pan Pizza for each book report I completed. So with the conviction that focused, intentional reading advances the development of leadership skills, here are three book recommendations for harried, overworked, worried leaders who are navigating this tech-shaped culture.

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman

Neil Postman is best known for his 1985 work Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. While his 1985 book remains as relevant as ever, it analysis primarily focuses on the influence of entertainment.

"Technopoly" emerged eight years later, when Postman could see the emergence of electronic communication and personal computing. Postman argues that mankind has changed from a society that uses technology, to a society that is shaped by technology. For Postman, the invention of a hammer means that there is no such thing as "man with hammer." There is only "hammer man" - whose views of education, politics, and art are inextricably filtered through the unremovable lens of new technologies.

Technopoly is written with greater urgency and moral clarity than its predecessor. It is an essential read in a year where AI will continue its rapid advance, and where short form digital media will continue to redefine communication.

For the leader in a tech-shaped culture, Technopoly poses an urgent question: how might I protect communities and institutions from mindlessly succumbing to the worst impulses of this technological moment? Postman also challenges us to recognize that the answer to this question is far more complicated than simply deactivating one's Twitter profile.

Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley by Carolyn Chen

Technology is not the only juggernaut affecting meaning-making. While Postman writes about the influence of technology, sociologist Carolyn Chen writes about the pervasive influence of the workplace on knowledge, belief, and meaning. While the case studies reflect on religion and spirituality, the book revolves around the core question of how we derive meaning in a growth-obsessed culture.

By tracing the stories of once-religious tech workers who relocated to Silicon Valley, Chen demonstrates the encroachment of the workplace into spheres once occupied by tradition. The mechanisms of this encroachment are often described by Silicon Valley corporations as amenities, or enhancements to workplace culture. From meditation programs that teach "scientific Buddhism" to coaching offerings that promise "inner transformation," the tech industry has used these cultural offerings to displace the role once held by pastors, rabbis, and spiritual directors. Not every workplace has such amenities. But our work is increasingly becoming a personal quest for meaning and purpose.

When work becomes a spiritual journey, it comes to define our sense of purpose. We work harder, we produce more deliverables, we work longer hours. One wonders, while reading Chen's work, what will happen to the Google engineer or the Facebook account manager upon the next round of layoffs.

Chen beckons today's leader to consider how the drive to innovate replaces deeply held values and identities with the demands of late capitalism. It reminds today's leader that if we fail to define values and vision for our organizations, the marketplace will step in to do so on our behalf.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doer

Our final recommendation is the fantastical story of how one particular narrative survived centuries of acceleration to sustain and inspire across the ages. In a world that is turning its back on literacy, Cloud Cuckoo Land mounts a vigorous defense of the long-form narrative.

Set in three different timelines (the Siege of Constantinople, a modern day library, and a futuristic space ship), Doer traces how an obscure Greek drama provides coherence and inspiration on a timeless scale.

Anthony Doer reminds us of the enduring connection between meaning making and stories. Though it is a long book, Cloud Cuckoo Land cautions us about a world in which there are no more stories - only fragments.

For the leader in a tech-shaped culture, Cloud Cuckoo Land invites us to reflect upon and to share the stories that are most significant in our own formation. For even when our work has been lost to the eons, our stories will remain.

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@ryanpanzer is moving his social media activity from Twitter to GoodReads.

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Book Review: Work Pray Code by Carolyn Chen

Charles Taylor, famed sociologist and author of "A Secular Age," argued that secularization is not a process of subtraction. Taylor writes:

Western modernity, including its secularity, is the fruit of new inventions, newly constructed self-understandings and related practices, and can’t be explained in terms of perennial features of human life.

In other words, secularization is not a product of our surrounding culture stripping away faith and religiosity. Rather, secularization is a product of positive construction, where our surrounding culture produces a new spiritual identity apart from the traditions of the church. And nowhere has this been more true than in the technology industry.

Carolyn Chen, author of "Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley,"

has observed that the tech industry has become a leading laboratory in this great spiritual reconstruction.

By tracing the stories of once-religious tech workers who relocated to Silicon Valley, Chen demonstrates the encroachment of the workplace into spheres once occupied by religion. The mechanisms of this encroachment are often described by Silicon Valley corporations as amenities, as enhancements to workplace culture. From meditation programs that teach "scientific Buddhism" to coaching offerings that promise "inner transformation," the tech industry has used these cultural offerings to displace the role once held by pastors, rabbis, and spiritual directors.

The once-religious emigrants that Chen describes are not rejecting Christian doctrine. They are not making an active choice to leave their upbringing in the church. Rather, they are shaped and molded by employers seeking to make the mundane into the transcendent. As our work becomes a source of our spiritual identity, we become more attached to and dependent on our employer. Chen's emigrants often look back on their religious past not with judgment or criticism, but with an acknowledgement that they have moved past their past spiritual selves.

When work becomes a spiritual journey, we approach it with an enhanced sense of purpose. We work harder, we produce more deliverables, we work longer hours. Chen is quick to point out that this transformation is taking place within a late capitalist frame. One wonders, while reading Chen's work, what will happen to the Google engineer or the Facebook account manager upon the next round of layoffs.

How will individuals who derived their spiritual identity from the workplace react when those same workplaces replace their jobs with AI? How will those who found transcendence through coaching and meditation regimes respond when their access to such programs is suddenly revoked? In a time where organizations are leaner and less committed to their employees, the juxtaposition of faith and labor has all the makings of a looming spiritual crisis.

Chen concludes her book by describing this transformation as a "cautionary tale." She asks:

"What kind of society do we become when human fulfillment is centered in the workplace What happens to our families, religions, communities, and civil society when work satisfies too many of our needs? Silicon Valley is a bellwether of what happens when we worship work - when we surrender our time, our identities, our resources, and even our cherished traditions in service to work. It is what will happen if we don't invest in building and sustaining social institutions and traditions that nurture community, identity, and purpose outside of work." (pg. 197)

As a sociologist, Chen asks these questions with a remarkable sense of clarity and urgency. The workplace has indeed encroached upon the spiritual sphere. Employers, not congregations, are forming faith identities. Chen has supplied the questions. It is time for the church to come up with the answers.

Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, was published in 2022 by Princeton University Press.

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Ryan Panzer (@ryanpanzer) works in the technology industry. He received a master's in theology while working full time for Google. He now wonders whether the seminary or Google has had a more profound influence on his theology.

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