Guest Post by Steve Sjogren
Finding Ourselves By Gifting Our Church
Why would anyone want to give away their church building?
That was the question people asked.
And, honestly, it was a fair question.
We had grown quickly, eventually reaching several thousand people on weekends. At one point we were holding seven services a weekend—no kidding. Our building had served us well, but we were moving to a new facility about a mile away.
The old building was listed about $1 million — this was a few years ago. We put it on the market, hoping to turn that equity into fuel for the next chapter.
But nobody bought it.
Then, while I was in Taipei, Taiwan, navigating the cobblestone streets with my walking stick, an idea hit me:
Why not give it away?
Not sell it.
Just. Give. It. Away.
I thought of it as a thank offering to God. We could find another church that needed a facility and simply bless them with it.
I came home and presented the idea to our leadership. I made it clear: This is something that came to me, but I’m not going to die on this hill unless you are willing to walk it with me.
They jumped on board.
So we spent six weeks raising money—not to buy another building, but to pay off the building we were giving away.
Our people got incredibly creative.
My son Jack was eight years old. He went door-to-door selling some of his artwork and explaining to our neighbors that he was raising money because we were giving our church building to another church.
People would say, “Wait. Seriously? Why do you need the money?”
“Seriously. We’re giving our building away. We’re trying to pay off the debt so we can give it away completely.”
By the end of six weeks, we had raised enough to come within about $100,000 of paying the whole thing off.
We didn’t quite get there.
But something much bigger had happened.
For years, we had been teaching our people about generosity. And we had also developed a practice that changed the way we thought about other churches.
At the beginning of our services, we would regularly pray for another church in our community.
We’d name them.
And we’d pray something like:
“God, bless them as much as—or even more than—you bless us today.”
That was a radical shift.
The other church wasn’t our competitor.
They were our partner in the Kingdom.
We weren’t trying to build our kingdom. We wanted to see the Kingdom of God advance throughout our city.
Eventually, we discovered whether we really meant what we had been praying.
Because it’s one thing to pray for another church to be blessed.
It’s another thing when God gives you the opportunity to be part of the blessing.
Would you ever give away your church building?
Maybe.
Or maybe the real question is this:
What do you have that God might want you to give away so someone else can move forward?
Sometimes kingdom generosity looks like money.
Sometimes it looks like a building.
Sometimes it looks like giving away your time, your resources, your influence—or simply making room for someone else to flourish.
We were weary of doing business as usual.
And somewhere along the way, we discovered that generosity can be a way of doing church differently.
You say you don’t have a church to give away? You say you could use $1 million? Of course. But there has to be a starting point at a progression that we can take. Maybe the first step for you is doing the prayer on weekends as it seems fitting maybe another step would be to bless and build up other churches in the community by donating equipment to them here and there as it fits. Maybe another idea would be to help pay for a specific project they are working on with their facility. We did this once upon a time with a local church that was building and needed a new roof. We paid for most of that over a couple of weeks of offerings.
You may be thinking, That’s great, Steve, but we don’t have a $1 million building to give away.
Neither did we—until we did.
But kingdom generosity usually starts much smaller.
Maybe your first step is simply to begin praying for another church in your community: “God, bless them as much as—or even more than—you bless us.”
Then watch what happens.
Maybe you have equipment sitting in storage that another church could use.
Maybe you could help with a specific project. We once helped a local church replace its roof by taking special offerings over a couple of weeks. It wasn’t a million-dollar gift. But it was a significant gift to them.
The point isn’t the size of the gift.
The point is the posture of the heart.
What if we stopped asking, How can we make our church bigger? and started asking, How can we help the Kingdom become bigger?
That changes everything.
Because sometimes the best way to find ourselves as a church is to give something away.
And sometimes, when we give away what we thought we needed to keep, we discover that we weren’t losing anything at all. We were finding the Kingdom.
