The Rev. Beau Abernathy has had to balance the roles of church pastor and real estate agent.

He’s twice led church congregations to purchase real estate, and his current congregation – CrossPointe Church – is looking for land at the moment.

“It’s extremely difficult to find the right property, especially here in Lawrence,” Abernathy says.

It’s an issue smaller churches face as they grow, and an issue larger churches that already have a building face as they struggle to pay the bills: what to do about their property.

Church market

Doug Brown, a senior commercial partner with Coldwell Banker McGrew Real Estate, 1501 Kasold Drive, has sold several church buildings over the years. He says the unique construction of a church – usually with a large open room for a sanctuary – tends to only attract other churches as buyers.

“That’s the kind of problem that seems to keep the market limited to other churches, or a nonprofit organization needing a big auditorium,” Brown says. “If it’s built as a church and functions well as a church, it’s probably going to sell as a church. If they’re trying to stick a square peg in a round hole, it might become something else.”

Brown’s list of properties currently includes the former Institute of Religion building owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, at 126 Indian Ave. near Haskell Indian Nations University.

It’s been on the market since mid-August, and Brown says he’s shown it around a dozen times to four or five churches interested in their own building.

“In general, the attraction is from other churches,” Brown says. “Most of them don’t have a space of their own, and they utilize school classrooms or auditoriums. They meet wherever they can.”

Better to build

That’s been the case for CrossPointe Church, which currently is meeting in a strip mall at 1414 W. Sixth St., Suite 100.

“It’s a nice 24-7 facility,” Abernathy says, “but we need a building in a better location.”

Abernathy was pastor at Christ Community Church when it purchased a site at 15th Street and Kasold Drive for $60,000 in 1995. He says the church sold that property in 1999 for $132,000 to help pay for its current location, at 1100 Kasold Drive.

He says pastors should tap into the resources in their congregations when looking to build, buy or sell. He’s seen statistics that say 85 percent of pastors leave their jobs after leading a building campaign, since that sometimes can become divisive to a congregation.

“Some pastors get too much into what color the carpet’s going to be,” Abernathy says.

He says most churches would rather build their own facility rather than move into an existing one.

“It’s better to build,” he says. “You can craft the building to fit your vision. If you get an existing building, you always inherit however the layout was designed.”

Reborn churches

Sometimes, though, that layout proves perfect for a use other than a church congregation. Among those examples in Lawrence are the Lawrence Community Theatre, 1501 N.H.; the Douglas County public works facility, 1242 Mass.; and several churches converted to houses or apartment buildings.

Perhaps the highest-profile former church that’s living a second life is the law office at 1040 Mass. It was built in 1874 as an Old English Lutheran church, then remodeled – after much controversy – in the early 1990s to become law offices.

“It’s now a very viable building,” says Craig Patterson, the architect who worked on the project.

Even though the law offices help to prove churches can be used for other purposes, Patterson says he’s not surprised most church buildings get sold to congregations before they’re considered for other uses.

“Churches are what we call purpose-specific buildings,” he says. “Many times you’ll find there’s an exchange of congregations.”

While many older churches still exist – and are used both for worship, commercial and residential purposes – Patterson says he worries that some churches currently being built won’t have that type of staying power.

“Contemporarily, there are a lot of tin barns that have some connection to religious institutions,” Patterson says.

Abernathy says he hasn’t been too worried about properties for his churches in the past, thinking the facility wasn’t that important in providing ministry. But he says that philosophy is starting to change.

“I used to be down on a building,” he says. “I was thinking, ‘Why do we spend so much money on a building?’ But they’re great tools. And that’s all they are, though: tools.”