Churches Find End Is Nigh
The Number of Religious Facilities Unable to Pay Their Mortgage Is Surging
ROSEVILLE, Calif.—Residential and commercial real-estate owners aren’t the only ones losing their properties to foreclosure. The past few years have seen a rapid acceleration in the number of churches losing their sanctuaries because they can’t pay the mortgage.
Just as homeowners borrowed too much or built too big during boom times, many churches did the same and now are struggling as their congregations shrink and collections fall owing to rising unemployment and a weak economy.
Since 2008, nearly 200 religious facilities have been foreclosed on by banks, up from eight during the previous two years and virtually none in the decade before that, according to real-estate services firm CoStar Group, Inc. Analysts and bankers say hundreds of additional churches face financial struggles so severe they could face foreclosure or bankruptcy in the near future.
“Churches are the next wave in this economic crisis,” says Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., president and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a non-profit civil-rights group, who works with pastors around the country to help churches negotiate better terms with their bankers.
Religious denominations of all kinds have suffered in recent years as donations have declined, with many Catholic parishes closing and synagogues merging their congregations. But the property-financing problems have been concentrated among independent churches, which while seeking to expand lack a governing body to serve as a backstop to financial hardship.
“Religious organizations may be subject to the laws of God but they are also subject to the laws of economics,” said Chris Macke, senior real-estate strategist at CoStar. Many troubled churches, he said, are in states such as California, Florida, Georgia and Michigan, which also have some of the highest home-foreclosures rates in the country.
In many cases, churches ran into trouble after borrowing to build bigger houses of worship needed to accommodate growing congregations in once-booming housing markets.
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This article has spread like wild fire on the internet and Twitter. Fox News jumped in yesterday with their own version of it. I was contacted by the WSJ reporter before they ran their story and gave her a lot of facts that were ignored or left out of the article. I have posted extensively on them.
The article in short overstates the problem. 0.000597% is the number of all US congregations facing foreclosure! Hardly a surge. The article also oversimplifies the issue. The implication is that the economy, unemployment and thus a decline in giving is the issue. However the facts as reported by groups like Giving USA showed that giving to religion ONLY declined by 0.01% in 2009. Churches have historically weathered recessions before and will again. In many of the instances of foreclosure there is more to meet the eye than simply a decline in giving.
I am amazed at how we are responding not upon facts but a few stories. One church in foreclosure is bad but we are not at the point of a surge or crisis. We need to get our facts straight and not respond to knee jerk media articles. Simply because a church in California or Georgia is struggling does not mean your church will struggle too.
At the end of the day churches will find that if you have a compelling vision, good vision trumps bad economy.
For another perspective read http://TheCharisGroup.org/blog
Perhaps, the churches will start helping demand that our rights are respected once again instead of just preaching that the law is the law even when it’s not.
This looks like this is coming to the final culmination of good vs. evil. They want to destroy anything good that is left in the world and they want to own everything and everyone with fake debt or STEAL THINGS THEY DO NOT OWN. They are all a bunch of Fourth Reich Nazi Luciferians. Brad Meltzer’s Decoded is doing a show on Thursday night on the History Channel about these very Secret Societies who are destroying the world with their evil plans using deceit in order to control. J.F.K also spoke about these Luciferians. We all need to do our homework. The truth is everywhere. We need to declare our National Sovereignty from these people.
Another thing. What are you gonna do with a forclosed……empty church? What a sacrilage!
An absolute zoo of foreclosers. But whats with all the blatant disrespect for human rights in our own middle class? Is there something even more sinister going on here?
Is there something more sinister going on here? HMMM Maybe owning all the land? Remember the banks are working with money from air…no back-up…a flat peice of paper. But with greed and fraud they want the land titles..to own the land. And to have people homeless with no means to earn a living. Comments have given clues and clues are on the internet. Foreclosures have been proven with fraud, yet no indictments and nothing done by the government to cease the fraud, and the government also refused to halt or stop foreclosures once the massive fraud shit hit the fan. Banks run the government, this anyone can see. So is something more sinister? Dig deeper and search, read all articles and grasp the key words..go on YouTube….we were taken over by the banks even with fraud and they are not our government..yet they made their own laws…..disregarding the laws of the land. So what powers do they carry…or is another entity that has definite existense lurking in the shadows? WAKE UP AMERICA
Is nothing sacred??
That is sad.
No matter how much you want to pay, if nothing is coming in, nothing can go out.
All businesses depend on something coming in. None are safe.
Starting up rebuilding and repairing our infrastructure is the answer. Does something that must be done for us all and pups money in pockets for us all to spend and in this case give.