A Colorado pastor is helping churches gain revenue by renting out church building spaces thru SpaceTogether.
Pastor Justin Knapp
Pastor Justin Knapp from Colorado founded SpaceTogether to help churches struggling financially. The pastor first thought about the business idea while he was pastoring his first church that is struggling to pay bills.
Usually, a church’s biggest budget, approximately up to 80% of the budget, is normally spent on property and staff payments. Pastor Justin thought that by offering rental spaces, churches can make money from their buildings.
“Our studies found that around 60% of churches have commercial kitchens, 30% have gyms, 100% have auditoriums, offices, and fully built-out childcare facilities,” Justin Knapp said. “Our software looks at space’s availability, amenities, and functionality of the available space and then matches a nearby renter.”
SpaceTogether
Since 2016, SpaceTogether has grown to over 15,000 users and half of iys properties for rent are church buildings. Pastor Justin noted that churches have excellent spaces that can be rented out to multiple businesses. By doing so, the churches will be able to earn money and not depend on donations for their operating cost.
The pastor, who had a difficult childhood, was not expecting to become a CEO of his own $36 million business. However, when he heard the calling of God to help other churches, he immediately knew he needed to respond to it.
“We’ve found ourselves in this weird position where secular investors ask, ‘why in the world are you working with churches?’ And faith-based investors say, ‘you aren’t doing totally the Christian thing,’” he said.
Church Building Spaces
He is firm in his belief that the gathering of a Church is sacred. However, the church building is not sacred. From his perspective, a church building is a set of facilities to be used efficiently by becoming a good steward.
“If churches do not find a way to create an alternate revenue stream, that building they call sacred will be gone,” he said.
The Colorado Springs pastor’s business idea has been helping many churches, especially during the pandemic. Over the past months, many churches are seeing a significant decline in donations, thus, by taking part in SpaceTogether, they were able to continue operating despite the pandemic.
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Reference: The Christian Post