This segment, from this week’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, pushes one my buttons: the experience that churches with just enough space are the ones that tend to survive. A recession following a big building campaign, or a congregation with unaffordable maintainance costs often leads to closure.
That, and once a religious building is lost in an expensive, built-out city (New York, Washington and Boston come to mind) it is very hard to build one later.
Innovation and mixed use is one answer.