Could your church building generate more income?
I think so many churches are sitting with the same question: could we get more from this building? Could it generate more income to resource the work we’re already doing? More broadly, how do we raise more money for this church?
It’s a question I’ve spent years of my life trying to answer. I remember one particular moment, not long after I’d started running venue hire at St Mary’s London. I was looking at other local venues and what they were charging. One of them was, frankly, a pretty rubbish basement bar. And it was charging more than we were.
We had this incredible Georgian church, with significantly more space, character and capacity, and yet somehow we had decided it was worth less. I remember feeling genuinely frustrated. Surely the church could do better than this. Surely there was more potential here than we were currently seeing.
As it turned out, there was. But what I didn’t realise then was that answering that question would eventually become a huge part of my work.
I fell into venue hire completely by accident
I hadn’t set out to work in venue hire. At the time, I was working part-time at St Mary’s alongside a job in visual merchandising at John Lewis, and I knew I wanted a change. So I prayed. I remember saying to God that by November I wanted to be doing something new.
Not long afterwards, the operations manager at St Mary’s called me into the office. Our venue manager was going on maternity leave starting in November (my ears pricked up at this point!) and, for reasons they couldn’t entirely explain, they kept thinking of me. Would I consider taking it on? I prayed about it, it felt right so I said yes.
At the time, venue hire was generating somewhere around £70,000 to £80,000 a year, and there was a sense that this was probably close to its ceiling. But once I was inside it, I could see so much room to improve. The pricing, marketing, customer experience and processes could all be better, and I became increasingly convinced that if we treated the building according to what it was actually worth, we could attract customers with much bigger budgets.
Over time, we did. Venue hire at St Mary’s eventually grew into an operation generating around £500,000 a year, and much of what I learnt through building it still shapes how I approach this work today.
Then it became about much more than money
I’ve always loved the Church. I love ministry, and I’ve always wanted to be somewhere in the middle of what God is doing. So I never wanted to treat venue hire as an awkward commercial operation running alongside the real ministry of the church. Increasingly, I saw that it didn’t have to be.
People came to events and later returned for prayer or services. People who might never have chosen to walk into a church now knew where the door was. They’d crossed the threshold, met people who were kind and welcoming, and experienced church differently from whatever assumptions they might have arrived with.
The income also meant we could do more. We could invest in the building, resource social action, employ people and take on more curates. And I saw God provide through the venue hire itself in ways that have stayed with me.
I remember praying one month for £10,000 of new business. Within 24 hours, I was on a call with someone I’d never spoken to before. They wanted to book 2 large events each month (totalling £10,000) for the foreseeable future, and by the end of the week the contracts were going out. That conversation resulted in two bookings every Saturday, every month of the year. As far as I know, they’re still there today.
For me, moments like that made it very difficult to separate the practical from the spiritual. We were running a venue, but we were also praying, acting and stewarding what we had, then watching what God did with it.
Eventually, other churches started asking questions
As the venue grew, other churches began getting in touch and asking the same things: how are you doing this? Could we do it here? I’d meet with them, talk through what we’d learnt and give them resources. At the same time, through prayer, dreams, Scripture and a series of conversations, I became increasingly convinced that God was calling me to take what we’d learnt beyond one church.
Leaving St Mary’s taught me something else too. Too much of what we’d built still lived in my head. I’ve since found the same thing in churches again and again. Venue hire can depend on one person knowing how everything works. They know the customers, the building, the processes, what needs chasing and what needs to happen next. It works, right up until that person isn’t there.
So part of my work became taking that knowledge and turning it into something sustainable that a team could use.
Working with very different churches and venues has also taught me that there isn’t one model for doing this well. A parish hall attracting local classes and children’s parties needs something very different from a 600-seat city church pursuing high-value corporate events. One needs to be simple, visible and incredibly easy to book. The other may need sophisticated positioning, photography, pricing and a much more considered sales journey.
Christ Church Roxeth is a good example of the former. The answer wasn’t to turn a local parish church into a corporate events venue, but to build an approach around the building, its local market and what the team could realistically manage.
The principles are remarkably consistent, but how you apply them is where the judgement comes in.
Ultimately, this isn’t really about venue hire
If I’m truthful, the reason I do this work is the gospel. My life was radically changed when I came to Jesus, and I deeply believe in the Church's role in our communities. I want churches to have the resources to be there when people need them.
I want to see children’s clubs, social supermarkets and meals for people experiencing homelessness. I want churches to be able to employ good people, care for their buildings, and serve their communities well. And I want fewer church buildings to close, because we often don’t realise how much we need these spaces until they’re gone.
So yes, I care about pricing, websites, booking systems, and venue photography, but none of that is really the point. The point is what becomes possible when a church has the resources to do what it is there to do.
That’s why I do this work. And if you’re asking what might be possible in your own building, I'd love to hear from you.