Neil Hicks, the archdeacon at the Anglican diocese of Wangaratta, knows the number of his parishioners is dwindling.
“When I was a kid, lots of kids in my primary school went to church and Sunday school but by middle school most had stopped going and now they’re grandparents,” he says.
Plenty has been written about the decline in the number of churchgoers – last year’s census recorded the proportion of Christians in Australia dropping below 50% for the first time – but less well-documented is what this means for the thousands of church buildings around the country.
While some are demolished to make way for developments or apartment blocks, others are transformed into childcare centres, yoga studios and libraries. Those rezoned for residential use often come with multimillion-dollar price tags.
Data from realestate.com.au reveals 40,000 keyword searches for “churches” in the past year. In that time dozens of churches have sold across the country, particularly in rural Australia, where demographic shifts mean there are not enough parishioners to keep a church viable.
“The reality of having insufficient numbers of people to physically run a place is that the building’s maintenance gets beyond the people who are there,” Hicks says.
“These days there are a lot more compliance issues. If you want to have a ramp instead of steps … it’s expensive. Even if there’s people in the community, they’re not part of the church community. They’ve stopped going to church one or two generations before.”
The 2021 national church life survey found that just 5% of churchgoers were newcomers and 36% were over 70.
But the legacy and future of these buildings concern many. Residents in Ross, Tasmania, were unable to raise sufficient funds to stop one of the town’s historic churches from being put up for sale.
Though there are fewer Catholic churches on the market, Wee Jasper near Canberra said goodbye to the hamlet’s church last year, faced by rising repair costs and a dwindling population. The renovated, state heritage-listed St Anne’s Catholic church in Wallabadah, in the New England region of New South Wales, is up for sale for the second time in its history.
Some, like the Anglican Wentworth Memorial church in Vaucluse, remain empty, amid conflicting visions about its future.
While property sales do provide parishes with funds to meet their rising costs, many do not fetch a large sum pre-renovation.
In Melbourne’s north, the heritage-listed Alphington Uniting church sold for $185,000 in 1997 and was converted into a home. In 2018 it fetched $1.98m.
In Perth, Tasmania, with its pews still in place, St Andrew’s church sold for $180,000 in 2015. After a sensitive conversion it sold for $850,000 in 2020, after winning the people’s choice prize at the 2018 Tasmanian architecture awards. It sold again this year for $1.28m.
The former St Andrew’s Presbyterian church in South Turramurra on Sydney’s north shore, deconsecrated in 1969, sold before auction in September for $2.5m after 100 groups inspected the property. Former churches in Paddington and Bondi Junction now house multiple units worth several million dollars each in townhouse-style conversions.
Hicks says the initial sum, which goes to the parish, is often used for new ministry initiatives or property maintenance. A portion also goes to the diocese office to contribute to the stipend and housing provided to the minister.
Not far from Adelaide, several Uniting churches have sold in the last 12 months. Malcolm Wilson of the Uniting church synod of South Australia says the formation of the church from three denominations in 1977 led to congregations amalgamating.
“Whilst the churches were established in the horse-and-cart days, across what was a reasonable distance, all those facilities have now become more centralised and the church is caught up in that social trend,” Wilson says. “For example, the Yorke Peninsula had something like 17 properties.”
Two churches on the peninsula have just sold and Peter Battersby, another synod official, says if a congregation decides they can no longer meet a building’s needs, the church’s first preference is for it to be used by another denomination, so it can still serve as a place of worship.
As these buildings are preserved and transformed, their history is being recorded. The independently run website Churches Australia has built a database of Christian churches, past and present, with photos sourced from communities. Australian Christian Church Histories provides details about the clergy, organs and architecture of each building, and the blog Churches of Tasmania offers a colour-coded map of the state’s churches and their uses.
While parishioners recognise that some buildings must evolve, there is a hope they go to people who take pride in their heritage. In the Anglican church, a grieving process at a local and diocese level marks the change of hands.
“We have to take it from being a consecrated space to a deconsecrated space,” Hicks says. “We grieve that and it’s the closing of a chapter. Having done that, you then move on.”
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