The question that keeps me up at night and shapes this book is this: Twenty years from now, when we look around our neighborhoods and realize that a third or more of our church properties are no longer churches, what will we have lost?

Or gained?

What will the impact be on the social fabric of our communities?

And what will each of us have done to encourage good . . . when churches are gone?

I wonder and worry about this in part because as I look back on my life I realize that churches and their buildings have played a huge role in shaping who I am today. Not just in my spiritual life, or my profession as a pastor and church leader, but in big ways and small, in the profound and the mundane. I am full of critique, skepticism, even cynicism about “the church”—but there is no denying that churches have made me who I am today and changed the trajectory of my life many times. Even before I was born.

It is likely that I got my surname from a tiny church in a tiny village in the rolling green hills of northern England. The story goes like this: In the early eighteenth century an orphan baby was left on the doorstep of St. Cuthbert’s church in the village of Elsdon. The minister took the baby in and named him Cuthbert Elsdon after both the seventh-century saint who gave the church its name and the village. Thus started the Elsdon line. My family name was born out of grace in a moment of need on the steps of a church. If you visit that church today, you’ll find my signature, and that of Elsdons I know, and Elsdons I don’t know, in a guestbook that goes back decades.

My parents were born and raised in the Newcastle area of northeast England, not far from the village of Elsdon. When they immigrated to the United States for my father’s work, they knew nobody. So one of the first places they went to was a church. One Sunday morning, after attending for a few months, they invited some of their newfound acquaintances over to their home in an attempt to make their coffee conversation partners into friends. Chatting amiably after the worship service, they offered their invitation to a handful of couples: “Would you like to come over next Saturday night to share a joint?” Their invitation was met with silence and awkward looks. My parents were confused by the lack of enthusiasm for this invitation. “Is it us?” “Our accent?” It took a little while to figure out where the misunderstanding lay, but eventually it dawned on them. “Oh no! Not that kind of joint,” they said. “A joint of roast beef and some Yorkshire pudding. Would you like to come over for dinner?” Those friendships survived my parents’ offer of “abused substances” at church, and that congregation became a vital source of community and relationship for a young immigrant couple making a new life thousands of miles from home.

That church and others like it, as my family moved around the country during my childhood and teenage years, played pivotal roles in my life. I found my voice and independence as a toddler crawling under the pews to the front of the sanctuary; at one church, I refused to be removed from the communion rail. At another, I met my best middle-school friends and trekked mud from a nearby creek through the entire building. I would regularly bring half of my high school cross-country team to the gym of another church for a rigorous game of basketball while we were supposed to be out on long runs. We’d play until we saw the rest of the team running back by the church and then we’d slip out and join the back of the group, our coach none the wiser. A friend from yet another church invited me to go on a youth group trip to ride our ten-speed bikes in the mountains of Colorado for a week, sleeping in, yes, more churches, each night. I left that week, and the follow-up trips each summer, with an increasing love for cycling and for God. I was taught about the faith and (at least occasionally!) attended services at these churches, but church was so much more than that. It was a place to find friends, to play basketball, to get dirty, and to be reprimanded kindly.