As churches look at their aging properties and changing demographics, they are asking tough questions. We have compiled a number of articles to help churches think through these questions. These articles don't have all the answers, and may raise more questions, but they can be helpful for your board, session, or advisory committee, have meaningful discussions about your land, your future, and your legacy.
- What do we mean when we talk about housing?
- How can housing revitalise your connection to your community?
- What are the barriers to building housing and how do we remove them?
- What is EHM doing as housing leader in Toronto?
- What is the Presbyterian Church in Canada doing to support churches to build housing
- How can a merger or amalgamation help us better manage our existing housing?
If you are a Presbyterian church and want to learn more, or receive a presentation from Ainsley Chapman, Executive Director at EHM and Special Advisor to the Presbyterian Church in Canada on Housing, contact ainsley.chapman@evangelhall.ca or 416-504-3563 ext. 217
About Canada's Housing Crisis
Tools For Churches Considering Housing
Supporting congregations considering development and housing options
The Presbyterian Church in Canada and Evangel Hall Mission are pleased to announce an exciting collaboration. Executive Director of Evangel Hall Mission, Ainsley Chapman, has been engaged as a resource to the Presbyterian Church in Canada to support congregations as they consider the future use of their land and buildings. This work may also contribute to a vision to address Canada’s housing crisis. Recognizing the challenges housing insecurity brings to the health and security of communities, Presbyterians have long been concerned with providing housing for vulnerable populations. Since the 1960s, some churches have incorporated affordable housing into their ministry. Recent…
Evangel Hall Mission
Reimagining Church Properties
By Karen Plater, Stewardship, and Betty Kupeian, Presbyterian Church Building Corporation. Originally published in The Presbyterian Connection Fall 2023. For two days at the end of April 2023, Betty Kupeian, Chief Operating Officer of the Presbyterian Church Building Corporation (PCBC); Ainsley Chapman, Executive Director, Evangel Hall; Karen Plater, Associate Secretary, Stewardship, The Presbyterian Church in Canada; and the Rev. Dr. Tim Dickau, Missional Leadership Certificate Program, St. Andrew’s Hall, B.C., joined a group of 30 people from across the country to reflect on how the use of church buildings and properties may be reimagined. The group was composed of urban…
Evangel Hall Mission
Faith Based Housing and Redevelopment at the Ontario Non-profit Housing Association Provincial Conference
Every year in October, the Ontario Non-profit Housing Association (ONPHA) hosts a provincial conference that brings together people to learn and share about everything from building, growing, to managing housing. Two major themes came out this year – the first looked at the struggles of small housing providers, and the second was at the challenges that faith-based communities face when trying to build new housing. Some of the issues that were raised throughout the conference include: Small housing providers aren’t sustainable and are rapidly exploring mergers and amalgamations During the 1990s, there was a lot of building of small apartments…
Evangel Hall Mission
More Than Just Housing, We Need to Build Community
By Ainsley Chapman, Executive Director, Evangel Hall Mission As more and more church properties are being sold to developers and private owners for housing or businesses, churches across the country in big cities and in small rural communities and of all denominations, have started important conversations about the future of their church land and buildings. One of those conversations is the potential of redeveloping church land to help provide affordable housing to help slow the housing crisis, even if it means there are fewer financial resources made from the property. This is an exciting time to be dreaming and planning…
Evangel Hall Mission
When Grief Prevents Imagining a New Future
It is bound to come up quickly in the conversation at any gathering of church folk, whether in a formal setting of a Session or presbytery meeting, or maybe just a coffee shop: how ill-equipped we feel to find a new role for the church in the rapidly changing environment of our world. We face declining numbers of people coming to church and a changing community in which we minister. We have questions of financial viability, and perhaps a building that may or may not effectively serve our congregation’s needs, let alone the community around us. Many of us have…
Evangel Hall Mission
What Does It Mean to be Stewards of Our Land?
By the Rev. Rebecca Jess, Armour Heights Presbyterian Church in Toronto Ont., and Vice President, Evangel Hall Mission Board of Directors Land is important in the Bible. We hear a lot about it in the earliest books: promises from God around land, Israelites seeking land, the releasing of land at Jubilee, to name a few. Land is important. Land sustains, nurtures and grows us. Land is what we live upon. It’s where you take root. Raise children. Source food. Build community. Set up places of worship, education and health care. Home is an equally important concept. Home can and should…
Evangel Hall Mission
Tools for Churches that Own Housing
Stronger Together: How Housing Providers are Using Mergers and Amalgamations to Save Money and Improve Quality of Life for Tenants
This year, EHM’s Executive Director, Ainsley Chapman, was a panelist at the Ontario Non-profit Housing Association’s annual provincial conference. In the session titled “Dating, Cohabitating and Marriage: The Three Stages of Amalgamation”, Ainsley Chapman shared learnings from EHM’s amalgamation with Portland Place. Why are amalgamations being discussed so often? During the 1990s, governments were investing heavily in housing – giving grants and mortgages to agencies large and small, and to communities of faith, to build mixed income housing. Government funding was easy to get, land was ample, the cost of labour and materials was cheap, and volunteers had determination and…
Evangel Hall Mission
Moving through a Merger Process
EHM’s Senior Director of Programs and Client Care recently won an award for her leadership during a 2021 merger between EHM and Portland Place, a small, 45 unit housing provider. Jennifer was recognized in particular for how she engaged staff and clients throughout the whole process. We sat down with Jennifer to hear more behind her strategy. What motivated EHM and Portland Place to merge? It’s become really hard for small housing providers to succeed in the current climate. It certainly wasn’t easy to build housing like Portland Place in the 1990s, but a lot has changed since then. Portland…
Evangel Hall Mission
print the FUll Package of Articles
Housing Articles