I just posted our story
here, but will say that number is roughly what we had in savings, and we were astonished how unfar that would go toward a new, very modest building.
Blessings on your work, Elder Jon. That's an important note that even in rural America, church construction and purchase costs can be sky-high. It's a reminder that we need to be VERY grateful for the low cost we're looking at for building purchase.
FYI, the inspection reports on the church building we plan to buy have come back not just good but very good. We were looking (based on an initial home inspector report by a man who isn't familiar with church buildings, and a structural engineer report by a company he retained) at $15,000-plus repairs to a building offered for sale for $95,000. A previous planned purchaser wanted the United Methodists to pay about $15,000 to fix the building before they'd buy, and when the Methodists said "no, we sell as-is," the previous purchaser backed out based on the initial inspection report.
It turned out, after an extensive review, that the only real problem was a very old gutter system that was too small to handle the runoff from a new metal roof the elderly Methodist members had installed a few years ago, plus they hadn't cleaned out the gutters (it was so bad there was an actual tree with leaves growing out of the top of the downspout), and to make matters worse, one of the drains was directing water straight into the foundation. Not sure who was advising the group of elderly Methodists on their building maintenance, but it's clear the problems could have been fixed easily. But even with the current guttering issues, we've had two substantial rains since we put the building under contract, not a single drop of water came into the building, and there's no moisture on the foundation walls.
Sadly, this kind of thing isn't the only case we know. There is another much larger historic downtown Methodist church in a town about a dozen miles away that the Methodists were told needed to be torn down or hundreds of thousands of dollars of foundation repair and drainage work would need to be done. A local contractor in that community was horrified to see a historic church slated for demolition, bought it, and turned it into nice restaurant and event venue for a few tens of thousands of dollars by putting in a modern drainage system. The new drainage system works fine and has worked for several years, unlike the previous system where the building was flooding with almost every major rain, so it's now crystal clear the Methodists got given high repair estimates by someone who may have wanted to make money rather than help the church fix its problems. The Methodists in that community are now stuck with a huge construction bill for a brand new church building that probably never needed to be built, while their historic downtown building is now in the hands of a Christian business owner who cared about it and wanted to preserve it.
We have the money to pay the high-end repair estimates for the building we're about to purchase, but the estimates we're getting from some of the Baptists in our area who have done church construction work for decades top out at a few thousand dollars for the "must do" things, and considerably less than $10,000 for "nice-to-do eventually" things we don't need but will probably choose to pay for eventually.
I'm telling these stories to alert people to be "on the watch" for contractor repair estimates when buying buildings or repairing buildings. The construction trade is filled with people who want to make a quick buck for bad work, and conversely, there are quality contractors who charge significantly more money because they know they have a reputation for doing a good job and can charge a premium to customers who have had bad experiences and don't want to have to re-do shoddy work done by somebody with a low bill. I know several Christian contractors here who are known for high-end work, and when asked why they charge so much more, they say -- correctly -- that they want customers who can afford to pay for quality work and avoid the customers who are looking for a deal. Nothing wrong with that; a car dealership selling new Mercedes has a different customer than the lower-priced vehicles. The problem is most churches can't afford a Mercedes and need to do the equivalent of buying a used car with significant miles on it. The construction people who serve the lower-end market need to be vetted carefully, just like the used car dealers need to be vetted carefully.
If you live in an area with a significant number of evangelical Christians in the construction trades, find people who know what they are doing and have done church construction and repair work for many years. Get references, and recognize that church construction can be very different from residential construction or other types of commercial buildings, so people who haven't done church construction may not understand the differences. Many ministers move around a lot or don't want to say bad things about tradesmen who do work they don't understand well enough to evaluate, but often lay members of church boards who have construction experience are very willing to talk about their experiences, both good and bad, with church construction jobs done by contractors.
Hope this all helps.
