As children, Day Edwards and Emmanuel Brown understood the difficulties involved in serving one’s faith. Edwards saw her pastor mother’s struggles as she built her congregation in Austin, Texas, moving from one location to the next, laboring to cover the overhead and pay rent. Meanwhile, the pressures that Brown’s pastor parents faced tending to their congregation and the needs of their family would stay with him for ever.
“A lot of people can’t handle the stress that many church leaders are under,” Edwards, 36, said.
Such pressures have only intensified over the last few decades. A decline in church attendance in the US was already under way before the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the evangelical research firm Lifeway Research, about 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, with only about 3,000 new churches opening. And social distancing has had a profound impact on religious life in the US. Twenty per cent of respondents to a 2022 Pew Research poll said they were showing up to church in person less often, and 15% said they were attending virtual services more often.
Originally conceived in 2019 by Edwards, who lives in Houston, Texas, ChurchSpace began as a way of utilizing the church she belongs to when it otherwise would sit empty. ChurchSpace, whose motto is “More Than Sunday Morning”, adopted an Airbnb-like model that allows churches to bring in extra income by hosting groups and events at times when they would otherwise be vacant.
Edwards partnered with Brown, 31, whom she met on an LA Urban League Zoom call. The two have raised $500,000 for their venture, including $100,000 from the Google for Startups fund and $125,000 from the Amazon Web Services impact accelerator.
Edwards and Brown’s startup became even more vital as churches struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic. ChurchSpace allowed church buildings to temporarily transform into co-working spaces and meeting rooms – netting participants up to $38,000 a year. The network, which started out with 24 members across the nation, now has a waiting list of churches looking to join.
The four-year-old business plans to redirect its efforts with more targeted partnerships later this year. While trying their hand at things such as a faith-based WeWork-like business was fun, Edwards and Brown said, they found that churches could earn far more by serving as facilities for both restaurants that lost their bricks-and-mortar locations in the pandemic and upstart chefs looking for a temporary base, tapping into the “ghost kitchen” industry that’s estimated to be worth $43bn.