Sell, Build or Share: How Four Washington-Area Baptist Churches Put Their Property to Work

• Vienna Baptist Church in Virginia is selling its 4.5-acre property and sharing space with another congregation.
• Riverside Baptist Church in Washington sold its waterfront site and moved into an 11,000-square-foot space in a development with a 173-unit tower.
• First Baptist Church of the City of Washington used ground leases to developers to operate debt-free.
• The Church at Clarendon in Arlington sold its air rights; its 10-storey building has 116 apartments, 60 per cent affordable.

Four Baptist congregations around Washington, D.C., have each found a different way to deal with buildings that no longer suit them. Baptist News Global reported on how they sold, built and renovated.

Vienna Baptist Church in Vienna, Virginia, which has served the area since 1957, is selling its 4.5-acre property and entering a shared-space agreement with another congregation. It plans to move money from building upkeep into community partnerships. Lead pastor Austin Almaguer said: “Our church buildings are more than brick and mortar, they are vessels of memories.” Riverside Baptist Church sold its waterfront property to a developer and in 2018 moved into an 11,000-square-foot facility with a 250-seat sanctuary, part of a mixed-use development with a 173-unit apartment tower. It created an endowment for community grants.

First Baptist Church of the City of Washington has worked on its property for more than 15 years: an apartment tower on leased land in 2011, sanctuary and fellowship hall renovations in 2023 and a new community building completed in May 2025. Ground leases let it operate debt-free. Operations director Dave Ryder said: “The business aspects take a lot of work, but the hard part was bringing the congregation along.” The Church at Clarendon in Arlington sold the air rights above its site; its 10-storey building, completed in 2012, has the church on the first two floors and 116 apartments above, 60 per cent designated affordable, after a decade of planning, neighbour lawsuits and rising costs.

Baptist News Global cited Partners for Sacred Places figures that more than a quarter of congregational budgets go on building maintenance.

The four models, selling, sharing, ground leasing and selling air rights, are all tools Jamaican churches could consider as upkeep costs rise and congregations age. A ground lease in particular lets a church keep its title while earning income. For diaspora investors, church partnerships of this kind can offer well-located sites, provided both sides take proper legal and financial advice.

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