From $16,000 to $48,000 a Year: Soaring Insurance Pushed a Spokane Church to Sell Its Building

• New Community Church in Spokane sold its 1905 downtown building, about 30,000 square feet with years of deferred maintenance.
• Its annual insurance premium was about $16,000; the only carrier interested quoted $48,000.
• After moving to a rented space, its insurance fell to about $3,000 a year.
• A Hartford Institute report found building, maintenance and insurance costs took a growing share of church budgets from 2020 to 2025.

Rising insurance costs are forcing some churches out of their own buildings. The Spokesman-Review, carrying a FaVS News report by Emma Maple, said a Spokane congregation sold its building over insurance costs, and that it is not alone.

New Community Church owned a downtown building constructed in 1905, about 30,000 square feet, with “antiquated, complex systems” and years of deferred maintenance. Its annual insurance premium had been about $16,000. When it came up for renewal, the only interested carrier quoted $48,000, three times as much. The church decided to sell and move into a smaller rented space. Administrative pastor Kevin Longmeier said: “We’re renters now. Our insurance went down to about $3,000 a year.” He added: “We’re trained pastors, we’re not engineers.”

The report placed the church’s decision in a wider trend. A Hartford Institute report covering 2020 to 2025 found that median congregational spending rose 84 per cent, and that the share of spending on buildings, maintenance and insurance rose by nine percentage points while staff, programmes and missions fell by the same amount. Nationally, churches face premium increases of 5 to 20 per cent a year. Brant Henshaw, treasurer of the Pacific Northwest United Methodist Conference, which is seeing increases of 10 to 15 per cent a year, said: “I’ve not heard of any individual churches that I can recall that were single digit increases.”

Janet Ruiz of the Insurance Information Institute said: “Insurance is what we call a lagging indicator. It lags after the rest of the economy.”

Insurance is a growing cost for property owners in Jamaica too, especially after major hurricanes. Churches with old buildings should review their cover every year, deal with maintenance that insurers may treat as risk, and compare the full cost of owning against renting. For some congregations, as in Spokane, selling a large, old building and renting may free money for ministry. For others, investing in repairs and resilience may bring premiums down.

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