Legacy Church Partners

Become an Invested Faith Legacy Church

Legacy Church Partners honor the past, celebrate the present, and seed the future!

Congregations who are nearing the end of their life together face countless hurdles while grappling with the reality that their community will not continue on as it has been.

At Invested Faith, we believe the work of healing the world continues, even as the institutions we’ve known and loved for so many years face the reality of ending a traditional institutional life. Through Invested Faith, the legacy of these communities lives on, honoring the past while seeding the future.

Bethel United Church of Christ in Arlington, Virginia is one such church. For eighty-some years in Arlington, VA, the church with the red doors on Arlington Boulevard marked a place of welcome to the neighborhood. In 2022, facing the same challenges many congregations today are struggling with - declining attendance and financial support, increasing building maintenance costs, and more - the congregation made the difficult choice to cease worshiping together. Bethel would live on in the decisions they made about how to move forward. The saints of the past and neighbors of the future would be woven together through the Bethel legacy committee’s distributions of financial assets. The legacy committee chose to partner with Invested Faith as a way of helping their mission live on in new and innovative ways. Read the full story of our partnership with Bethel UCC here.

At Invested Faith, we understand that making the decision to close is a difficult, emotional process for churches. A partnership with Invested Faith offers the promise that the legacy and witness of the church will live on, spreading seeds of innovative new ministries across the country, and offering hope to all of us who look toward a more justice filled world.

If your congregation would like to discuss options for partnering with Invested Faith as a Legacy Church, please contact us here.

For Legacy Churches or churches who are struggling to make these hard decisions, find a recommended resource here.