Would Anyone Show Up To Your Funeral?
If your church died tomorrow, who would come to the funeral?
Not the members. You already know who they are.
I mean the people who never joined your church but quietly relied on it.
The neighbour who sends her kids to the after school program. The refugee family that stored their first furniture in your basement.
The musician who rehearses in your hall because no one else in the city will rent to them at that price.
If your faith community vanished from the neighbourhood map, would your city feel the loss in its gut, or just notice a fresh piece of real estate on a realtor’s website?
Right now, most church closures land with all the drama of a change to municipal recycling rules. Someone sends a polite email. A sign goes up. A developer starts circling. The city shrugs and moves on.
That tells us something brutal.
Most churches are technically visible and spiritually invisible. Everyone can see the steeple. Almost no one can name what would be missing if it disappeared.
This is where the idea of a “grievable” church matters.
From “Open On Sundays” To “Grievable Presence”
Every congregation says it wants to be “a light in the community.” Fine. Here is the translation that actually tests that:
If you closed, would your neighbours feel like someone turned the lights off on their street?
A grievable faith community is one whose loss would create real, civic sadness, not just private disappointment. It is the church that city staff mention in council meetings, the mosque that small non profits beg to keep open, the temple that neighbours describe as “ours” even if they never attend services.
A grievable church is:
On the radar of people who DO NOT share its beliefs
Tangled up in the daily life of the neighbourhood
Missed for practical reasons, not just sentimental ones
You can think of it this way:
Most churches are still asking “How do we get people into our building on Sunday?”
Grievable churches ask “How do we get so woven into this place that our absence would tear something important?”
One is a marketing problem. The other is a community infrastructure problem.
Only the second one is worth your next ten years.
The Hard Question You Probably Do Not Want On Your Board Agenda
Here is the uncomfortable agenda item every board should write in big letters at least once a year:
“If we closed in 3 years, who outside our congregation would show up to our funeral, and why?”
Name them. Write the list.
Which non profits would lose space overnight
Which schools, daycares or programs would lose their gym, hall, or playground
Which under the radar support groups, 12 step meetings, and newcomer circles would have nowhere to go
Which neighbours know your building as “the place you go when life falls apart”
If that list is short or vague, your church may already be in a palliative state, no matter how healthy your Sunday numbers look.
That is the provocative part: grievability is a better health metric than attendance.
Googleable Is Not The Same As Grievable
You can be easy to find on Google and still impossible to miss if you disappear.
Most churches focus on being discoverable.
Better website
Nicer signage
Updated logo
Fresh social media posts
All fine. All useful. None of it guarantees that your community would actually care if you shut your doors.
Grievability comes from a different set of questions:
Who in our city would lose something tangible if we closed?
Who in our neighbourhood would say “They show up for us. They belong here.”
Where do we function as low cost or free public infrastructure, not just a religious service provider?
Search engines care about keywords, backlinks, and click through rates. Your neighbours care about whether their kids, their grandparents, and their messy real lives have a place inside your walls.
You need both, but only one will fill a room if you ever have to hold a funeral for your building.
The Risk Of Becoming Spiritually Condemned
Every city has “condemned” buildings. Unsafe structures that need serious work or demolition.
Spiritually, a lot of faith spaces are already there. The roof is fine. The boilers work. The sanctuary looks beautiful.
The real problem is more dangerous and less obvious: no one is emotionally attached to the building except the people who already come on Sunday.
That is how you get churches that can technically run for another decade but could close tomorrow without a single story in the local paper.
They are not hated. They are not opposed. They are just irrelevant. From a city’s point of view, they are the beige drywall of the urban landscape.
A grievable church, in contrast, lives closer to this reality:
City staff think “If that place closes, we have a problem.”
Neighbours think “They are part of how this area works.”
Small organizations think “We could not afford to be here without them.”
Grievability is not about becoming trendy. It is about becoming structurally and emotionally necessary.