The Church Conversion Kit

What if the most powerful third spaces in your town aren’t dying—they’re just waiting to become what they were always meant to be?

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A Church is a Place Where No One Should Go Hungry.

Not just for food, but for:

• Warmth
• Shelter
• Beauty
• Companionship
• Music
• Purpose

And yet across the U.S., tens of thousands of churches now sit largely unused—once-weekly gathering halls with empty kitchens, aging congregations, and large tracts of land that could feed their towns.

Too many pews are mostly empty. Heating bills are high. Painstakingly built edifices are beautiful and useful—yet barely functioning.

What if they could be centers of nourishment and encouragement for all, with a simple path of return?

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A New Life for Old Sanctuaries

WHOLEFAM invites church boards, pastors, building owners, and community members to consider a quiet transformation:

Return silence, singing, and sanctuary to sermon halls.
Convert needy lawns into productive community gardens.
Open dark kitchens to provide daily community-supported meals.
Transition unused weekday worship space into daily generational care hubs.
Offer community game nights, music and art opportunities, and walks.

Move from underused structure to a village hearth.

Whatever your faith, we all meet in remembering goodness, telling the truth, and caring for one another.
Together we reclaim spaces to return to all faith’s deepest function:
Feed the people. Love the neighbor. Be the place that holds life together.

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The Time is Now

Why?

• Elders are isolated and hungry
• Mothers are tired and unsupported
• Kids have nowhere to go
• Rural families are struggling to access food and community
• Depression and loneliness are epidemic
• And yet… the buildings already exist

Your kitchen is already built.
Your sanctuary is already sacred.
Your land is ready to grow food, not grass.

We have the model. You already have the space.

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Is Your Church Ready?

Some churches are already moving in this direction.
Others are unsure what to do with dwindling attendance.
Others have simply forgotten how powerful they are.

This kit is for any church that has:

• A kitchen
• A building
• Land (even a little)
• A heart for service, even if the old ways aren’t working
• A sense that practical action can uplift hearts and neighborhoods when ideologies may not align

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The 10-Step WHOLEFAM Church Conversion Model

A non-dogmatic, universally applicable path to revive the soul of your third space.

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Step 1: Reaffirm Your Purpose

Gather your board, your elders, your remaining members. Ask together:
“What were we really here to do?”
If the answer is “Feed the people. Love the people. Encourage the people. Shelter the people.” —you’re ready.

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Step 2: Inventory Your Assets

Take stock of:

• Kitchen capacity
• Land use (gardens, fields, parking lots)
• Number of rooms (classrooms, offices, fellowship halls)
• Furniture, chairs, tables, media equipment
• Volunteers still willing to show up

You may have more than you think once they see the larger local vision.

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Step 3: Gather a Core Circle

Invite 5–10 people from your church or neighborhood—anyone who believes in community care. Include:

• A cook
• A gardener
• A people connector
• A musician
• A handy person
• Someone pragmatic
• Someone visionary

This is your Village Hearth Team.

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Step 4: Choose a Path

Decide what you want to become:

• A full WHOLEFAM Sanctuary with nonprofit status, administrative support, and regular rotating on-site stewards living in residence.
• A community kitchen and care hub (day use only).
• A local resilience project (gardens, sing-ins, movies, free meals, winter shelters).
• A silent chapel sanctuary, women’s self-healing center, youth hangout, elder activity space

There is no wrong answer. The point is to begin.

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Step 5: Commit to Feeding the Village

No sermons required. Just smiles.
No flags, just food. Consistently. Warmly. Respectfully to all.

Choose a cadence:

• Weekly soup night
• Daily warm meal
• Pantry sharing and garden exchange
• Community planting, harvest, canning, and freezing days

This alone can restore trust and vitality.

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Step 6: Reclaim the Land

Even a lawn can become:

• Raised beds
• Medicinal herb spirals
• Chicken coops
• Tiny homes
• Compost stations

WHOLEFAM provides templates for permaculture layout, zoning guidance, and volunteer mobilization.

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Step 7: Open the Doors More Than Once a Week

A living sanctuary isn’t just a Sunday destination.

You might offer:

• Silent meditation mornings
• Shared music and meal prep
• After-school arts or quiet homework tables
• Elder lunches, grief circles, hospice care
• Open art & music training for kids & adults
• Quilting bees & free stuff swap days
• Community sing-ins, movie nights, musical talent shares
• Friday fire pit songs and stories
• 12-step addiction support

The key is open space, open hands, open time.

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Step 8: Transition Your Structure

We’ll help you:

• Set up a nonprofit entity (if needed)
• Create a shared-use agreement between the church and new stewards
• Add land use protections (to keep the space from being sold for private gain)
• Begin rotating leadership roles in governance
• Invite in donors who want to see this rebirth succeed

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Step 9: Stay Secular, Stay Sacred

You don’t have to become “non-religious.”
You just become open to all.

This model works best when:

• No beliefs are required
• No conversions or religious conversations are expected
• Stillness, warmth, and shared joy in service are centered above ideology

Think: temple kitchens, daily ashram meals, church basements, stone soup.

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Step 10: Tell the Town

When the lights come back on, the people will come.

• Hang a sign: “All Welcome. No One Hungry.”
• Share a poster: “Community Fires Every Friday.”
• Let it be word of mouth, small, sincere, and local.

This is not about branding. This is about belonging.

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Want to Get Started?

WHOLEFAM can support your transformation by providing:

• A full Church Conversion Kit
• Founding council formation tools
• Garden and kitchen designs
• Zoning and trust guidance
• On-site or remote mentorship

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This Is What Churches Were Meant For.

Not spectacle.
Not scarcity.
Not performance.

But peace.
Warmth.
Food.
Company.
And the kind of reverence that sings while sweeping the floor.

If your sanctuary is quiet, let it be quietly holy again.
Let it feed the people. Let it hold the fire.

Contact us to learn more.