What would you do with a spare $500,000?

For the few dozen remaining members of Salt Lake City’s First Congregational Church, the question wasn’t hypothetical. Not after they sold their east-bench church at the corner of Foothill Drive and 2100 South.

Their answer: Donate it.

So on Sunday, May 17, the small but mighty congregation will hand a check worth half a million dollars to Crossroads Urban Center to help the nonprofit build a new thrift store and food pantry — with a bonus coffee shop — on the city’s west side.

“When we sold our building four years ago, our fellowship was convicted that this was more God’s resource than ours,” the Rev. Doug Gray said in a news release accompanying the decision. “Since then, we have looked for high-impact ways to substantially bless our community.”

Crossroads, he said, fit the bill.

The church’s decision to off-load the property, a classic midcentury brick building from the 1960s, was a difficult but necessary one for church members. Established in 1865, the congregation, one of the first not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to form in Utah, has dwindled from its 1970s high of 350 to 450 members to fewer than 100, with just 25 to 35 regular attendees.

Other cash donations resulting from the building’s sale have included a $1 million gift to Friendship Manor, a retirement community that also serves people with disabilities, and a $250,000 offering to The INN Between, which provides medical respite and end-of-life care for unhoused individuals.

“It’s really inspiring to me,” Bill Tibbitts, Crossroads’ deputy executive director, told The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday, “to see that intentional effort to make sure that their church has a lasting legacy.”

Tibbitts said the church’s contribution marks the first major donation to a project that will help the organization better meet rising demand for its services.

More than money

Neither is the money the only thing the church has donated. To date, the group has given fine china to refugee families, pews to woodworking classes and toilets and hand dryers to other churches.

Harder to part ways with was the church’s stained-glass window “Walk to Emmaus,” which appeared in the congregation’s first historic church downtown. That went for use in a Latter-day Saint temple, while the Provo Community Congregational United Church of Christ adopted the church’s pipe organ.

Salt Lake City’s Congregationalists are far from alone, meanwhile, in looking for ways to adapt amid declining attendance.

Last September, Cottonwood Heights’ Mountain Springs Community Church was finally forced to close its doors due to dwindling numbers. While the members initially considered selling their building, they opted instead to hand over the keys to an Anglican flock in need of a place to meet.

‘It’s actually…perfect’

Downsizing is a challenge facing churches far beyond the Salt Lake Valley or even the state. While recent research has identified an apparent slowdown in America’s “great dechurching,” many flocks are still feeling the effects of a steep, decadeslong decline in worship service attendance across the board.

How churches respond to this new reality makes all the difference, Religion News Service writer Bob Smietana, author of “Reorganized Religion: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why It Matters, told The Tribune in a previous interview. Some stubbornly try to hang on until it’s too late, “using up their reserves or letting maintenance go until they run out of money and the building starts to fall apart.”

Others embrace the shift, leaving them with assets to spare — and share.

These days, Salt Lake City’s First Congregational Church is thriving in its new setting at All Saints Episcopal Church, said congregant Glenda LeHoux.

The two congregations are small and have been able to amplify their impact, she said, by joining together in service activities and Bible study, sometimes even combining services, such as on Mother’s Day.

“It’s actually,” she said, “a perfect situation for us.”