edndori asked this question on 4/3/2000:

From the legal point of view, who actually owns a church?

Being a non-profit organization, can it have stockholders.

Does the corporation own everything, but cannot itself be owned?

How does this work?

Fr_Chuck gave this response on 4/4/2000:

I will follow up on your questons with darwitt's

in many churches, such as ours, while we are under direction of a bishop, our actual church is a formed corporation. The members of the church itself are the owners. They by the church articles and rules, vote for a rector's committee , and in some churches a voters committee, or in some churhes just have open votes. these people make the day to day decissions

Some directorrs or managers that run the actual day to day activities of the building and things like that

but the actual people who make up the congegaton are the real owners of that particual church. they could for example, change denominations by vote, doesnot usually happen but we have one here in atlanta considering that now. And two baptist churches last year were kicked out of the national convention so they are now indepentant baptist, the majority of its members suported the issues.

The average rating for this answer is 4.6.

edndori rated this answer a 5.

So the answer for specific cases may vary considerably from one case to the next. Thank you.