A 200 year old local white Baptist congregation bought the small dairy farm next to us back around 1960, and built a huge church. All through the sixties, they were adding parking lots and more wings. They had a full time school, all kinds of gigantic meals and fairs. By the mid eighties, they were renting prime times to a “non denominational church”, a Korean church, and any other group they could find. A few years later, they sold out and did not buy another church. Not a black in sight. Only thing I can think of is that they had been given a huge lump sum by a dying congregant or two back in the fifties, spent it, attracted freeloaders, went in to debt, and that was that.
Wow, what a story of inflation and implosion. What area of the country was this church in?