Being Seen Beyond the Summary: What the New SEO Means for Your Church
Try something right now. Open a new browser tab and search for your church by name. What do you see at the very top of the page? If a paragraph…
Many churches have more building than they have Sunday. Rooms sit dark Monday through Friday. Parking lots stay empty. A campus that took decades of faithful giving to build gets used a handful of hours a week.
Hillwood Presbyterian Church in Nashville looked at that gap and asked a different question: what if the building could serve the neighborhood on the days nobody’s in the sanctuary?
The answer is Flourish!, a co-working collective on Hillwood’s nine-acre campus. Recently a few of us on the Worship Times team spent a full workday there. Not a tour. An actual workday with laptops open, calls taken, deadlines met. We wanted to know whether the idea holds up in practice.
It does.
Flourish! isn’t a room with a folding table and a Wi-Fi password taped to the wall. It’s a real co-working operation:
Membership runs $75/month for shared space, $100/month for a private desk, and $25 for a day pass. Rooms rent hourly to the public: $50 for the media studio or a conference room, $75 for the retreat room.
“Every space at Hillwood is welcoming and inviting! We worked in one of the conference rooms where we had access to a coffee maker, a large table, and plenty of beautiful natural light. Will definitely be using one of their spaces again! (The media room is particularly cool!)”
– Justin Near, Director of Support
It solves a problem the neighborhood already has. Remote workers, solopreneurs, and parents juggling work and family need somewhere to go that isn’t a kitchen table or a loud coffee shop. Nashville has commercial co-working, but it’s expensive and it’s downtown. Hillwood is offering something cheaper, calmer, and closer, in a part of town where those options barely exist.
It doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t. The FAQ answers the question everyone is silently asking: Am I joining a church by joining Flourish!? The answer is a plain no: “we’re a church-rooted space designed to meet real-world needs with love and care.” That honesty is why it works. Nobody’s being recruited. The hospitality isn’t a funnel. And because it isn’t, people relax.
The mission language is real, not retrofitted. Hillwood’s tagline is Connect • Renew • Serve, and Flourish! delivers all three: shared meals and networking, wellness rooms and forest walks, and real ways to serve. It’s the church’s mission expressed in a form the neighborhood can actually walk into on a Tuesday.
The partnerships aren’t decorative. Local nonprofits and mission-driven organizations get space in the building, and members get introduced to them. A community food pantry operates on site, feeding neighbors who need it. The coffee and hand soap you’ll find throughout the building come from Humphreys Street, a Nashville social enterprise that puts kids and teens in South Nashville into jobs and mentoring. Buy the coffee, fund the mentoring. That’s the whole idea.
“It was a great space. Justin and I were able to work out of the conference room all day without interruption. The staff was extremely friendly, and the space was accommodating. Great wifi, plenty of power for the laptops, and the location is tucked away but still close. We will be back!”
– Michael Gyura, President of Worship Times
Co-working may not be your answer. But the underlying move, treating your building as a community asset rather than a Sunday container, is available to almost any congregation. Some questions worth sitting with:
Who in your neighborhood needs space, and when? Not “what could we offer” but “who’s already looking.” Remote workers. Tutors. Music teachers. Support groups. Small nonprofits priced out of office leases. Artists. Therapists needing a quiet room a few hours a week.
What do you already have that’s better than you think? A commercial kitchen. A gym. A fellowship hall with good light. Acres of green space. Free parking, genuinely valuable in a city. A room with decent acoustics is a podcast studio. A quiet office is a counseling suite.
What’s the honest cost? Utilities, cleaning, insurance, wear on the building, and staff time. Someone has to answer emails, run onboarding, and unlock the door. Hillwood’s pricing isn’t arbitrary; it reflects real overhead. Check your zoning and talk to your insurer before you promise anyone anything.
Who are your partners? Hillwood didn’t build this alone. Small World Yoga runs a weekly class. Harvest Hands and Humphreys Street Cafe supply the coffee. Local schools and nonprofits create the service opportunities. Partnerships turn a room into a program.
How will people find it? A great space nobody knows about serves nobody. Flourish! has its own page, its own Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok presence, an interest form, an online signup, and a Peerspace listing for the media studio. If you build something worth using, give people an obvious way to discover it and say yes.
Buildings are expensive to maintain and easy to resent. But a building is also the most tangible thing many churches have to offer, a physical answer to the question of whether a congregation is present in its neighborhood.
Hillwood’s answer shows up Monday through Saturday, 8 to 6, with the coffee on.
Curious about Flourish!? Visit hillwoodpc.org/flourish to learn more.
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