Combine multiple debts into one lower payment

When should your church consolidate debt?

Debt consolidation makes sense when your church carries two or more loans with different lenders, different rates, and different payment schedules. The administrative burden alone (tracking multiple due dates, maintaining relationships with multiple lenders, managing different escrow accounts) costs your finance team hours every month.

The financial case is even stronger. If your church has a first mortgage at 7.5%, a line of credit at 9%, and equipment financing at 10.5%, consolidating into a single loan at 6.5–7.5% can often cut total monthly payments by roughly 15–30%. On a church carrying $2M in combined debt, that is commonly $3,000–$8,000 per month back in the budget. Most of that relief comes from spreading short-term debt, like a credit line or equipment loan, over a 20 to 25 year amortization rather than from the lower rate alone, so total interest over the life of the loan can go up even as the payment goes down. These are general illustrations; actual savings depend on your balances, rates, and remaining terms.

Consolidation is especially valuable for churches that took on multiple smaller loans over time: a pattern that often results from piecemeal expansion decisions without a unified financing strategy. If your church has accumulated debt across 3+ sources over 10+ years, consolidation can be transformative.

The ideal consolidation candidate has a property with significant equity (LTV below 70% after consolidation), stable giving trends, and a DSCR on the new combined payment at or above the 1.20x to 1.25x most lenders want. If those numbers look unfamiliar, our free assessment will calculate them for you.