Any comments from anyone?  At this point I'm seriously considering re-entering the entire year because there is no way I want to submit a balance sheet to the bank (as per our loan agreement) that is so messed up or to our congregation at our annual meeting.

Canadian GAAP rules, for a variety of reasons, generally require use of historical cost for most assets.  

This more or less works, except when assets have a very low 'dollar' value, and less well in countries that are no longer on a 'gold standard' (which is pretty well all countries).

Whether you need to use GAAP or not, may depend on who you are reporting to.  

In your case, current value accounting (taking into account inflation) may make more sense, i.e. basing the land and building value on an appraisal or other definite record.  

Even if I don't actually need to use GAAP, I'm trying to learn how to do things the right way and the "best practices" way.  It's a lot to learn on your own!  The accountant did advise that if I want to track our building and land as assets, I should find documentation for the purchase price of the land and how much it cost to build the building.  I might find the first, but I'll be hard pressed to figure out the second.  It's only 12 years old, but there's a lot of mystery regarding some loans and mortgages and the people involved then are no longer part of our church.

One thing that I can pass on, is that there isn't necessarily 'the right way', there's the most appropriate way for the needs of the organization.  And 'best practices' for one organization are not necessarily transferable, even where there are a lot of similarities.  

The land may have been a donation, or donation in kind, possibly the construction was done using a mixture of purchased and volunteer materials and labour.   If it wasn't documented at the time, and there is not even a shoebox full of invoices and donation receipts that you can access, accurately determining cost forensically would be close to impossible.  

With access the to the title, any building permit(s), insurance documents, perhaps any mortgage contracts, there would be some clues as to what that value would have been (i.e. insurance is on the building, but not on the land, but the mortgage could be on the whole works)

But...You can't build a solid foundation of stone on top of a sea of mud.

So... if there is no external need (CRA, bank, insurance) for the actual, historical cost to be documented in the books, then there may be no need to do it at all.  There would have to be a disclaimer on any financial report or statement that it has not been prepared according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.  

Another thing to take into consideration is that most GAAP guidance is based on the 'Going concern' principle, which assumes that the organization is going to continue operating.  If it's becoming no longer viable, then current value accounting may be more appropriate.  

The current market value of the church property may be land value minus demolition cost, and that may be an appropriate value to use on the statements.  

This forum is primarily for peer support regarding the Sage 50 software, and anything I've stated in here is not to be considered to be an Accountant's opinion.