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"If you build it, they will come." That may have been true of a baseball diamond carved out of an Iowa cornfield in Field of Dreams, but the concept is not necessarily applicable to the local church.

There's no sure answer for when a church should build or expand. It's a kind of holy which-came-first- the-chicken-or-egg question: Should you build a larger facility and expect growth? Or should you postpone building until your sanctuary is so crowded with people that it's bursting at the seams?

Church consultant Lyle Schaller, who has written more than 30 books on church planning, growth, and ministry, doesn't have a clear answer to the question. "There's no single answer to the question about building for growth," he says. "It depends entirely upon the individual congregation."

Don't look for a formula, either, he cautions. There isn't one. "I've known some congregations that have been in temporary facilities for over 20 years, and they continue to grow, while others have built new facilities for growth but experienced very little of it," he says.

Ministry First
Nonetheless, there is some advice on how to sort through this quandary:

• Start with the right perspective. A new building is not an end but the means to an end. A structure enables ministry to occur; it should not be regarded as a monument. Bob Lunn, director of commercial development at the design-build firm Barden & Robeson, supports that, saying that people are not attracted by beautiful buildings but by meaningful ministry. "The building is just the tool of the ministry. It is not the ministry, as so many churches think," he says. You build or expand to meet the needs of the ministry, not to make a ministry.

• Develop a master plan. A church should develop a plan for ministry before starting any building project. The master plan should be a prayerful projection into the next three to five years of the ministry's scope and how it will affect numerical growth. "We're finding that among evangelical, Pentecostal, and fundamentalist churches, if the planning is done properly and the church is built carefully, a congregation seating 100 to 300 people in the sanctuary can expect to double in size in three to five years," Lunn says. New churches and very small congregations can expect more rapid growth if they are intentional and prayerful in their decision-making.

Everyone in the church needs to be on the same page spiritually to come up with a plan to build at the right time for the right reasons. To achieve that, Lunn urges that the pastor sit down with church leaders and deliberately seek the Lord's guidance for ministry development. Then they should ask the entire congregation for input. "See what unfolds for phase one, phase two, phase three, and beyond in a logical progression, with normal budgeting requirements," Lunn says. "Then watch the Lord bless."

Rules to Build and Grow By
Once you've developed a ministry plan, you should heed some basic rules about growth. According to Schaller, these include:

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