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Driving to work one morning, Pastor Mark Acuff was surprised to find the parking lot almost full. "I had a panicky feeling that perhaps I was supposed to be doing someone's memorial service or something," Acuff recalled.

As he hurried into the building, Acuff, pastor of Chapel Hill Bible Church in North Carolina, discovered to his relief that the gathering in the auditorium was not a funeral, but an all-day training event for a group of county service workers.

Indeed, on any given day, Chapel Hill Bible Church's seven-year-old facility might host a blood drive, a gathering of mental health professionals, local and national election polls, a home school co-op, a meeting for a teen pregnancy support center, a concert by the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, or a parachurch leadership training event. Its parking lot is a regular Park and Ride lot for a University of North Carolina campus shuttle.

Some pastors consider having a permanent facility a hindrance to missional ministry—the overhead of a building and its maintenance burdens a budget and limits creativity, they say.

Other congregations, however, recognize that church buildings are desirable meeting spaces. They are well cared for, situated in familiar and often easily accessible locations, and are regarded as neutral, non-hostile environments in which to host an event. Many churches have attractive meeting spaces that cannot be rivaled for seating capacity elsewhere in the community.

In other words, instead of a hindrance, a facility can be a missional asset.

Chapel Hill Bible Church, for instance, considers its on-campus activities a significant means of fulfilling its mission of being "a community that expresses and experiences the love of God." And this congregation is not alone. Many churches view their facilities as an extension of their mission.

Leadership has discovered that the way a congregation understands the relationship between its facilities and its mission relates directly to how they use the building and how financial and staffing resources are allocated.

Door Creek Church in Madison, Wisconsin, is uniquely positioned to serve a local population of nearly 200,000. Door Creek's facility plays a key role in the church's outreach efforts, a philosophy that is stated at the very top of the church's facility policy:

It is our desire that the Door Creek Church facility be used to the greatest extent possible by the ministries of the church, its members, regular attendees, and surrounding community/ neighborhood groups in order to achieve our four purposes: Worship, Reach, Grow, and Serve.

"Our philosophy is that it's God's building," explained Randy Olson, director of operations and outreach. "If we can use that building to be a blessing to our neighbors, to our community, in a way that honors God, then we want to do that."

For Door Creek, that means hosting a health and kindergarten registration fair for the local school district, providing regular meeting space for neighborhood associations, and allowing the police department to use the building as a training facility several times a year. In addition to these community groups, Door Creek hosts nonprofit groups such as Child Evangelism Fellowship and a local food allergy organization. Door Creek has also become a polling place for nearly 2,000 voters per election.

The church's motivation for making its facilities available to the public is important: the staff believes its generosity in sharing the facilities will result in unchurched community members returning as potential new members.

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