The pastor motioned toward the empty pews. “Here’s our problem. This auditorium seats 400, but we seldom hit 150. Sunday mornings this place feels almost as empty as it does right now. Our little group rattles around in here. It’s depressing; it keeps us from growing. Our board hopes you can recommend a way to remodel this room to make it smaller, warmer, more comfortable.”
How had this situation come about? Years earlier the leaders had said, “If we build a larger sanctuary, people will come to fill it.” They had built the sanctuary, but the people hadn’t appeared.
I could have drawn up plans for corrective remodeling, but still saddled with debt from that earlier building, the church couldn’t have afforded them. Because they mistakenly expected a building to generate growth, they built too big too soon.
Another church faced the opposite problem. Innovative ministries to young adults had attracted new people. Every Sunday saw double worship services and Sunday school, with classes spilling over into the parsonage and the restaurant next door. Their full-to-overflowing buildings testified to the excitement of belonging to this church family.
But their growth had bumped against their limited space. With no more room, growth had stopped. Not only were they crowded, but one building-the one the teens used-was leaky, poorly heated, and structurally unsafe. This church was still paying off an earlier expansion project, one that had been too little too late.
When it comes to church buildings, if we aren’t afraid of one mistake, we’re afraid of the other. It’s possible, though, to avoid both mistakes. In my consulting work, I use the following seven ideas to help churches plan their buildings wisely.
Solving “too little, too late”
1. Know the community. A church on the West Coast was considering whether to build. When I asked what future ministries they envisioned, they mentioned, among other things, a ministry for the poor, perhaps a soup kitchen or a clothes closet. But when the pastor checked local demographics, he discovered almost no poor families in the neighborhood. Instead, the church’s neighborhood was attracting upper-income families. His people’s desire, this pastor realized, was largely a fantasy.
The pastor believed that to reach their neighborhood, they needed a building appropriate to their changing surroundings. Their older, poorly maintained facility, with an amateur-looking sign tacked to its side, hardly looked inviting to their upwardly mobile neighbors. I suspected the pastor was right when, as I spoke to the congregation, mice scampered across the platform and ran beneath the pews in front of me!
This congregation awoke to what they needed to do and did it. They changed their building plans, and last I heard, they were getting ready for a neighborhood get-acquainted party to introduce themselves to their “future members.”
I recommend studying a current demographic survey and talking with local officials who know the community. Only with sound knowledge of a community and its people can a church appropriately tailor its ministries-and its facilities.
2. Evaluate current and long-term needs. To find out how well current facilities serve a church’s ministries, I suggest an effectiveness review. I have the leaders write down on the floor plan of the building what happens in each room during the various hours of the week. Then I ask them to identify anything needed to improve each ministry’s effectiveness, immediately and long-term. For example, does it need new leadership? Training or support for leaders? More money? Or larger facilities?
Sometimes more space isn’t the answer. Perhaps the original space can be redesigned or better utilized. Or the infusion of trained and supported leaders, or of better materials or methods, may solve problems without driving a nail.
But sometimes more space is the answer, and it’s clear that certain ministries would benefit from different or improved facilities. But the obvious solution isn’t always the best.
A church near New York City developed a major ministry to the poor, the homeless, and runaway teens. Even with two services, however, they had outgrown their sanctuary, so they bought land to build. On further reflection, though, they realized that relocation would separate them from the very people to whom they were ministering. While they needed more space, the location of that space was critical. They sold the new land and used the money to remodel their sanctuary. By fully employing the space in two adjacent houses and a commercial building, they expanded in the same location.
A key step in matching facilities to needs, then, is to create an itemized list of space needs, both immediate and long-term. For each ministry, include how much space is needed, what kind of facility would work best, and any special requirements-such as location. This information is needed before an architect can design a building capable of meeting the congregation’s needs.
3. Repair and redecorate. Even older church buildings can feel warm, pleasant, and comfortable. In a word, they can look loved.
When a new pastor came to a church in upstate New York, he found a badly neglected building. Years before, the congregation had realized they needed to relocate and bought land elsewhere. They quit spending money on maintaining their old building. Partly because of the unloved appearance of the church building, the congregation had quit growing. But until the congregation grew, it wouldn’t be able to afford to build.
This pastor, then, was able to challenge the people to repair and redecorate their old building as a necessary step toward resuming their growth. They cleaned out junk, replaced outdated signs on classroom doors, put new furniture in the nursery, fixed the plumbing, and landscaped. Once again their building looks loved. It no longer stands in the way of growth.
Solving “too big, too soon”
4. Use present facilities to the maximum. Once a church has clearly defined its space needs, it’s ready to find ways to meet those needs. People often are surprised by how many space problems can be solved without building new facilities. Often old facilities may be utilized in new ways. For instance:
Move groups to the right size rooms. Many churches have at least one little class in a big room and one big class in a little room.
Change the group size to fit the room. When a group outgrows the room, why not divide the class? When a church has small classes in big rooms, it might change teaching methods. Large-group team teaching may make better use of space and improve learning. Some children’s classes can grow in the same room by adding an assistant teacher.
Change furniture. You can increase worship seating as much as 20 percent by replacing pews with individual seating. If that seating is movable, the space also becomes available for multiple uses.
A room that uses appropriate tables and chairs can hold twice as many people as one filled with overstuffed furniture. A room for children suddenly grows when adult-sized furniture is replaced with children’s furniture. For preschool or kindergarten classes, the solution may be to get rid of the furniture and have the children sit on a carpeted floor for their activities. Sometimes oversize play equipment-such as a slide-may waste space. If full-size cribs are eating up needed nursery space, replace them with half-size or stacked cribs.
Find new uses for any space not already fully used. One of the first places to look is the worship space. A church in Pennsylvania with excess worship seating removed several back rows and installed room dividers, carving out needed space for a foyer, a fellowship area, and a Sunday school class.
A foyer may make a fine meeting room for receptions, board meeting, or Sunday school class dinners. Some churches use folding walls to divide large foyers for Sunday school space and then open them back up when it’s time for people to arrive for worship. One church in Kansas City uses its foyer as a reception area for the church offices. Along one of its walls-in space not otherwise used-they’ve installed six staff and secretarial work stations, divided by movable secretarial modules.
Consider what minor remodeling can do. Can you increase usable space by taking out a wall? Putting in a wall? Installing a folding wall across part of the foyer? Enclosing a hallway with a folding wall?
Build a storage building. One church was able to empty out three rooms when they built a storage shed, an inexpensive way to add lots of space.
Use creative scheduling. A children’s ministry brought in scores of children from the community. Because they met on Saturday, they could use the only space big enough to hold the group-the worship area.
How about an additional worship service on a weeknight? One church I visited has a Monday evening “Sunday school.” Not only is this good stewardship, but it also ministers to those who can’t come on Sundays.
5. Use alternate space. Every community has meeting space churches may use, often just for the asking-homes, motel party rooms, schools, lodge halls, community rooms in banks or apartment complexes. Young-singles classes often work better in restaurants than in church buildings-some people will participate who are uncomfortable in a church.
6. Consider a modest addition. A Massachusetts congregation started holding double worship services, but a lot of people were unhappy: they weren’t able to see friends who attended the other service.
Recognizing the importance of such fellowship, the church made two changes: first, they extended the period between services to thirty minutes to give worshipers leaving the first service time to visit with those arriving for the second; and, second, they built a larger foyer to provide a place to visit. While neither change by itself would have done the job, providing both time and space for fellowship solved the problem-and cost far less than a new sanctuary.
A church in Maine had problems with office space. The pastor had an inaccessible office by the platform, the associate pastor worked in the back of a house used for Christian education, and the secretary worked in a different part of the same house. The half-time youth pastor had no office at all.
The church corrected its problem by moving the pastor out of the adjacent parsonage to a home away from the church campus. They then converted the former parsonage into an administrative complex where the whole staff now works together.
7. Seek creative parking solutions. When one church needed more parking, a doctor offered the lot at his clinic two blocks away. The church leaders agreed to park there to free parking space at the church.
A church near Philadelphia uses stacked parking: members volunteer to park bumper-to-bumper at the back of the lot and wait patiently when it’s time to go home. This leaves the most convenient parking for visitors.
Can you use the school parking lot across the street? The shopping center down the block? Could you create a “park and ride” center a half mile away, with the church providing a shuttle bus? Most parking problems have solutions.
Solomon wrote, “Any enterprise is built by wise planning, becomes strong through common sense, and profits wonderfully by keeping abreast of the facts” (Prov. 24:3-4, LB). These seven suggestions are no magic formula; they simply represent wise planning, common sense, and a way to keep abreast of the facts. They can help a church avoid the most common building mistakes-too much, too soon or too little, too late-and get just the right building at just the right time.
-Ray Bowman
Ray Bowman Consulting, Inc.
McCall, Idaho
with Eddy Hall, free-lance writer
Goessel, Kansas
Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
