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.
Pre-evangelism policy
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.
“Frankly, we like our neighbors coming in,” Olson said. “We know for a fact that a number of them have returned to worship or for our special events.”
Acuff agrees. “Many times when I meet someone in the community, they tell me that they have been to our building for some kind of event, like a recital,” he said. “And I have met people visiting our services who said that they knew about the church from attending a community event.”
John Denham, facilities manager at Grace Church in Roseville, Minnesota, puts it plainly: “We refer to the building as a pre-evangelistic tool. We try to bring the community in as much as we can so they can feel comfortable with Grace.”
Grace Church has ample opportunity to introduce itself to the surrounding community. Located adjacent to a large high school, the church regularly hosts school meetings at no charge. It also shares parking space in what has become a warm, “good neighbor” relationship with the school. Grace has also served as a polling place and as a Park and Ride lot for the Minnesota State Fair.
The church values these interactions so much that relationships with “outsiders” take priority over those with other Christians.
“Our first priority is to ministries of Grace Church, our second priority is community usage, while our third priority goes to other Christian organizations,” said John Denham, facilities manager.
Covering costs
Before generosity with church facilities is rewarded with increased attendance, churches face the very tangible expenses of facility maintenance and repair. That is, relational gains require an investment by the church, and the congregation must decide how to recover its expenses.
Church policies vary regarding the application of fees to outside groups. Grace Church, for example, uses a fixed fee schedule to cover costs.
“We’re not in it to make money,” Denham said. “Depending on what group is coming in, we will tweak it here and there. We try to give people the best deal possible.” Grace Church will waive fees for certain groups, such as the neighboring high school.
While Grace charges for many types of facility use, Denham said that the church’s staff understands that the work required to host groups is part of their job.
At other churches, the possibility of increased attendance is its own reward. Door Creek Church, for example, prefers to build the cost of facility use into its own budget.
“As much as possible, we try to do things for free,” says Olson. “The only time we charge is for a regular use that involves a lot of manpower to set up and take down, but the vast majority of events are held at no charge. We feel we’re getting a benefit because any time you can get people from the community to spend a few hours in your building, there’s a chance that when they are looking for a home church, they will come back here.”
Chapel Hill Bible Church also tries to be hospitable in its financial policies. The church charges a standard rate, published on the website, for most groups. But it does not charge the board of elections for use as a polling place, nor the American Red Cross for holding blood drives.
“We try to be extra hospitable to them because we want them to come to our church,” Williams said.
No vacancy
There are times when the church’s mission precludes the outside use of its facilities. This is the case at Cresset Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, which denies outside groups the use of its facilities simply because the church and its Christian school keep the building busy every day of the week.
Many churches committed to the responsibilities of community stewardship nevertheless host only groups whose message is consistent with the church’s mission and vision. The Sheboygan Evangelical Free Church in Wisconsin has a “Facility Use Policy & Procedure” guide that governs the use of its building.
“The policy says that we want to allow the safe use of our facilities for activities uniting family and friends in Christian love,” explains Heather Tempas, church administrator. That policy permits building use by organizations such as the Sheboygan County chapter of Right to Life, which has its annual rummage sale at the church, and by the local government for use as a polling place.
But it’s not open to all. The church reserves the right to determine who makes the cut.
Door Creek also has criteria by which facility use might be rejected. “We don’t want to be seen as endorsing a particular political party, product, or for-profit organization,” Olson said.
In Williams’ experience at Chapel Hill Bible Church, “It’s impossible to police the content of what happens in an individual meeting.”
The church does try to prevent the building from being used in a way deemed inconsistent with Christian principles. “If a group was advertising their event and we knew that the speaker was definitely an anti-Christian type of person, we would not let it happen.”
Open door policy
While some churches understand the value of their facilities largely in terms of pre-evangelism, others consider their buildings a resource to be offered freely to the last, the least, and the lost without considering any return on investment.
Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Warrenville, Illinois, intentionally hosts a variety of events and programs to assist the growing Hispanic community nearby. The church sponsors the annual Mobile Mexican Consulate, which serves over 1,000 people. In addition, Immanuel holds World Relief-sponsored ESL classes twice a week, mentoring programs by Warrenville Youth and Family Services, an annual back-to-school clinic, Posada (Mexican Christmas) celebrations, and a sister Hispanic church that uses the facilities during the week. All this is in addition to other activities such as elections, school concerts, parachurch events, and its own slate of church programming.
“We love the idea of being a community hub,” said Carol Plueddemann, minister for congregational life. “We are seen as a place for a lot of Hispanic events that take place in our community. We really want to say ‘yes’ as much as we can.”
More radical examples of this mindset can be found in churches located in the poorest sections of America’s biggest cities. In these neighborhoods resources are scarce, and the only motivation for opening church facilities to the community is God’s urgent call to meet spiritual needs.
In 1978 Wayne Gordon helped found Lawndale Community Church on Chicago’s West Side, a predominantly African-American community that, at the time, was the fifteenth poorest community in the United States.
“From the very beginning, the church wanted to be relevant to the community,” said Willette Grant, hospitality coordinator. “Pastor Gordon and others talked to people in the community and asked them, ‘What does our community need? What would you like to see here?'”
The answers included affordable and quality health care, housing, and education—daunting challenges for any church, but even more difficult for a new church with no resources. Nevertheless, thirty years later, Lawndale Community Church is meeting those needs and more, even though its Sunday offerings don’t cover the costs of its outreach ministries.
The entire Lawndale enterprise is astonishing: the church has birthed a neighborhood health center that sees over 40,000 patients a year, a community development association that provides low-cost apartment rentals and single-family housing, and a recovery home for men battling drugs, alcohol, and incarceration.
While these ministries have spun off as their own 501(c)3 organizations, Lawndale Community Church offers its own full menu of services to the community, including funeral services, summer day camps, and Bible studies. The church also opens its facilities to the local neighborhood/police partnership, and other community groups—all at no charge and with no strings attached.
“We have a lot of people in the community who don’t attend church,” Grant explained. “We just hope and pray that perhaps people will feel the love of Christ extended to them. The majority of our work here is outreach, just trying to reach people with the love of Christ.”
Unlike churches that build similar ministries and facility costs into their budgets, the majority of Lawndale’s outreach staff is paid through donations of individuals and partner churches who believe in Lawndale’s work. The result is a radically different mindset, one that is not limited by return on investment.
Grant said, “We want the community to think, ‘This is a church that is opening its doors to us, and they don’t expect anything in return. Perhaps we don’t have to walk in with lots of money or fancy clothes. Perhaps the church is not looking at us like, Now that we did you a service, we expect this. Perhaps this is how Christ operates.'”
As these examples indicate, a church’s use of facilities is in large part determined by its vision and mission. If you are hoping to move your congregation in a more missional direction, instead of looking first at the budget, perhaps you should look first to your mission statement. If the church is committed to missional ministry, its resources will follow.
Angie Ward is a Leadership contributing editor living in North Carolina.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
