What You Must Know as Your Church Moves from Portable to Permanent (part one)
If there’s one thing that scrappy church plants and megachurch multi-site models have in common, it’s that many of us spend our fair share of time in elementary school cafeterias, high school auditoriums, and suburban cineplexes. Temporary locations are a great way to get a congregation off the ground and planted in the community. They can be a relatively inexpensive way to establish presence over the course of a few months or many years.
While I’ve lost count of how many total portable, temporary, or mobile spaces we’ve occupied over the years, at the current moment six of our thirteen campuses qualify as “portable:” every Sunday morning they get set up, and every Sunday afternoon they get torn down. They’re like our own personal Exodus tabernacle, but with way less manna that breeds worms and way more Goldfish crackers that breeds crumbs.
But at some point, many tabernacles will find their Temple Mount: the permanent space they finally get to call home, the promised land they finally receive after years of wandering in the wilderness.
Since 2007 we’ve taken five campuses from portable to permanent, and plans are in the works for more to make that move in the years to come. (And just so I can make the math start mathing, two of our current campuses started in incubator spaces in one permanent location as they made their move to another.)
Through almost twenty years and five portable-to-permanent transitions, I’ve discovered that there’s more than an address change needed when it comes to going permanent. A change of mind is also necessary: your staff, your congregation, and your community needs a mindset reset when moving in.
Get this wrong, and you risk unmet expectations, hurt feelings, and the uncanny vibe that somebody was the victim of a bait-n-switch (and that somebody might be you). Get it right, and you have the opportunity to shepherd your people – and yourself – into a brand-new chapter of ministry.
Over the next few posts, I’m going to detour into a brief mini-series of things we’ve learned in the portable-to-permanent jumps. While it’s certainly not an exhaustive list, this series contains some of the largest opportunities (or potential errors) we’ve faced along the way. Together, we’ll explore…
- Why a new building dictates a totally different stewardship,
- Why a new place requires brand new systems (which lead to ongoing muscle memory),
- How a permanent facility can lead to unprecedented growth (and requisite growing pains), and…
- The #1 thing I fear every time we unpack that final box.
By the way, even as I make my list of four things, I can feel thing five and thing six waiting in the wings, clearing their throats, and expecting some stage time. So this mini-series has the chance of turning into something a bit less “mini.” (You’ve been warned.)
If you have a thing five or thing six – something you’ve experienced as a portable-to-permanent veteran or something you’re questioning as your move-in day approaches, I’d like to hear from you. Start a conversation here and it might just make its way from a portable idea to a permanent part of the series. (#didyouseewhatididthere)
photo credit: David Lebron
