What You Must Know as Your Church Moves from Portable to Permanent (part two)
We’re continuing a series on taking a congregation from a portable location to a permanent one. Don’t jump in mid-stream: get started here.
An ode to mobile church life:
There is something extremely special about a group of people who set up and tear down each Sunday. I believe portable can bring out the best in a congregation: people pull together, folks who don’t think they have a place to serve find a place to serve, and often the guest congregation finds unique ways to bless their host facility.
We’re more than two decades past our first foray into mobile church, and whenever a few of that gang just happens to be standing around together, one of us will say “Hey, remember those mornings when we were setting up Riverside, and…”
Once our collective eyes stop twitching, they’ll gleam. Because some of us would look back to that season as the glory days in our church: a high-water mark of people who did whatever it took to reach all people for the gospel.
But mobile is also extremely hard: early mornings. Late afternoons. Rushing from set up to worship back to tear down and wondering just how bad you smell along the way. Trailers get flat tires, road cases make for dented Sheetrock, and school weather policies make for cancelled weekends.
What I’m saying is, portable church sometimes feels less like strategy and more like survival. Dated supplies have to be “good enough,” replacing basic signage feels like an unattainable luxury, and thinking outside the box is overtaken by simply living out of the box.
When we live in survival mode, quality often takes a back seat. And – much like your great-grandmother who never throws away a piece of aluminum foil because she grew up in the Great Depression – it can be really hard to escape survival mode.
That leads us to the lesson #1 in moving from portable to permanent:
1. New building = different stewardship.
This one is sneaky, and it took a few permanent facility launches for us to realize it: it’s hard to switch your brain from mobile facility mode to permanent facility mode. I’ve found that there are two vastly different paths that a new building might take us:
“This is too good for us.”
When you’re used to that infernal road case with a janky caster, a spacious storage room can feel overwhelming. When you rely on the local high school’s 12 channel sound system, the new state-of-the-art audiovisual install can seem like just too much.
Keep this between us, but I like to call it a “backlash against quality.” It’s not that people don’t appreciate quality. It’s not that we’re trying to be hoity-toity by trading in our foam preschool mats with the questionable stains for pristine carpet squares that get vacuumed after each use.
But after years of surviving in a “good enough” mentality, it’s no surprise that a new building can feel too good. Swapping metal folding chairs for plush seating and lobby pipe and drape for walls with intentional artwork can feel excessive. Showy. Maybe a bit suspect.
But if we’re looking at this through a guest services lens, we have to remember that we’re not trying to impress insiders. We’re simply trying to remove distractions for our guests so that when they arrive, they feel like we expected them. We prepared for them. We knocked down barriers for them.
“This is perfect and must be protected.”
If there’s a pendulum swing from the quality backlash, it’s that we treat the building as a new sacred cow. Every wall-scuff opens an investigation by the Building and Grounds Committee. Every carpet spill risks stage three church discipline. What was okay in mobile world (after all, this stuff is relatively cheap and easy to replace) becomes very-not-okay in permanent world.
But here’s where the new stewardship mindset must take place: buildings are tools meant to be used, not monuments meant to be preserved. There’s a balance between letting your kids run feral and treating the lobby like their own personal climbing wall, and strapping them in a straightjacket and not letting them touch anything for fear they leave a pinky-print on the glass.
Your building is a tool. Use it for the good of your community and as an outpost for the gospel.
A permanent building doesn’t have to mean arrogance. Raising the bar of excellence doesn’t have to mean extravagance. Once you unpack that trailer for the last time, once your address moves from a P.O. box to an honest-to-goodness physical address, things will change.
Make sure your mental stewardship changes with it.
photo credit: Rob Laughter
