What You Must Know as Your Church Moves from Portable to Permanent (part four)
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.
There are any number of motivations involved in taking a weekly gathering from a portable facility to a permanent location: the desire to stop being a landlord and start being an owner; the pull toward a sense of establishment in the community; the innate longing to feel like you’ve “arrived” (I’ll tell you what else arrives: a massive mortgage and the requisite electricity bills. But that’s another post for a different day.)
Just because you’ve settled into a permanent spot doesn’t mean you’ve settled. There will be brand new speed bumps, roadblocks, and detours that you might not have anticipated once the keys to the building are in your pocket.
That’s why moving to permanent involves a third major mind-shift, and that is
3. New growth = new growing pains.
Sure, there were all kinds of issues with the set up / tear down nature of a portable place. But just as a new building = different stewardship, a new building often means added people, which adds a different type of issue.
Here are four issues I’ve seen in our journeys from portable to permanent…issues that were new surprises we had to deal with:
“Did we just under-build?”
Project attendance all you want. Forecast the numbers any which way. Dream of the wide open spaces of a new lobby and the unlimited potential of on-site storage. Once your building comes out of the ground, you’ll be shocked at how small that sucker is.
There is something about a new place that brings unprecedented growth. Let me offer up an example: our North Durham Campus was effectively mobile for 17 years. We outgrew a 40 year old building, then bounced from a high school to a temporary facility to an elementary school back to the high school then to a borrowed church and on to a middle school before a permanent place was built. If you track the numbers through the years, the forecasted needs of the building made perfect sense. At a weekly attendance of 300-400 people, a 500 seat auditorium (with two services) gave us plenty of room. But here’s how that played out:
- The final four weeks in the portable space, we averaged 373 adults and kids.
- After two months in the new building, we averaged 645 people (a 73% jump).
- 18 months in, we averaged 889 people (a 138% jump from pre-launch).
I’m not saying a new building will always lead to that kind of growth. And I’m not advocating for over-building. There’s a tension between solid data and big dreams and good stewardship. But don’t be surprised when you’re surprised by a Field of Dreams theology: if you build it, they will come.
The “Where have you been?” dilemma.
If there’s a close cousin to the first question, it’s the attitude behind this question. A new building seems to bring old friends out of the woodwork. People who felt like a portable space was just too much work or not quite convenient enough or didn’t feel like they could worship in a gym that smelled like middle school boys (a fair point, to be honest) … some of those people are going to come in droves when the new place is out of the ground.
We’ve learned to train our core launch team for this reality. What might feel like a good-natured ribbing (“Okay then, glad you’re back with us now that we’re a real church”) will come across as mean-spirited and judgmental. I get that some of your folks (maybe even you) will feel like you put in all the work so they could enjoy all the blessings. But kill that attitude before it starts. That’s not the way of Jesus. Instead of a snide “Where have you been?”, try out “I’m so glad to see you!” It’ll change your heart’s posture.
New growth = new teams
“I can’t wait until we can say goodbye to set up and tear down forever.” If you (or a member of your team) have expressed that sentiment, go back and read the previous post. Permanent spaces aren’t free of portable needs, and those volunteers will need to retain a semblance of order if you’re going to be worship-ready every week.
But a new building leads to new growth, which leads to brand-new teams. At new facilities, our Guest Services Team implements a group of Campus Hosts, designed to simply wander and look for people who might need extra help. These are people who have no otherwise-designated serving spot. In other words, they’re not going to be locked in to a First-Time Guest Tent Team or a Seating Team. They’re free-floaters, responding to the needs at hand.
You will also need many other teams and – depending on the footprint of your new space – many other people to beef up your existing teams. My recommendation? Do what we do: spend some time in the months leading up to launch to audit your current volunteers and figure out where you might be lacking. What opportunities are there? What needs will you have? A new space is a great time to bring new vols into the mix. Growth may fill seats, but it also exposes gaps.
HOAs, young love, and graduations.
You’ve been in renter mode for months, years, or maybe decades. But when you become the owner, get ready to entertain any number of wannabe renters.
This was a surprise for at least one of us on staff (raises hand). After years of a campus never having to think about logistics for a funeral or a wedding or an inquiry from a member of the community, it suddenly seemed like all we were doing was fielding logistics for funerals or weddings or inquiries from members of the community.
So go in with a plan. Know what it costs to open the building. Decide your philosophy of building usage. Figure out what requires zero payment, what requires minimal cost coverage, and what are the “above and beyond” usages where you not only recoup costs, but maybe can add to some ministry’s budget lines.
This is a much, much bigger conversation for another post (or entire series), but it’ll be an issue before you can say certificate of occupancy. We’ve made a rule of thumb that no new facility gets rented to an outside organization (funerals / weddings are the exception) for the first year of opening. That gives us time to get our feet under us, learn where the light switches are, and decide on the rhythms that make sense for building usage.
Those are just four of – probably many – growing pains that we’ve faced over the years with new facilities. You may or may not have these same ones. You may have more. But before you get the key, prepare yourself and your people. That new space will expose what you haven’t take the time to get ready for.
