Church Design & Construction

Tips on Selecting a Church Architect

2008-06-21T19:43:00.003-04:00

If you are looking for a church architect, here are some tips that you will want to keep in mind that will help you get the right architect for your church building program.

First and foremost is that there is a difference between an architect that has designed some churches, and a church architect. Designing churches is different and working with church folks is different. What ever church architect or firm you select should specialize in churches. The church architect you select should have designed dozens or even hundreds of church plans.

Secondly, the church architect you select should have experience in designing churches that are of the size, style, and complexity of the church you need to build. Just because the firm of Dewey, Cheatam & Howe has designed a few cathedrals or edifices for mainline downtown churches, does not mean that they are the right church architect to design your multi-purpose family life center. As you search for a church architect, make sure you ask to see work from other projects of the type, size, and cost of your program.

In a Q&A session with a church yesterday, I was asked yesterday what were some general qualifications that the church should look for or consider in hiring an architect. In addition to the above tips, I suggested that they look for an architect who attends church. I even suggested they may consider asking how often they attend. The reasons for suggestion this were two-fold. For one, its always better to do business with a fellow Christian when possible. Secondly, and even more importantly, is how well can an architect design a church when they don't attend?

As a church building consultant, I have been blessed to come to know several architects who specialize in church construction. You could save yourself a lot of time, effort and money, by contacting me and letting me put you in contact with the right church architect.

For additional information on question to ask church architect candidates, you may download an excerpt from my book, Preparing to Build, in the form of an article entitled 75 Questions to Ask When Hiring an Architect.

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Don't Forget the Bibles

2008-06-12T12:00:00.002-04:00

So many details get overlooked when building a new church. As you approach the end of your church building project you will be ordering new church furniture. Whether you order pews or nice church chairs, don't forget that you will also want new pew bibles (chair bibles just does not sound right). If you are expanding ministries or Christian education you may need to stock up on study bibles or teen and youth bibles.

Whether you want KJV or a foreign language bible translation, a large number of pew bibles, make sure you get them for your opening service. If you need really large numbers of bibles you can get pallet pricing directly from the printer.

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Contracting for Church Design & Construction

2008-05-30T09:01:00.006-04:00

Which Way is the Right Way? There are a myriad of ways for a church to contract for the design and construction of a new church. Today, many churches are built by what has become traditionally known as the design-bid-build method. This is the conventional general contractor approach, where the church hires an architect to design the building, the design is sent to bid, and builders submit bids to build the building, usually at a fixed cost. This is undoubtedly the worse way for the church to contract for the design and construction of their church.

There is a growing trend towards design-build, which, while better than design-bid-build, is not the best method in terms of lowering cost and risk. In a typical design-build model the church hires a builder by who, in turn, hires an architect who does the design work for the builder. The drawback, however, is that the architect works for the builder, not the church. This can put the church at a disadvantage as the possibility exists that the builder and architect can make design decisions that benefit the builder and architect (i.e. raise their profit), and not the church. In many cases, design-build has a drawback similar to that of the conventional general contractor model, a fixed price closed book contract where the church does not know all the costs of the building program and cost savings go to the builder, not the church.

Diametrically opposed to the sequential, and somewhat disjointed, design-bid-build delivery model, is the team approach using a construction manager. The team approach integrates the church, builder and designer together at the beginning of the design process to work in parallel throughout the design and construction process. This parallel team method provides the church with a number of advantages including: time savings, less duplicated effort, a design whose cost is counted throughout the development process, and a building design that is a collaborative effort rather than the product of a somewhat disjointed and adversarial process. All of these benefits add up to significant savings in time, cost and effort while producing a superior result.

If your church is planning to build, it will greatly benefit from having an “ideal model” to emulate. In the best church construction scenario, the church will have begun preparation to build well in advance of the design and construction phases, and accomplished two very important tasks. First and foremost, it should complete a needs and feasibility in order to objectively understand what it needs to build, what it can afford to build, and how to pay for it. (A needs and feasibility study is a prerequisite step for both architectural design and raising money through a capital campaign.

The capital campaign is the second task that the church should begin as far in advance of building as possible. Among other benefits, a capital campaign will help raise money for the up-front costs of building and potentially reduce the amount of money that needs to be borrowed. It would be in the church’s best interest to get a church building consultant, either from within their denomination or an independent consultant, for both the needs and feasibility and capital campaign. Both of these important tasks will be greatly enhanced by the wise counsel and experience of an outside consultant who is both experienced and objective.

This brings us to the model that will save the church the most time and money, reduce its risk and stress, and has the highest probability of providing the best building solution. The ultimate model for church construction is one with a consultant involved early in the process to determine needs and feasibility and execute a capital campaign who is working in a team consisting of a licensed architect and a construction manager working in an open book method where all costs and accounting are open to inspection and is working for a fixed fee.

The further away the church gets from this model, the greater the potential amount of cost, risk, and time the church will experience in their church building project. It is also important to remember that there is a lot of difference between an architect (or builder) that has done some churches and a church architect (of builder).

To get the full 4-pg article that describes this in more detail, you may request a copy from the author by using this contact form.

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Church Building Plans - The New Paradigm

2008-05-14T22:46:00.005-04:00

I am really exited over the relationships we have built with a number of church builders and architects. However, the relationships I am the most stoked over today are those with 3 forward looking architectural firms (who all have a heart for the church) that I believe are driving a paradigm shift in how many churches will go through the design process.

As I have previously noted, it is possible for churches to get church building plans from previous building programs for a fraction of the cost of design from scratch. Granted, these plans need to be modified for local conditions and building codes, but the church is able to save approximately half of the cost of their church design by starting with existing plans.

There are three distinct advantages, in addition to cost savings, in starting with existing church plans:

It saves time. It is much easier (read faster) to pick out an existing plan rather than try to go through the give and take process of trying to explain it to an architect. It is much like picking out a suspect from a lineup instead of trying to describe them to sketch artist.

Using existing, or stock, building plans also allows you to get an accurate construction cost early in the process from working drawings that cost as little as $2,995 - as opposed to spending 10's of thousands (or more) to get to the same point designing from scratch, especially when the vast majority of churches cannot afford to build the plans that the architect typically provides in the first pass.

Likewise, you can start the preliminary plan approval process sooner with the city or county, again, without having to invest months and tens of thousands of dollars to get this process rolling.

In addition, existing church building plans are a definitive point for identifying what changes the church would like to make. I always say "it ain't yours 'till you mess with it", and this is certainly true of church plans. By limiting changes to interior walls and not changing the fundamental structure of the building, these changes will not make a significant impact on the overall cost or invalidate the preliminary cost estimate. Once the church has made all the red-line changes they feel they need, the architect can give them a quote on turning those uncertified plans into final, sealed construction documents, usually at 40-60% less than the traditional design process.

As a church building consultant I recommend that any church should at least investigate this option as part of their due diligence. To make it even easier, we offer a church plan search service at no cost to the church. We have a close working relationship with all three of these industry changing firms and we would be please to help you find the right church building plan for your church

Next post, I will show how this fits into a larger strategy that I consider just about the best way to design and build a church.

The Worst Way to Design & Build a Church

2008-04-12T12:07:00.003-04:00

I have seen a number of articles recently that echo what I have been saying all along, that the "traditional" Design/Bid/Build (DBB) model is not the way to build churches. In DBB, the church hires an architect to design a building. That design is then put out to bid to a number of contractors. The winning bidder then builds the church.

As explained, it seems like a good way to go, but in reality, this method will take longer, cost more, cause more conflict, and reduce the church's satisfaction with the process. What happens in almost every church building project done this way is the architect over designs the building and produces a building that the church can't afford. After the design goes to bid, the church receives multiple bids that are typically 2x - 4x what the church can afford. The design goes back to the architect to be redesigned. The revised plans go back to bid and (hopefully) a reputable builder can price the job near the church's budget. The builder then helps the church value engineer the building to bring the project within the church's budget. Once again, the changes are done by the architect, and guess what, you pay for the changes again. In fairness, what I have described is the typical experience of most churches, some architects may charge differently.

For a church that does not clearly understand what they need to build and what they can truly afford, it will most likely spend tens of thousands of dollars on plans it cannot build and then spend even more to get plans that will work for the church. The best thing would be to have completed a church needs and feasibility study before talking to an architect or builder.

A lot of architects don't like what I have to say. However, the majority of architects that specialize in churches absolutely agree with my position. A number of these offer stock church plans at huge savings and/or offer services to the church at rates that are 35-50% or more below "street price".

Many of those who are now writing articles in the church magazines decrying the traditional Design/Bid/Build model (what I have been telling churches for years) are promoting the Design/Build (DB) model for building a church. While better than DBB, DB has it's own unique potential drawbacks. In a seminar this week, I was able to help a church save between $300,000 and $500,000 by explaining how modify the way they did the Design/Build contracting for their on a $4.5M project.

In a follow-up post, I will describe the best way to contract for a church building project.

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Financial Considerations for When to Build

2008-03-31T21:25:00.001-04:00

A popular theory with some in the church is that the church should wait to build until it has raised most, or all of the cash for building. This can be a good strategy if the church is forward thinking enough to begin to accumulate cash well before it needs to build, but may be contra-productive if the church needs to build in the near future.

Some may also purport to claim that it is unscriptural to borrow, often quoting one or two verses out of context to prove their point. The truth is, that while borrowing may be less preferable than paying cash, it is not a sin as long as the church is careful to count the cost and determine a safe debt limit.

By way of example, let's consider a modest building program of $1,000,000. Accepting that construction costs have increased an average of approximately 10% per year, averaged over the past several years, then a $1,000,000 building program will cost about $100,000 more in one year. A $100,000 annual cost increase is about $8,000 per month. If a church had $500,000 and waited a year to build in order to raise all the money, it would have to raise $600,000 by the time construction began.

On the other hand, if the church were to borrow the $500,000 at 7% interest for one year, the total cost of interest would be no more than $35,000. (Actually it would be closer to $18,000 as the church would exhaust its own funds before borrowing, so it would not need to borrow the entire $500,000 until about 6 months into the project.) In the worse case, the church would pay $65,000 LESS by borrowing and building than by saving and paying cash and could save as much as $82,000.

While there are some reasonable warnings with respect to borrowing, it is not unscriptural. It would be, however, unscriptural not to be good stewards of God’s money. The church should not be like the servant in the parable of the talents who buried his master’s money in the ground to be safe. This servant was an unwise steward whom the scriptures refer to as wicked, lazy, and worthless. Like the wise servants, the church needs to make effective use of its money work.

The cost of delaying construction is also valid issue when discussing delays due to a slow decision-making process and/or unnecessary delays in design or construction. Again, every month of delay costs the church $8,000. If the process of design and selecting a builder takes 4 or 5 months longer than necessary, the church has added $40,000 of cost to the building program for no good reason.

In the final analysis, the church should not only count the cost of building the tower, but also count the cost in delaying to build.

The Biggest Mistake in Church Design

2008-01-27T15:59:00.000-05:00

As I look back over the years and hundreds of church building stories I've heard, by far the single biggest mistake made by churches in the design process is the failure to have a firm and reasonable budget at the front-end of the design process. This is a joint failure on the part of the church and the architect. Now before I get a bunch of angry emails from architects (it wouldn't be the first time) I want to say that the responsibility is primarily the church's, however, this does not let the architect off the hook, as I will explain below.

A church should have a firm budget going into the design process that is based on what it can truly afford to build. It is not the architects responsibility to help the church determine what they can afford. Sadly, however, when most churches sit down with an architect, the first question asked is "what do you want to build" and not "what is your budget" or "what can you afford". While it is the church's responsibility to know what they can reasonably afford to build, the architect has a responsibility to ask the question. However, experience shows this rarely seems to be the case. If the church does not have a reasonable budget, or any budget at all, the architect should press them to develop one. (For an in-depth understanding of how a church determines its financial ability and the appropriate formula to calculate a maximum construction budget, see my book, Preparing to Build.)

The church's financial ability will dictate how big of a building it can build; the needs of ministry will dictate how that building is laid out. It is a gross disservice (and that is being kind) if the architect does not ascertain one of the fundamental factors affecting the design - the client's budget. If the design process starts with what the church wants to build, instead of what in can afford, the church's budget must then conform to the building plans, when it should be the building plans that should conform to the budget. This is a recipe for disaster. After several months of design and, quite often, 10's of thousands of dollars, over 8 out of 10 churches end up with building plans that far exceed their financial ability to build. In this manner, millions of dollars are spent each year by churches on building plans that they cannot afford to build.

Not too long ago a builder shared with me an experience from when he spoke at a small church building seminar. In the presentation he asked the pastors how many of them came to their current church and found a set of building plans in the closet or stuck in a drawer that they couldn't build. An astounding 20 out of 22 (90%) raised their hands! When you consider that these plans probably cost between $30,000 and $150,000 each, those few churches probably spent between $600,000 and $3,000,000 on plans that would never get built.

The church must have a true and accurate understanding of what they can afford to build and that must be communicated up-front to the architect. The church should then hold that architect financially responsible for delivering plans that are within, or reasonably close to, its construction budget. In this manner, the church will not find itself paying an architect to draw church plans that won't work and then paying them to fix those same plans, which will add adding considerable time and cost to the church's design process.

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Church Building Guide

2008-01-02T23:08:00.001-05:00

Need a guide to church construction? I've put up a new web site dedicated to my book, Preparing to Build. Here's the official description,

Written by an experienced church building consultant, Preparing to Build is over 170 pages of real-world, practical information that will equip your leaders and church building committee to properly prepare for, and to execute, a church building program in a manner that will save time, stress, and money.

Reader Comments:

"Preparing to Build was an incredible value - just a wealth of information. The truth and his experience jump off the pages." - Dwight VanDaveer
"I have read your book and recommended it to our church board. I think your book is one of the best I have found on this topic." - Mark Sterk

Check out the new site at PreparingToBuild.com

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Church Capital Campaign: The Biblical Basis

2007-12-21T11:27:00.001-05:00

I occasionally run across folks that think that a church capital campaign for a building program is a bad idea. Some have even called it unscriptural, but in in my opinion, its just the opposite. Perhaps people get caught up in the terminology, but a capital campaign is really just a name for designated offering to the church building program.

A capital stewardship campaign is a purposeful giving effort for the purpose of buying land or building a building. While more structured in the process than in Old Testament times, church capital campaigns have as a biblical basis the example of building of the tent of the tabernacle. In Exodus 35, we read that Moses went to the people to take up a special offering for the building of the tent and all that went inside of it. The first principal that we learn is that God called (and continues to call) His people to sacrifice their time, treasures and talents in order to accomplish His work.

Capital campaigns also draw upon the example in the 29th chapter of 1 Chronicles of where we find King David preparing to build the temple. In this example we learn two important principles.

First is that he prepared in advance. Even thought the Lord had told David that he could not build the temple, God did not say he could not prepare, so we see him taking up an offering for the work.
The second important principal we learn from this text is one of leading by example. In verse 26, we see a "top down" approach to giving as the leaders gave first as a model to the people.

The three capital campaign principals you should take away from this post are; God calls His people to sacrifice for His work; start saving before you need to build; and lastly, giving should be modeled by the leadership of the church. Best wishes to you for your church's capital campaign.

Church Grants - Part I

2007-12-14T09:07:00.000-05:00

Many churches today are seeking church grants for a variety of purposes, including construction. According to Bernice Sanders Smoot of Saint Wall Street, there are over 600,000 churches and faith based organizations in the USA and my experience is that most of them are looking for money. With only a very few thousand faith-friendly grant foundations, well I guess you can do the math.

The bottom line is your ministry, in order to get funded by grants, must have three key ingredients and follow the golden rule if are to stand any chance for grant funding. In simple terms, the three key ingredients are: you need to have something worth writing about; you need to write about it well; and, you need to write to the right people.

Once you have these three key ingredients, you then need to follow the golden rule for grants: "He with the gold, rules." This means that you must follow the grant maker guidelines to the the letter, unless you want your proposal to end up in the trash can. Yes, I said the trash can. Over 80% of requests received by foundations are immediately rejected, largely due to not following the rules. and this is true regardless of how deserving of funding your ministry may be. You see, some faith-based foundations receive dozens or hundreds of requests per day. Grant makers don't have the time or the manpower to try to piece together your request - you follow their format and process or your request does not even get considered.

When applying for a church grant, you must be able to demonstrate the value proposition. You do this by quantifying what you have done, what the effects were, and how the money you are requesting will produce more results. Grant makers like to fund success, not just good ideas. This requires many ministries to take the time to measure and quantify their programs so they have something worth writing about. Once you have something that you can document as being worth funding, you then need to make the grant request. You need to submit according to each foundation's guidelines, and you need to write it well; get professional help if necessary. Who you submit to is also very important. Just because a foundation makes faith-friendly grants does not mean that they want to fund everything just because it is faith related. Many grant makers fund only specific types of programs, so you should to apply to those that fund the type of programs and ministries like yours.

If your church is looking for grants for ministry, stay tuned for Part II of this post which will share where to find the vast majority of the funding that goes to houses of faith and ministries. Hint: Its not from grant making foundations or the government. In Q1 of 2008 we also will be announcing where you can get a directory of over 1,000 foundations who openly accept proposals from Christian churches and agencies.

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Avoiding Budget Bloat in Church Construction

2007-12-06T07:43:00.000-05:00

Church construction projects (and their budgets) seem only to grow over time, not shrink. Here are three tips to prevent construction budget bloat.

Tip number one is to make sure you have everything in the project budget to begin with. Your project budget should be one that includes everything including site acquisition, site development, architectural design, engineering (including survey, civil and fire), construction interest, fees & permits, consulting fees, contingency and furniture and fixtures. Whatever you forget in the planning stage you will pay for later in the project, usually after you have already used up all of your budget on the things you did remember.

Secondly, make sure the budget is reasonable. Your builder should the church a complete project budget prior to construction. One of the safest contractual arrangements for the church is one that provides a guaranteed not-to-exceed price. In this agreement, the builder is responsible for underbidding, errors, and omissions. This is typically easier to do with a design/build firm, as they are responsible for both the design and construction. If something is left out or underbid, they can blame no one except themselves. Whoever provides the project budget should have some responsibility and liability for that number. For planning purposes, you should figure that your project budget (including everything) will be no less than $100-125 per square foot. Certain states and metro areas will be higher.

Finally, watch the change orders. Change orders will happen. If the changes are required due to code compliance, there is little you can do except grin and bear it (note, the building inspector does not always interpret things the same way the planning department did when they approved your plans). If the change order is because of a design deficiency, you can try to pursue the architect's errors and omissions insurer (best wishes with that) unless it was design/build, in which case you can probably make some or all of the problem the builder's. That all being true, the biggest threat however, to budget creep is often the church! Once the church has had designed just about all it can afford (and sometimes more), sometime during project construction the pastor, a deacon, or building committee member will get a "great idea" and ask the builder if they can do it. Generally the answer is yes, however, is always at a cost. It all adds up, $80,000 here, $12,00 there, and pretty soon a budget that was already tight becomes super-critical.

In summary, know what you can truly afford, design to your budget (and stop there), don't make changes once construction starts, and keep an eye on those change orders. Change orders make up a large portion of many builders profit objectives, so watch out that you don't pay more for them than they really cost.

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Architects and Church Construction Cost

2007-11-21T12:22:00.000-05:00

I had to laugh today as I was reading a Scout Merit Badge Review on the usscouts.org website. One of the merit badges which boy scouts can earn is for architecture. Under the comments section for this merit badge it says, and I quote, "...involves interviews. Be sure to ask the architects why they almost always under estimate the cost!" It's not just me saying this folks, it seems others have the same opinion!

I can think of a couple reasons why the architect's cost estimate for church construction is low. For one, they usually only deal in theory as they are not the ones actually building the building. They may consult a building cost resource (always out of date), base it on their last project, or underestimate the cost of some of their architectural "features". However, they are not on the front line every week in construction of these facilities and may not really have a grasp of the actual costs. Architects also tend to over design buildings. One of the first things most builders will do with a plan is to "value engineer" it to provided the same functionality with a simpler or more cost effective design.

Another reason is that architects usually have no liability if their price estimate is wrong. If the church budget is $1M and the best builders estimate is $1.3, the architect usually has no liability and will cheerfully redesign the building - for a fee. A wise church will insure that in the negotiation phase that any cost for redesign to make the church meet the budget that was provided is born by the architect and not the church.

By the way, if your church is building and you have boy scouts in your church, this would be a great opportunity for them to earn a merit badge.

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Church Capital Campaign Horror Story

2007-10-30T10:35:00.000-04:00

For many churches, it is the season of the capital campaign that will help finance the construction of the church building. For the world, it is the season of horror as it celebrates Halloween (don't get me started on that track). For some unlucky few, it is the intersection of both - a capital campaign that turns out to be, if not a horror, then far less the spiritually and financially uplifting event that it should have been.

As a capital campaign consultant, I hear the good and the bad about church's experiences with their campaigns. Sometimes its enough to make you want to cry, or at least cry out in anger and frustration. Today I heard from a church who spent $50,000 on [just] capital campaign services from a well known consulting firm with a short name. The church did not feel they received the the promised or necessary attention or focus of their consultant. The church soon realized that the campaign was in trouble and when they reportedly contacted the firm, they were promised printed materials and follow-up visits, none of which materialized. The end result was the church was left much on its own and raised about 25% of what the consultants told them they could raise. The church is considering asking for some of its money back, as the consulting firm did not deliver on its promised services.

I hear variations of this sad song over and over, perhaps with a different refrain, but always the same chorus; "we paid a lot of money and feel we got very little personal attention for the money spent." Over and over again I hear churches say the results did not live up to the sales pitch. Churches that were wined and dined and inundated with fancy glossy sales packages often felt somewhat abandoned when it came to delivery. A word of warning - it seems that many firms are better at marketing than performing.

Before you get the wrong idea, I do NOT mean this as a condemnation of capital campaign services. A capital campaign is an effort that produces both spiritual and financial benefit! The church will typically experience much better spiritual and financial results when it hires a consultant. An experienced consultant should be able to tailor the best practices developed from other church's efforts into a capital campaign to meet an individual church's needs. Speaking from my own experience as both a client and a consultant, the church should get experienced outside help for its campaign. There are good consultants that can deliver entire completed campaigns for less than just the consulting fee charged by some of the "big firms".

I will also say that, regardless of the size of the company, the church should not "buy the company", it should "buy the consultant" . It's important to know your consultant and how many projects he or she will be working on at the same time as your project. It is also important to know the spiritual "fit". for as it says in 1 Thes. 5:12, we are to "know those who labor among you".

If you have your own capital campaign story, I encourage you to share it as a comment to this post.

Timing a Church Capital Campaign

2007-10-21T17:51:00.000-04:00

Timing is critical for churches that want to execute a capital campaign, and preparation for a spring capital campaign needs to start the previous fall.

A church's capital campaign has 5 phases and it is the third, or public phase, that most church people think of when they talk about a capital campaign. As you will see below, there are two other phases of the campaign that must happen first - and that means the church needs to be getting started in the fall.

A capital campaign takes time to prepare, committees must be formed, people trained, and all of the behind the scenes work to make the campaign happen have to happen before the campaign goes public. As a pastor who recently finished a spring campaign said, "If there was one piece of advice I would give about a capital campaign, it would be to give yourself plenty of time". While their church had a very successful campaign, their short timeline put a great deal of stress and burden on the staff.

The following is a sample time line for a 5 church capital campaign:

Planning & Recruiting: 3 weeks - 3 months
Equipping & Preparation: 5 - 10 weeks
Public Phase: 5 - 8 weeks (Elapsed Time 13 to 20+ weeks)
Receiving Commitments: 1 to 3 weeks
Collection & Follow-up: Typically 3 years

Phase 1 - Planning & Recruiting
This phase can take from 3 weeks to 3 months, depending on size of congregation, method of church governance, availability of staff to the project, and other events on the church calendar. In this phase a general timeline is established, the director and executive committee members are considered and recruited based on job descriptions and gifting. Workers for the various teams or committees may also be solicited during this phase.

Phase 2 - Equipping & Preparation
This phase can last from 5 to 10 weeks, or often even longer. The shorter the time frame for completion, the more intense the effort. It is during this phase that recruitment of workers for the capital campaign teams is completed, training for the stewardship committee is accomplished, and much of the “behind the scenes” background work is completed. The more time the church allows for this phase, the easier it will be for everyone involved.

Phase 3 - Public Phase
It is this phase that most people think of when they conceptualize a capital campaign. This phase can last from 5 to 8 weeks, depending on the size of the congregation and other factors. The goals of this phase are to clearly communicate the need; clearly teach and model stewardship; and for everyone prayerfully consider how the Lord would them contribute to the campaign.

Phase 4 - Capital Campaign Wrap-up Phase
This phase will last from 1 to 3 weeks depending on size of congregation and method of collecting pledges. The major goals are: to have a celebration Sunday to give thanks and Glory to God; collect any remaining pledges; provide a final total to the church; send thank you letters; acknowledge and thank workers; and implement a plan and process to provide regular statements on giving.

Phase 5 - Pledge Collection & Follow-up
This phase consists of the tasks of collecting the monies pledged, providing regular statements to members for pledges received, making regular reports to the congregation on capital campaign pledge receipts, and integrating new members into the program.

Churches will typically raise about twice as much money by utilizing an outside capital campaign consultant than they will on their own. While some churches may be put off by the cost or idea of a consultant, it is easy to see that this is an investment that will pay for itself many times over. A church consultant will lead the church's capital campaign committee and help them apply the best practices that have been developed by the thousands of churches in their own capital campaigns over the decades. By getting started with their campaign at the appropriate time, the church will make it easier and more effective, not only for the capital campaign consultant, but for the church as well.

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Church Seating - How Would Jesus Sit?

2007-10-14T00:39:00.000-04:00

Pastor Dan Kimball of Vintage church posted an interesting history of pews and church seating. As he points out, pre-reformation, people did not sit in fixed seating. I chuckled when he painted the mental picture of the Last Supper in pews. Want to be a new testament church? Then get out of those pews and rows of locked chairs and get more relational in your gathering.

I attended a post modern service with multiple "stations" where you could take the Lord's Supper, pray at the foot of a large cross, pray with like-minded people, or enjoy the teaching of one of the pastors. While at first I found it a somewhat disconcerting experience, that quickly morphed to a one of a deep spiritual experience that I was sad to have come to an end.

We talk about churches being relational. Most churches today have the forced "meet and greet time" where we are all encouraged to turn, great and shake hands with someone. In my personal opinion its a somewhat shallow experience and not one that fosters true communication or relations. Then, after our 2 minutes of "relating", we spend the next 45 minutes looking at the back of their heads. Its no wonder that many wonder why they don't connect better with visitors.

Church seating fanning out nearly 180 degrees, with the pulpit as the center point, does at least let us see the faces of others that are worshiping with us. How uplifting it is to see the faces of people in true worship. And by being able to see each other during worship, we get to know people a little bit, even if somewhat removed.

So, back to my question, which is the title of this post. How would Jesus sit? We know that they used to sit together, sometimes even reclining against each other. I encourage us all to get outside the box and start designing sanctuaries and classrooms that are intentional in their design to create relationships with each other, and our Lord.

Capital Campaign Communication Materials

2007-10-12T22:08:00.000-04:00

As a capital campaign consultant I understand the important role of communication materials. A church capital campaign is like a three-legged stool in that there are three foundational elements that need to be addressed: Intellectual, Emotional and Spiritual. The campaign materials that you create are an important element that help communicate the information and excitement of a capital campaign and provide an additional avenue to educate the congregation on the spiritual aspects of giving. The ultimate success of a church capital campaign is dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit moving people to make an appropriate faith response to a Kingdom need, not how well we speak or how fancy our materials. That said, if you are asking your congregation to give hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, you should provide communication materials that rise to the occasion.

As a part of my consulting services, I provide the graphic art design for all of the communication pieces. This offloads the church having to spend a huge amount of time and money getting someone to design quality materials. I am able to provide churches with a "menu" of over 150 themes, multiple logos and type faces and can offer a complete communications package in hours or a few days instead of weeks. The church campaign committee makes selections from a flexible "menu" of options and then supplies the text for each of the pieces.

I have delivered a complete set of printed capital campaign materials in as little as 4 weeks from the time the church first sat down to select their options. My secret? Catalyst Faithworks. They have a complete line of capital campaign materials with hundreds of themes, logos, fonts and templates of everything from commitment cards to 4-page brochures and newsletters. They provide the word count for each piece, the church supplies the text and as fast as the church can approve the proofs they can move it through their process and provide either camera ready artwork or they can coordinate printing and ship the completed campaign to the church. The provide the highest quality service and product and at a price that is a small fraction of what it would cost to create the materials from scratch. Before you ask, no this is not a paid endorsement - I really like the service and the people. Give them a call and ask if Steve at AMI Church Consulting services is a happy client.

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Turning Around a Church Building Program Gone Bad

2007-10-12T21:30:00.000-04:00

As the poet Robert Burns so accurately stated, "The best laid plans of mice and go oft awry.". Even more so, plans go even more awry when they are not so well laid, especially in church building programs. If your church building program gets into hot water, or never seems to get off the ground, it may be time to regroup, and that my mean getting some outside help.

Building programs that never really get off the ground are certainly not uncommon. I know of churches that have had regular meetings for years (the record is 11 years) without managing to build anything. I heard of another church that went on long enough to have 2 building committee chairs die in office. If your building program is much talk and little action , it will inevitably be found to suffer from one or more of these four conditions:

Lack of real need,
Lack of good process,
Lack of effective leadership, or
Lack of faith.

The first and last are between you and God. A good consultant can help with the other two.

A building program that is in hot water nearly always will get there through a lack of proper planning. The three biggest mistakes that churches make in this regard are unrealistic expectations, failure to count the cost, and failing to objectively understand their needs.

I have been a part of rescuing building programs that were stalled or in hot water. Depending on the situation, the church may need to back up and do a full needs and feasibility study or at least an assessment to see where the building program got off in the weeds and to make the necessary adjustments to get it back on track. Having an outside authority come in and lead the church though an analysis not only helps get the church building program back on track, but will also help restore the confidence of the church membership. This analysis may require changing the scope of the building program to one the church can afford, or it may just help highlight and confirm what the church felt it needed, but did not have the objective evidence on which to make an informed decision.

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Count the Cost of Church Construction

2007-09-07T18:15:00.000-04:00

One of the things that fails to concern me is the general lack of financial skills in the leadership of many churches. If I had a dollar for every time a church of 50-100 people contacted me wanting to build a church of a million dollars, I could make a payment or two on a church building of my own. I guess what brings this to mind is a call I had (again) today with a church of 55 people who wanted to build a 10,000sf multi-purpose church facility. A conservative price tag for the project was a million dollars and it had never occurred to the leadership that they could not afford it. When I told them the probable cost of the project there was stunned silence on the other end of the phone for several seconds.

In the hopes of setting the record straight for some other folks before they get themselves in trouble, let me share with everyone some basic idea of pricing. Excluding the price of the land or site development costs, a building project is going to cost $85 to $200 a square foot, and that is a church building of simple to moderate complexity and style. It only goes up from there. As of the date of this post, every $100,000 of mortgage debt will cost the church somewhere north of $800 per month, or $8,000 per million.

So, before your church decides to get into the design process, or put a concept before the church, it would be in everyone's best interest to count the cost.

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Cheap Fix for Church's Acoustical Problems

2007-08-12T16:20:00.000-04:00

A local church recently moved into their new facilities. sanctuary is multi-purpose, with the permanent, and larger, sanctuary yet to be built. This multi-purpose space has a nice hardwood basketball court type flooring, a high ceiling and hard, flat, tall and parallel walls typical of multi-use space.

Like most similar spaces, the acoustics leave much room for improvement due in large part to sound bounce (reverberation). Sound from the speakers goes out nicely over the congregation, kits all of these nice hard surfaces and bounces (echos) all over the room. This echo greatly impacts the listening experience, making music less clear and vocals much harder to understand.

There are a number of solutions that will help remedy this, many of them quite expensive. I was quite intrigued by a number of posts on the internet talking about using Sonotubes(R) to diffuse sound to keep it from bouncing around. Sonotubes are not some magical acoustic treatment, they are the tubes contractors use as forms for pouring concrete pillars. Like a paper roll tube on steroids, these industrial grade cardboard tubes, when cut in half and mounted on the wall, diffuse the sound, scattering it instead of echoing it, greatly improving sound quality. Carefully cut in have and mounted to the wall, they look like architectural treatments. To see the concept, see www.jdbsound.com/work/art558.html.

While you can have an audio consultant come in and solve the problem, many churches have little money after a building program to spare, so here is the "poor man's" solution.

Get a number of Sonotubes (new not used) and carefully cut them down the middle. Typically you will use either the 18" or 24" tubes. Dress the cut edges so they are straight and smooth. Working from the pictures from the web site above, place the Sonotubes against the walls directly across the room from the stage area and on the sides as needed. What you are trying to do is to break up the large flat wall areas with the diffusers. One church I read about placed the tubes on boards and leaned the boards against the walls, moving them around and experimenting to get the best sound. Once you know the location and spacing, then the church can permanently mount them to the wall, usually flush to the wall. Paint the tubes the same color as the wall and voilla, instant sound improvement and architectural treatment! It was even suggested by a friend that you could put lights in them like a large wall sconce to provide indirect lighting.

That said, the best way to solve these types of acoustical problems is to avoid them in the first place by getting an Audio/Visual engineer involved during the design process. However, if you have already built and need an inexpensive solution, this may work the trick.

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God is a God of Order

2007-08-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

The scriptures say that God is not the author of confusion. I had the pleasure of presenting the results of my needs and feasibility study today to a congregation that has needed to build for several years. In analyzing church and Sunday school attendance, it was apparent that this church had "hit the ceiling" several times on capacity over the past 10 years and then dropped back in attendance, always oscillating up and down past their maximum sustainable limit.

Conventional building and church growth wisdom tell us that a church is effectively full when it is at 80% of capacity, and this church certainly bore that out, with Sunday school at 80% of capacity, sanctuary seating at 85% and parking at 80%, the church just could not grow. The church knew they needed to do something, but was split almost 50-50 on how to address the question.

Enter the church building consultant. Within 90 days, the pertinent data on attendance, finances, land and ministry needs was collected and analyzed along with information that came out of personal interviews, congregational and community surveys and demographic studies. In the final analysis, neither of the two proposed solutions would have provided any long term growth to the church. This was not the fault of the church, for they had no real experience or training that would have equipped them for this work. They did not have was the experience to understand the proper questions to ask and to then evaluation the answers in a manner that would indicate the proper building strategy.

Knowing what process to follow, what questions to ask and what the answers mean brought the church from disorder to order, with a firm and sensible plan for the future, in just 3 months and will equip this ministry to make a greater impact on their area and win more souls for the kingdom. If you don't have this type of expertise in your church (and few do), there is no shame in getting some outside counsel; after all both Moses and Solomon got outside, expert help for their building program.

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Save on Church Design Using Pre-developed Plans

2007-07-29T17:07:00.001-04:00

Churches can save 50% or more on the cost of church design services by utilizing church building plans from previous building projects. Churches today have the option of buying existing plans from church architects at huge savings over custom designed plans. While options like this have been around for several years, this is a concept that is just coming into its own.

For a brief explanation of why church design costs are often unnecessarily high, see this explanation on this church architect's web site. The long and short of it is that architects often price church design projects as if they were doing all the work from scratch, when in many cases, they are taking plans from previous projects and, due to the wonders of Computer Aided Design (CAD) they are able to make changes and save the revisions without having to do everything from scratch.

Several firms now offer stock church plans for as low as $5,000, but don't think this is going to be the total cost of your church design. While these are wonderful prices and will save tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in design, any set of stock plans will need to be modified to meet local, state and federal building codes. Changes to the floor plan to alter the layout to the churches desires will also add to the cost, however, with all these changes, the church can expect to save 50-80% over the cost of custom plans.

Stock church plans will certainly not include site plans or civil engineering; and what is offered for the price varies from firm to firm. For instance, as of this writing, both DigitalChurchPlans.com and ChurchPlansforLess.com offer as-is, uncertified plans with prices starting at little as $2,995 while ChurchDevelopment.com offers plans that are customized to the churches specifications and approved through the permitting process for a cost that is significantly less of customized building plans. With the uncertified plans, the church purchases the building plans and has the them modified to their needs, either by a local architect or the firm providing the plans.

In addition to saving huge amounts of money in the design process, the church will save weeks or months in the design process. The as-is, uncertified plans offer an additional benefit in that the church can submit plans to contractors for bids much earlier in the process and for a much lower investment in time and money. This is especially important as most churches underestimate the cost of construction, so getting a price based on actual plans that are very similar to what will actually be built will give the church a reality check before they spend (typically) tens of thousands of dollars on plans that they cannot afford to build.

For information on a service that will take the church's building needs and search all available sources of existing plans, I offer a church building plan search.

Intro to Church Design & Construction

2007-07-29T15:48:00.000-04:00

I've been threatening to do this for a long time, so I am starting this Church Design & Construction blog to provide a forum to share some of the experiences and things I learn as a church building consultant. I have been involved in ministering to churches that planning to build for nearly 8 years. It all began in a small town far far away as the building committee chair-person for a church plant. One of the first things that I did once I was "volunteered" for the role was to start researching on the Internet for information on church building. 10 years ago, their was precious little information to be found, but I eventually found a ministry orientated group of men that provided some guidance in the process. From the time they first appeared in our church to help train and lead the building committee in the process, I began to be drawn to providing this service for other churches.

Today, just over a decade later, by the grace of God, I am a published author and a successful church construction and capital stewardship campaign consultant. The purpose of this blog will be to share tips, real-world examples, information, and guidance on church design, church construction and church financing; to help the church in its mission to win souls for the Kingdom of Christ.