Video Transcript: Church Buildings

This is lecture 31, of the practical ministry skills course. And today we're talking  about church buildings. Our key verse is, don't you realize that all of you  together are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God lives in you. I  Corinthians 3:16, and you say, what does that have to do with the building?  Well, actually, it kind of is the opposite. It's kind of a reminder that the building is  not the temple of God. The building in the Old Testament that the building was  the temple of God, but in the New Testament, we, all together, all of us  Christians, are the temple of God. The Spirit of God lives in us. The Spirit  doesn't live in the building. And as a matter of fact, I couldn't find any New  Testament verses about a church building. And so I had to use this one,  because a building is not necessary. Some of you may be meeting under trees  and or just out in the open and praise the Lord that that's wonderful and fine, as  long as the weather's okay. There are tremendous advantages to having a  building as a tool for ministry, but I'm sure I probably don't need to go into this  with you, but you may need to go into this with your people, because very often  when I was pastoring, somebody would say to me, where's your church? And  what they meant by that was, tell me the address of the building. How do I find  the building? But if they would say, Where's your church, I would often say, Well, it's Tuesday morning. So most of them are probably at work trying to make the  point that the church is the people, not the building. Of course, then I would tell  them where the building was, because they had a legitimate reason to know,  and if they wanted to come to the service, the service was held in the building.  And so I would tell them that, but buildings can be very helpful. And as a matter  of fact, if you're not meeting in a building, I'm sure you're probably working as  hard as you can to get into a building, because the weather is not always good.  So what kind of building are you going to meet in? Well, probably most  Christians, most churches, most ministries down through history, have met in  one kind of a building, and that is a person's home. Most of them have met in  homes, all the ones in the New Testament, all the New Testament churches met  in homes, and then they would gather occasionally for special occasions in  some other kind of a place, a public place or a rented place. But a home is the  historic starting place of many churches, but many churches quickly outgrow  homes. And if you are not intending on starting a network of house churches,  which we'll talk about in one of the future lectures, then you will need something  that can hold more people than your home can. So then there are basically  three options. You can rent a space. You can there are some places that will  allow you to just rent for a few hours on Sunday. Often in America, schools will  do that. Movie theaters, if you have a movie theater, often, are not used on  Sunday morning, and they have typically some kind of stage in front and a  bunch of chairs, and they might rent you. The problem with renting a space like  that is that you have to have all of your equipment. If you if you have musical  equipment, sound equipment, a pulpit, that kind of thing, you have to bring it out 

and set it up before the service every week and put it away and have a place to  store it through the week. Also, renting a place like that doesn't give you  anywhere for midweek activities, Bible studies, or if no place for the pastor to  meet, to counsel people or for you to hold meetings. The other kind of renting, of course, is renting a building or a space in a building that you have all the time,  and that can be a very worthwhile solution. The downside of that is you are more or less at the mercy of whoever owns the building. If they decide they don't like  you, for whatever reason, they may not renew your contract. And there are  some countries where owning property is seen as a sign of legitimacy. If you are just renting, then it's not seen as necessarily a really legitimate organization. But if you own a property, then you must be, you must be, all right, there's, there's  something legitimate there. So that that may be, may apply to your culture, or  may not. And so that does bring us to the next level, which is buying. You can  buy an existing building, or you can build your own. You can buy a piece of  property and build your own building. So these are the different ways of doing it.  And I think we talked already in the worship space section about the design of  the building, trying to anticipate, if you are going to buy a building, look for one  that is going to need the least possible modification, and give you the most  possible flexibility and give you the most ability to do the things that you need to  do, and not just for now as you're buying it, but as you grow. And the same thing with building, if you are building it, study other church architecture, and not  necessarily for how it works on the outside, although that's important, but for the  functionality of the inside. How are you going to use it? Can you I told the story  about the elevator that was just slightly too small to fit a casket in. So try to  consider all of those things. If you are in a situation where you can do one,  where you can hire an architect, hire somebody who has designed other  churches because churches have different kinds of needs than a lot of other  buildings. But don't over commit yourself. Don't commit yourself to spend more  money than you can afford. Yes, you want to have a nice, functional building,  and yes, you want it to be big enough for everything you need now, plus your  anticipated expansion. And you would not be going into this if you did not expect to grow. But don't over commit yourself. This is another area where you have to  very prayerfully discern for yourself the difference between faith and  presumption, the difference between yes, we're going to do this because we  believe God is telling us that we're going to grow and we're going to anticipate  all of this, and so we're going to step out in faith to stretch ourselves a little bit.  That's good. But on the other side of it is the magic genie thing. You know, there  was a movie famous in America some 20 years ago that there was a line that  became famous. If you build it, they will come. Well, a lot of pastors took that  idea and built churches, and guess what? They didn't come. People will not  necessarily come just because you've got a new building that's not necessarily  going to attract new people. And more than that, if you build it, he won't 

necessarily pay for it. God won't necessarily provide the funds if he didn't  specifically tell you to do it. Jesus Himself said, Don't begin until you count the  cost for who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the  cost to see if there's enough money to finish it. Jesus did not say, you go ahead  and build it and that will show your faith. Jesus said, If you build it without first  figuring out if. You there's not enough money, then that's foolish. You're  demonstrating your foolishness, not your faith. I've seen more than one sad  instance where it seemed like the only reason the church existed was to pay off  the loan on the building. The pastor is saying to the five people in his  congregation, God calls us to evangelism, and the bank that holds our mortgage has mentioned it too. But you know what, if your only motivation for trying to get  new people into your church is to help pay off the mortgage. They can tell that  they'll they'll know that they can tell, and they'll run from it. So first impressions,  when somebody the first time they come and consider visiting your church. The  first impressions they see of your church are going to be very important in  helping them decide if they want to come, if the grass is not cut, if the paint is  peeling, if it's unkempt, and there are other churches around that look much  better, kept up, they're not likely to try yours. First impressions are and you  never get a second chance to make a first impression cleanliness, one of the,  surprisingly, one of the big things that will cause a visitor to decide whether or  not to come back. They'll often decide in the first five minutes, maybe before you even start talking, if the building is not clean, especially if they have children, if a nursery, if a place where the children are going to go looks like it's not sanitary,  not hygienic, it's dirty and gross. They're not going to want to leave their kids  there. They're not going to want to come back to that church. Secondarily in this, I don't want to get into gender stereotypes or anything else like this. In my  experience, men don't much notice unless it's really awful, but women, I am told, really notice the cleanliness of the ladies room. If you have bathrooms, keep  them clean, or else, if the people have a choice, they'll go to another church.  Consider access to your church. How hard or easy is it to get in, not just for  young folks in good health, but maybe there's somebody in a walker or with a  walker or wheelchair or using a cane, and how clearly? How clear is it? I do you  have signs, or do you have other clear ways of indicating where you go in? I  have visited churches that had a whole bunch of doors and it was hard to tell  which one to go in. And so we try, well, let's try that one and it's locked? Well,  let's try this one and it's locked, lots of people just turn around and go. You have  some kind of sign, some kind of indication, or somebody outside the church to  guide people in, to let them know where to get in. Safety and liability is  something important to consider with a church. Is it a fire trap? Do you have fire  extinguishers around? Are there things around that people are going to trip on or sticking out of the wall that will cut them? So is it a safe place? Does it give the  feeling of being a safe place? You want it to be a safe place for you and your 

congregation, but you also want it to give the feeling of a safe place for visitors  security. I wish I didn't have to mention this, but there are places in the world. As a matter of fact, it seems like most places, certainly in the United States now, we have people coming into churches and shooting in churches just because it's a  church. And it may be a terrorist thing, and it may be just some Loony, some,  some nut case. But nowadays you never used to have to consider this, but  nowadays you may have to consider the security of your people. Are you going  to have guards at the doors or whatever you know what's what's necessary for  security insurance. Some people say having insurance on your building or on  your life or your health or anything else is a lack of faith. Other people say it's  wisdom. I think you need to figure out for yourself, and your church needs to  figure out for itself. But for me, I don't see it any different than the proverb that  talks about the how wise the ants are gathering in the summer and storing up  food so they'll have something to eat in the winter. I think insurance is right along those lines, because otherwise, Solomon would have said that the ants are  foolish for doing that, because if they had enough faith, God would provide for  them in the winter. And that's not what he says. So think about insurance if  you're in a position to be able to get insurance. What about loaning or renting  the use of the building? Well, that's up to you, but you need to have policies, and it's best to make policies ahead of time, especially if you're going to loan it out to I would consider loaning it to other ministries, loaning it to community  organizations for the evangelistic effect, for just giving a good feeling about your  church in the community. But also the people that come in are going to see you,  know, you can have bible verses on the walls and whatever, and they'll see  those and there's that kind of evangelistic effect, and renting out the use of the  building for community meetings or for a daycare facility or something like that  can be a means of bringing in extra money to help support your ministries. So  but again, make sure, if you're doing something like that, it's always a good idea  to have a written contract and have all of the different fees. You know, for this  kind of an organization, we charge x and now x dollars an hour. And for that kind of an organization. We charge y dollars an hour. You know, the first one might be a fellow church or a non profit, and the second one might be somebody that  wants to use your space to make money for something. So policies,  maintenance. Whenever you're talking about a building, your talking about  maintenance. You need to take care of it. Something is going to break,  something's going to wear around, and so be prepared to regularly spend  money on maintenance. That should be a constant Line item in your budget  should be a maintenance fund for routine maintenance and do the maintenance  when it comes due. Because, as I said, I think it was last time. If you there are  many, many cases where if you don't spend a little bit of money now, you're  going to have to spend a lot of money later if you don't change the air filter in  your in your heating and air conditioning system, if you have one and you don't 

change the air filter. Air filters are inexpensive, but if you don't change them,  then it can cause the entire system to fail, and replacing an entire system is very expensive, so be prepared to regularly spend money on routine maintenance,  and if possible, keep a reserve fund for major maintenance. Sometime that  heating air conditioning system is going to go bad, sometime your roof is going  to need to be replaced. And those are things that, if you possibly can have been  building up some funds over the years, putting in a little bit every year. Then  finally, when at the end of 10 years, you need to replace this piece of equipment, then you'll have the money and you won't have to come up with all of it at one  time, most congregations, most ministries, have at least one or two people who  just love to maintain and care for the building. I don't understand it, but they love taking care of the building, so encourage them. Encourage them to do that, and  encourage them to see it as a ministry. Encourage the rest of the congregation  to see that as a ministry taking care of the property. Indoors and outdoors, you  may have people that like to take care of the building stuff inside, you may have  people that love to take care of flowers around the outside of the building, or  make sure the grass is cut. That is a wonderful ministry. Encourage those  people to do it, and encourage the entire church to see that as a ministry. If you  want to find it biblical, I think it's probably comes under the Ministry of Helps in  Romans 10, or the ministry of service different translations. If you have other  church property, maybe you have sound equipment, maybe you have the  projector, maybe you have tables and chairs that you bring out sometimes for  church meals, and other people might want to borrow them if they're having a  family reunion. Be clear who owns what, because sometimes people bring their  own personal property and leave it in the church building for people to use, and  then sometimes people want to borrow church property and take it home and  forget it belonging to the church. So be clear who owns what. Be careful about  lending it out and have someone responsible for keeping track of it. If you say,  oh, yeah, sure, you can borrow these tables and chairs for your family reunion.  Make sure that it's someplace it's written down that brother and sister so and so  borrowed these chairs for their and tables for their family reunion, and on this  date, and they're due back by that date, and if they forget to get them back by  that date, somebody has the responsibility to contact them make sure you know  who's Who's in charge of doing all of that stuff. We are nearing the end. We  have five more to go, and I will see you in the next one