You Gotta Problem? Take It Outside…

You gotta problem? err, a space problem?  Yeah, you and everybody else… 

I’m thinkin’ that you’re reading me right now if your building already has a super fancy worship center, because that’s what your elders wanted to spend money on.  You’re also thinkin’ the kids classrooms are adequate, at least that is what you have trained your mind to believe.  And even though there is always a line out of the ladies room, the restrooms are at least clean and free of that funk you get when you leave the exhaust fan off for a week.  But… there is no foyer, or at best, its a really sad excuse for a foyer, and it’s cramped even on that bad weather Sunday, that you managed to show up to anyway because you didn’t bother to read the closed church names scrolling across the bottom of the local TV news before getting out of bed, shoveling out the driveway, loading up the kids in their winter gear, and minivan-skiing all the way to church.  If your building is like the above description, like many older church buildings… don’t worry… there is a fair weather solution… TAKE IT OUTSIDE! 

Too many churches are mentally stuck on the theory that we have to make the inside magical, cuz’ that’s where we are going to win the unchurched over for Christ!  Once we get them in the door they won’t want to leave!  Quite often a church sets out to create an open, inviting foyer space with all of the latest amenities to cater to the generation Y, younger, hipper, big tithing crowd, by designing an edgy (french for overpriced), retrorastolic, dank, warm-fuzzy-ish coffee cafe, probably named something original like ”Sacred Grounds”, “The Divine Grind”, ”Java Jireh”, or my personal favorite “God To The Last Drop”.  It’s full-boar-hog-rootered Starbuckorific in feel, color and taste, and everybody old or new to the church will absolutely love it.  THEN REALITY KICKS YOU IN THE GUT when the drawings are done and the construction budget is submitted for approval, and you realize your caffeine crackhouse has turned into nothing more than an eight foot plastic foldout table, sporting a tablecloth sewn by the quilting ministry, garnished with a plate of cut-in-half day-old donated bagels and one of those 40-cup stainless steel purcolating wonder pots that sound like its gonna go off like sputnik, brewed with only the best pre-ground columbian beans that Juan Valdez could get his donkey to carry all the way to the States… just for you…  Too many times the cuts run deep into the areas that we think mean the most to our evangalizing opportunities.  How will we cope with such a devastation you might ask… TAKE IT OUTSIDE! 

I will be the first to admit that I rarely focus on the outside of the building for useful ministry space, mainly because that is not where the sexy stuff happens.  When given the opportunity to consult, I personally wanna play around with designing the fun spaces, mainly kids space, foyer space, and worship space.  But, what we don’t usually think about once we have run out of inside space, due to budget/building constraints, is the typically abundant open areas right outside the front doors.  Quite often the church has a nice grass or paved area right in front or to the side of the building that in their minds is only designed for ingress and egress.  I would challenge you to use a little imagination and visualize an outdoor cafe in the front or on a visible side of your church.  Think hard and imagine that scene from your stroll through the maze of alleys in Venice, or sipping coffee at that quaint little sidewalk cafe in Paris, or dipping churros in your cocoa in the streets of Pamplona, or standing and looking up in front of that balcony on Bourbon Street where you caught your first beads at Mardi Gras (caught you wandering, and I have pictures).  Anyway, what I am saying is that here is an opportunity for what I like to ingeniously refer to as “Free Square Footage” and an opportunity for a massive fair weather expansion of your foyer space.  Not only is this area a great space to house the folks before and after the service, but you are also generating drive-by curiosity with all of the people sitting and standing and carrying on right in front of your building.  Cops will probably be called, chaos will undoubtably insue.  Put yourself in an unchurched body for a moment… if you were driving around looking for a church on a Sunday morning, and you came upon two churches across the street from each other, and one has no movement in the front of their building, and the other has mild chaos with folks drinking coffee, laughing, and eating day-old donated bagels, which are you going to be more curious about? 

Give it some thought.  It’s really an interesting idea once you let your mind work a little.  Plus, in these current economic times of $150+/sf of building cost, a nice patio cafe in front of the church building, dressed up with some benches, tables and chairs, and an outdoor coffee stand sounds pretty tempting, and forgive me for saying… might even be a little fun.

So here are some examples of churches that are doing this, and rather successfully I might add…

Manchester Christian Church, Manchester, NH

Christ Church of the Valley, Royersford, PA

The first is Manchester Christian Church.  They created an outdoor cafe courtyard, complete with a huge fireplace, where it used to be the drive through and drop-off area on the front of the building.  Now people stop and hang out before ever getting inside the church on Sundays.  I’ve been there during the week as well when no activities are going on in the church and there are still people gathering outside there.  It’s just that fun…

The second photo is just a shot of the coffee cafe cart for Christ Church of the Valley.  Even though the picture doesn’t do it justice, this thing is awesome.  It has a water hookup for the sink and electricity for the coffee makers.  The church strategically located an outside water faucet and power on the front of the building at the location of the cafe.  They easily roll it out there on Sunday morning, hook it up, crank up everyone on caffeine before and after the services, and then roll it back in afterwards.  They already have fixed benches and tables spuratically placed all around the front entrance area of the building.  Five minutes of setup and Poof… instant sidewalk cafe… instant success.

Thanks for reading my ramblings on this subject, hopefully you found some inspiration.  Oh, and if you were trying to figure out what “retrorastolic” means, thinking this is some new industry buzz word, and you even went and googled it… yeah, I made it up… but I’m probably going to trademark it…

Cost Effective Baptistry Changing Rooms

Baptistry changing rooms vary in size and shape, but there are a couple of things in common with just about all of them.  To be effective they have to be accessible, clean, and private.  When a church designs a new facility and they are looking for the best location to put the changing rooms, quite often they choose the back of stage area near the baptistry, which makes alot of sense, right?  What doesn’t make sense is over-designing them.  When you over-design changing rooms you wastefully spend money on an area that will not be seen but by a very few folks in the church.  Well, let me take that back, you hope by everyone, at least once.  When the rooms are seen or used most people probably do not really care if the rooms are aesthetically pleasing anyway, as they are all giddy and jacked up about just giving their life to the Lord!  For goodness sakes folks, they’re just changing rooms, not the Sr. Minister’s Office… 

A good friend, Sonny Wollard, the Multi-site Director for The Crossing in Quincy, IL, recently went through this very dilemna of deciding what to do about their changing rooms at their newest campus in Kirksville, MO.  Sonny had an idea of what he wanted so he sought a quotation from a local contractor.  For three changing rooms he was quoted $5,200, which includes metal stud framework, drywall, hollow metal frames, doors, hardware, paint, tax, title, license, etc.  In a church that would rather focus their resources on reaching the lost, this was totally unacceptable.  

Sonny set out to take care of this project much more cost effectively.  He first determined the location as a section along the back wall of the back-of-stage area near the ingress/egress of the baptisty.  This area was just going to be a Green Room and storage anyway so it made perfect sense.  His basic theory was that a standard changing room should be 4′x5′  each, which should be plenty of room for someone to comfortably change their clothes and the room to have a chair and possibly even a small table stand in there.  The doors would not necessarily need to go to the ground, but still not be so small that you could see over or under them.  Basically, something along the lines of restroom toilet partitions, but only bigger and a little more private.  What Sonny schemed up was nothing short of brilliant.  Sonny went to his local HOME DiscountEd ImPrOvemenT Store (name withheld do to copyright infringement) and for a little less that 400 bucks he bought 7 sheets of 4′x8′ MDF board (that’s Medium Density Fiber Board for you rookies out there), door locksets, hinges, other miscellaneous hardware items, and paint.  With his plans drawn up ahead of time, he had the HOME DiscountEd ImPrOvemenT Store go ahead and cut all of the wood panels to their correct length and width in about 15 minutes, which they did for FREE!  He then painted all of the panels before erecting them.  By himself, it took about 3 hours to completely assemble.  From the picture below you can see just how good these look, and for less than a tenth of the contractor’s price!  This is stewardship at its finest!  Imagine what you could have done with the othere $4,800!  Hats off to Sonny and The Crossing.  I am sure if you beg a little, Sonny would be more than happy to share his dimensions and plans with you.  Let me know if you need his phone number…