Inner Revolution

The Problem with Church Buildings (Part 3: Eight ways to make portable sustainable)

Let’s be honest, doing church in a portable environment is a pain. Whether you have three volunteers and one trailer or several 18-wheelers and a cast of hundreds it is hard to face setting up and tearing down, setting up and tearing down, setting up and tearing down weekend after weekend after weekend. Then there’s the added challenge of not having space during the week for counseling, training and connection. No wonder your own building becomes the Holy Grail.

Let’s look at some ways you can make portable sustainable.

1. Realize you have meeting space now
   While you may don’t have Sunday School rooms or a fellowship hall, you do have living rooms, clubhouses, Starbucks, hotel meeting rooms, as well as other churches who are often willing to loan (or rent) space during the week. There are plenty of rooms available, they just belong to someone else.
   
   
2. Lease an office space with a small to medium size meeting room
   This will give you a “permanent” home that is much cheaper than a full blown church building. Now you have an office to work out of and you have space for leadership development and small connection events. With the economic downturn you may be able to lease space for a very reasonable amount, and in many situations you can tap into their existing phone and wireless networks.
3. Make sure have multiple teams for set up and tear down
   Ideally you will have several set up and tear down teams. Each team should not serve more than twice a month, and your children’s ministry team should not set up or tear down. (Or you will be on never ending hunt for new children's workers) Multiple teams is a non-negotiable.
   
   
4. Select the right team leaders
   Often pastors will select an engineer/administrator/laborer as leader of the setup/tear down teams. While this type of leader will get the job done and get it done efficiently, they will struggle keeping the teams engaged and motivated. You want a coach, a people person, a team builder. Let the engineer draw the plan and arrange the trailer, but make sure the team leader is the guy everyone wants to be around. This is huge if you want to make portable sustainable. Finding the right setup/tear down leader is as important as finding the right worship leader if you're in this for the long haul.
   
   
5. Honor the setup and tear down teams
   As a pastor make sure the teams know they are appreciated. Take care of the team leaders. Make sure there is budget money for team parties. At a church I visited in Hawaii (where they will never have their own building) they have a volunteer who arrives at 5:00 a.m. every Sunday morning to cook breakfast for the setup crew. He brings his own grill and cooks an amazing breakfast. That is his ministry and he loves it. How can you let the teams know how important they are to the core mission of the church?
   
   
6. Build community into the teams
   A setup or tear down team is makes a great men’s small group. Guys are more comfortable doing a task together than sitting in a living room sharing their feelings.  An effective way to build community is for the guys to go to breakfast together after they finish setting up. They then have time to run home and pick up the family to attend church. Community is the destination; setting up equipment is the vehicle. Your set up and tear down teams could become your biggest evangelistic outreach to men.
   
   
7. Create a path for advancement
   One church that was portable for many years created an entire hierarchy for the setup team. When you first volunteered you would be put on a chair setup team for section three. Eventually you could work your way up to chair section leader, chair setup leader, auditorium setup leader, first weekend setup leader, first weekend setup and tear down leader, and eventually Director of Setup and Tear Down. Men like to have a chance to advance and a clear path to run on.
   
   
8. Hire the setup/tear down crew
   If your teams are exhausted and you’re running out of ideas, start hiring part of the crew. Pay high school or college students a few dollars a week to do the heavy lifting. It might seem expensive, but it will be way cheaper than buying a building. Trust me.

These are just eight ideas I have come across in working with portable congregations over the past ten years. What ideas have you tried that has made portable sustainable for your church?

 

The Problem with Church Buildings (Part 1 What a building won't do)

 

One of the first questions every church planter (after, "Why won't you turn the music down?") will face is “When will we move into our own building?” The school, theater, cardboard box is fine for today, but what they really want to know is when we’ll be a “real church”. This begins as a solo, grows to an ensemble, morphs into a chorus and soon emerges as a significant choir. If you listen very closely you can hear the chant echo across the fruited plane even now, “We want a building, We want a Building, WE WANT A STINKIN’ BUILDING!!!”

 

And why do they want a building? Because a building will make your church much, much more effective and fulfilling your God-inspired vision. If we had a building…

We could do more discipleship classes

We could help feed the poor

We could house widows and orphans

We could host teas and coffees (and poker nights if you’re reformed)

 And as a pastor you dream of a building of your own…

You could sleep in until 5:30 a.m. on Sunday mornings

You could have a real office instead of a corner of the spare bedroom

You whole staff would have a place to plug in their laptops at meetings

You wouldn't have to shout over the coffee grinder during counseling sessions

There is no doubt that in many ways a permanent building makes some things easier. Not having to set up and tear down every weekend might add five years to the life span of the average church planter. Not having to whisper (or shout) during counseling would probably be more effective.  But there are some major drawbacks to having a 24/7 building.  Let me throw out some things a building won’t solve today, tomorrow we’ll look at some of the challenges a building brings and Thursday I’ll give some ways to stave off the building zombie choir.

First, a building won’t make you a real church. I’m sure you realize that the Christian church built few, if any, buildings before 300 AD. There were likely some renovated homes and expanded shops, but the real building bug didn’t bite until Constantine had seen the light. Then the church got busy building and they made up for lost time.

The sad thing is that many of the church buildings are now just shells. They are beautiful to look at, but there is no life inside. The reality is that the church was vibrant before the first building was built, but in many cases that vibrancy died after the cathedral was completed. The building didn’t kill the church, but it didn’t sustain it either.

There are many examples of vibrant, real churches with no buildings. In Hawaii most newer churches have no hope of ever owning a building, yet they continue to grow and thrive and plant new churches. I met a young man the other day who pastors a growing church for homeless people in the Miami area, and they meet under a tree. I realize those are extreme examples, but the point is that a building doesn’t validate a church, the anointing of the Holy Spirit validates a church.

And if you have a leadership development problem, a discipleship problem or a volunteer recruitment problem now, you will still have those challenges once you have a building. If people aren't growing at your church now they still won't be growing when you put a permanent roof over their heads. Rather than focusing on the nirvana of building ownership you will be better served focusing on the core challenges and keeping the buiding monster at bay.

 

New music from Seacoast

The Seacoast Student Ministry band at our LPR campus recently recorded a CD called Uprising. I had the chance to be there for the live recording and it was an incredible night. I have been eagerly awaiting the release. They released it last weekend at Elevation (Seacoast's summer camp), but I haven't yet got my hands on my pre-ordered copies. Fortunately I know some people and got a bootleg version. It is incredible. These kids are amazingly talented and love to worship. (Yes, my daughter is one of the guitar players) Below is their version of Steve Fee's We Shine. Let me know what you think.

Just how emerging are you?

I found the chart below on the Emergent Village blog. It was created by Michael Patton and posted by Scot McKnight. Currently there are 146 comments on this post; most of them are over my head. I like to read about the Emerging/Emergent stream/conversation/revolution/heresy/(enter your description here) but I don't really track with all of the theological rabbit trails. I'm just not that smart. I thought this chart was interesting, however. I wonder where I would put myself on the chart? Hmmm...

 

How to introduce a new service

Seacoast's Long Point Campus is starting a new Sunday night service this weekend. Here is a video we used to introduce the new 6:15 service. These guys are amazing. They do a sitcom for our children's ministry called Tyler and Frankie B that is very cool. You can watch an episode here.

This is a crazy time for us. Some guys from a possible campus to be name later are coming to check us out this weekend. Our Summerville campus moves into their new building next weekend and our new James Island campus has their first practice service next weekend as well. On Easter we officially launch James Island, have our official Grand Opening in Summerville and add a new service in Asheville. We try to pack it all into two or three weekends and then  just lie around on the beach the rest of the year.

A unique path to Jesus

I heard a unique story today of someone finding their way to Christ. A young man I was talking to said he grew up in a home where they did not attend church. Occasionally his mom would shove a Bible in his face and tell him to read it when he was going through a tough time. He tried reading a little here and there, but it didn't make any sense to him. Other than those bizarre moments he had no connection with God.

After high school he went off to college where he spent his first few semesters partying in every way possible. Eventually he found that the partying led nowhere and left him feeling empty. He wandered if there really might be a God or at least something more to life. He couldn't talk to any of his buddies about his confusion and fear and he began to fall into depression.

Eventually he spoke to a counselor at his college who recommended he pick up self-help book at the bookstore and everything would work out fine. While he was at the bookstore he also picked up a Bible. After a few days he gave up on the self-help book, but he continued to read the Bible. Right before September 11, 2001 he found himself readin in Revaltion. When the twin towers fell he thought it was the end of the world.

When the world kept spinning he dove back into Revelation and read that sinners would be thrown into a lake of fire. This concerned him because he knew he fit the profile and that he was in deep weeds if he died. Not knowing where else to go he turned to a Christian chat room on AOL and began asking questions. A young lady eventually invited him into a private chat room and led him to commit his life to Christ. From there he connected with a small group of commited Christian men at his college and eventually into church.

If you are scoring at home this young man found his way to Christ through nothing but the book of Revaltion, a terrorist attack and an anonymous Christian in an online chat room. It was reminded that God only uses me because he wants to; he doesn't need to use me to change people's lives.

Are you flippin' kidding me?

A friend who is a source for many very funny anecdotes recently sent this picture her cousin took while driving through Arkansas. I've tried to think of a funny caption but I've come to the conclusion that this picture is worth at least 1000 words. Maybe 1001.

What's the best church name you've come across?

Now that's unfortunate

If you've ever attended church in a theater you will appreciate this. Seacoast's new Asheville campus meets in a cinema that has digital signs over each door giving the name of the movie playing on that screen. This weekend their nursery was in the theater where Death Sentence was playing. That should allay the fears of new parents:

"Oh yes, we have excellent child care. Just drop your child off at Death Sentence and we'll take care of everything from there."

This isn't our first experience with unfortunate movie titles. When we opened our West Ashley campus the marquee outside read "Punch Drunk Love". That's the picture that ran in the paper announcing our Grand Opening. Gives a whole new meaning to spirit filled worship.

Another day, another campus

We completed the Seacoast triatholon this weekend; open two campuses in two weeks, put one of them in the most dangerous section of Charleston and put the other one almost 300 miles away. It was incredible. We had over 350 show up in in Asheville. (Over 450 showed up at North Charleston for their second service) The volunteer team was incredible, the worship team was as good as I've ever heard, the support team from Irmo and Mt Pleasant was outstanding. I'm not just doing the blogworld hype thing, this morning was rockin' in Asheville. We are now officially have 26 service times in 14 unique experiences on 11 campuses across 3 states. Now its starting to get crazy.

Some incredible teamwork enabled us to pull of the triathalon. Craig Snook and the volunteers at Asheville were incredible. Rob Williams has put together a band that could play at ANY church in America. (Any means any) Shawn Wood, Nate Kraus, Ashley Schuermann, and Jerry Seay did world class work on marketing and technical arts. My beautiful wife Sherry had the kids areas in both places looking spectacular. Lori Fitzgerald did an amazing job keeping us all on task.

Tomorrow we celebrate. Tuesday we start talking about number 12.

More on Sunday

Jackie Hynd, a member of our Long Point staff, did a great job capturing last weekend here in Charlston. Here is her account

What a wild and wonderful weekend God provided us!  I was so glad to have been able to attend the Grand Opening of the North Charleston Campus Sunday morning which was an incredible blessing.  As soon as we turned onto Remount Road, it was evident that SOMETHING was happening as soon as we saw the super-friendly parkers at each corner as we approached the church, waving us into parking lots already filling up with cars.  And to see the great turnout as we approached the church and then the super-charged greeting team waiting for everyone as they arrived.  And then, the amazing energy of the worship team as the service started and great messages by Geoff and Sammy.  What an AWESOME grand opening!  God must be beaming!

And then, one of the most moving baptisms in the afternoon that I have gotten to be a part of. 

• A young man, a Christian for just a year, walks into the water alongside his 90+ grandparents, who have never been baptized and wanted to join him on this special day
• A young man who is celebrating 6 months of sobriety from drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, who thanked his parents for never giving up on him, as they they stood there cheering him on as he was baptized.
• Jerry and Cody McSwain jointly baptizing Cody's soon bride- to -be, Amanda, with many tears shed by onlookers
• A woman who, after winning $50,000 on Deal or No Deal, moved to Charleston with no family here, testified that the winnings helped her to move here, find Seacoast, and most importantly find God.  She was well assured that she had more than 100 family members with her yesterday.

The stories go on and on. What an incredible moment in time.  What an incredible day.  We have an incredible God who ALWAYS gives us so much MORE than we can ever ask or imagine.