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.

 

What if I don't want to go?

As I write this post I am getting ready to head to the airport to begin my trip to Russia. We fly from Charleston to Atlanta to New York to Russia. In the middle of the night tonight, around 2 a.m. EST, we will be landing in Moscow. I honestly never thought I'd go to Russia and now I'm am less than 24 hours from being there.

I have to be honest; I am not sure I want to go. I am grateful for the opportunity and blown away that I actually get to go, but if I could back out now I'd seriously consider it. It is cold in Russia, the police (according to the travel books) like to harass foreigners and take their passports. I don't speak a word of the language; I don't even recognize any of the letters in the alphabet. And I'll be speaking to a roomful of leaders I have never met with whom I may have nothing in common. 

And, honestly, I like staying home. Right now I am sitting in my favorite chair, listening to my favorite music, drinking my favorite morning beverage. They don't have any of that in Russia. At least I don't think I do. They do have borscht, whatever that is.

I know that most mission trips are a lot tougher than what I am doing. We will be staying in decent hotels and we will have a translator/driver with us all of the time. The people I am teaching are already committed Christians and the Russian government is not out to get them or me. (At least they say they're not) We don't have to sleep in huts, ride in dugout canoes and fight off mosquitoes with machetes. But I'm not on most mission trips; I'm on this one. And I'd just as soon not go.

But I think that is the point. I think God wants me to go. I think he wants me to be uncomfortable. When I am comfortable I do not grow. When I only do what I know how to do I never learn anything new. It is out on the edge, when I am way outside my comfort zone, when I surrender and say, "God, if you don't show up I'm toast", that is when I find out what it means to live by faith. It is only by stepping way outside of what I like to do and what I know how to do that I learn what God created me to do. So in a few minutes I'll grab my stuff and head out on this new adventure.

How about you? Where is God leading you that is uncomfortable? Is there a conversation you know you need to start? Is there an opportunity you know you should take, but it would require you to go beyond what you think you can do? How is God stretching you today?

Failing Failure

Michael Hyatt has a great post on From Where I Sit called Turning Failure to Your Advantage. He gives four guidelines to deal with failure:

1. Acknowledge the failure
2. Take full responsibility
3. Mourn the failure
4. Learn from the experience

Its funny, these are very basic steps but we miss them all the time. I was talking recently with a leader about a failure within his organization. He said the worst part is that the one responsible for the mistake wouldn't learn from it because they refused to own their own error. In this case there was really no choice but to make a change.

Failure can be a great teacher, but you have to show up for class.

I hope this doesn't hurt your feelings

I came across a great article on leadership by Peter Drucker this week. I don't write much about leadership because everyone else does, but I thought some of this was pretty profound. Check out the following excerpt...

What leaders know
All the effective leaders I (Peter Drucker) have encountered-both those I worked with and those I merely watched-knew four simple things:

1. The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers. Some people are thinkers. Some are prophets. Both roles are important and badly needed. But without followers, there can be no leaders.

2. An effective leader is not someone who is loved or admired. He or she is someone whose followers do the right things. Popularity is not leadership. Results are.

3. Leaders are highly visible. They therefore set examples.

4. Leadership is not rank, privileges, titles, or money. It is responsibility.

Point number 2 really smacked me upside the head. I spend way too much time worrying about what people think about me, how telling the truth will make them feel, whether my 24 hour deoderant is still working. (Well, maybe I should worry about that last one) Some of the guys I work with (I don't want to mention their names; let's just call them  Jeff Kinney, Chris Surratt and Larry Maio) confronted me with this recently. They said they needed my honest feedback, not empty pats on the back and generalizations. I responded by saying what great guys they are and that they're all doing a super job. Keep up the good work!

Leadership is measured in results, not popularity. I hope everyone is okay with that.