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CONFESSIONS OF A SURPRISED ARCHITECT
by Ray Bowman with Eddy Hall
(Copyright Ray Bowman Consulting, Inc. 1992, 2000)
When the Fairview Village Church in suburban Philadelphia asked me to design a thousand-seat sanctuary, that's exactly what I intended to do. They had called me for the usual reasons: their sanctuary was full and they were running out of educational space. It was time to build.
To determine how best to design their facility, I first met with the church board for four hours on a Saturday morning. Next I spent several days studying the church's ministries, finances, and use of facilities. Then I met with the church growth committee. Finally, I felt like I had the facts I needed to draft my proposal.
I met with the board again the following Saturday. "What you really need to build," I announced, "is a storage shed."
Had the church invited me a year and a half earlier, I would have designed a thousand-seat sanctuary and cheered them on. "The building will bring more people to Christ," I'd have said. "It's beauty will draw you closer to God. People will notice you're here and that you're an important part of the community."
During thirty years of designing church buildings, I'd heard all these claims from pastors and church boards. I'd seen no reason not to accept their assumption that bigger buildings translated into greater ministry. But my life had taken a surprising turn that had made me look at the church through new eyes and forced me to rethink the conventional wisdom that had guided three decades of work.
In 1979 if anyone had suggested I'd soon be changing careers, I probably would have laughed. I had studied to be an architect, spent all my working life as an architect, and after building my own firm and spending twenty-six years as a principal had no intention of ever being anything but an architect.
Then one day as I was driving to our Twin Falls, Idaho, office to meet with one of my partners, a thought came to me as clearly as if someone had entered the car and spoken to me: "There's going to be a big change in your life, and it's going to involve your profession." I recognized the voice. When I got home, I told my wife Sally about it, then promptly forgot it.
Three weeks later I had a totally unexpected opportunity to leave my architectural firm when one of my partners, over lunch, offered to buy my stock. I had absolutely no idea what prompted his offer. When I told Sally about it, she said, "No way!" But we prayed about it, and when we did, both Sally and I felt we should accept.
"But, Lord," I said, "then
I'll have no work and no income. What am I supposed to do?"
God's answer was clear even if a bit sketchy on details: "I'll
show you what kind of work you are to do and give you all the work you can
handle." On the strength of that promise I accepted my partner's offer, leaving behind
an established career for an unknown future.
The day after I signed the papers dissolving my association with the firm, Sally and I were on our way to Canada for our first consulting job. A church in Red Deer, Alberta, had asked me to conduct a feasiblity study to determine whether they should renovate their existing building or relocate to a larger site. Though it was just my first day to wear my consultant hat, I felt at once the difference it made. Even if the church were to decide to build, I knew I would not be their architect. I don't suppose the possibility of advising a church not to build had ever crossed my mind before. But at Red Deer, for the first time, it was a live option.
As an architect, my job had been to follow instructions--to design whatever kind of building the church asked for. As a consultant, though, my job was different. I had to advise the church on what was best for the church, and that meant looking at the big picture. I analyzed the church's finances. I charted growth patterns. I studied utilization patterns of the existing building. At Red Deer I ended up recommending that the church remodel and grow right where it was.
But the biggest surprise of that consultation came as I was about to leave. "Ray," the pastor said, "do you know what you are?"
"No," I answered, "I really don't."
"What you are," he said, "is a church growth specialist."
And though that thought was totally new to me, it rang true. God was calling me to invest the next chapter of my life in helping churches reach out more effectively.
That didn't mean, however, that I had the expertise my new role demanded, a point soon driven home when another church board peppered me with church growth questions I couldn't answer. So for the next year I spent much of my time between consultations reading about ministry and church growth, listening to tapes, and asking the Holy Spirit to teach me. I began relating what I was learning about church growth to what I already knew about architectural design. I studied church finance and was surprised to learn that the Bible clearly describes financial principles that can guide the work of the church, principles much different from those followed by the world--and most churches.
So by the time Fairview Village asked for my help, I realized that a facility plan intended to maximize ministry could not be created in a vacuum. It had to be developed hand in hand with a ministry plan and a financial plan. All three had to work together.
Because I had looked at the church's facility needs, not in isolation, but in light of ministry and finances, I had come to a conclusion that was startling, at least to me: a major building program at that time would in all likelihood stop the church's growth and create financial bondage for years to come.
Over the next ten years I went on to consult with scores of churches and learned from each of them. Because I was asking facility questions from a new perspective--from the perspective of ministry and outreach--time after time I was forced to admit that some point of conventional wisdom I had uncritically embraced as an architect was untrue. Much of this conventional wisdom encouraged churches to build too big, build too soon, or build the wrong kind of building.
After thirty years of designing and encouraging churches to build new church buildings, it was painful to admit how much of my well-intentioned advice had been misguided. I could see how some churches had actually been hurt by the building programs I had helped with. Some building programs had diverted attention from meeting peoples' needs. Other churches had taken on building debts that financially crippled their ministries. In many cases the building program had slowed or stopped the growth that had prompted the new building.
These hard lessons eventually pushed me to a conclusion so unconventional that it sounds like architectural heresy: most churches thinking of building shouldn't, at least not yet. I became convinced, in fact, that the single most valuable lesson a church can learn about building is when not to build. And that lesson can be summarized in three parts--three situations in which a church should not build.
First, a church should not build if its reasons for building are wrong.
Richard Foster describes a congregational meeting his church held to pray for God's guidance concerning a proposed building program. "I went into the meeting thinking that probably we should build, and left certain that we should not," Foster writes. "The crucial turning point came when I saw the driving force behind my desiring that buidling to be my unarticulated feeling that a building program was the sign of a successful pastor. Theologically and philosophically, I did not believe that, but as we worshiped the Lord, the true condition of my heart was revealed. Eventually, we decided against building, a decision now validated by hindsight."1
Years ago a church of about 150 people in Arkansas hired me as an architect to design a new sanctuary for them. When I saw their building, I was puzzled. Though the building was older, its location was good and the congregation had never filled it.
Finally, I asked the pastor, "Why do you want a new building?"
"The first reason," he answered, "is that these people haven't done anything significant for twenty-five years. This is a way to get them to do something significant.
"Second, the people aren't giving at anywhere near the level they could or should be. A building program would motivate them to give more.
"Third, a building program will unite the people behind a common goal."
I believed he was right on all three counts and designed the new sanctuary. Now I know that this pastor was trying to do something that never works--solve non-building problems with a building. That church built for the wrong reasons.
Second, a church should not build when there is a better way to meet space
needs.
As I studied the Fairview Village Church, I agreed at once that it had a space problem. At its rate of growth, the congregation would soon outgrow its worship space. Between Sunday school and their Christian school, their educational space was full. They had no room for additional staff offices. Building was the obvious solution, and I was tempted to lapse into my traditional architect role to produce the design.
But I couldn't. By that time I knew that was the wrong answer. "I found a room filled with missionary boxes," I told the board. "Now those boxes don't need heat. They don't need windows or carpet, do they?" I recommeded a low-cost storage and maintenance building to free up existing space for educational use.
"This barn on your property is a historic structure," I told them. "It's worth preserving. But you're not getting good use out of it." Then we discussed how they could remodel it into a gymnasium, kitchen, and educational space at half the cost of a comparable new structure. "You can meet your need for worship space for years to come," I went on, "without the tremendous commitment of time, energy, and money involved in bulding a new sanctuary." The wall between the existing sanctuary and foyer could be removed to enlarge their worship area. A modest addition could provide them with a new, larger foyer, one that would make it practical to hold two Sunday morning services, doubling their worship seating capacity. The new addition could also house the office space they would soon need for their growing staff.
Finally, I suggested they replace the fixed worship seating with movable
seating. For the comparatively low cost of new chairs, the church could use
the largest single space in the building for a wide range of activities--space
that would otherwise lie useless for all but a few hours a week.
The church accepted the suggestions, completing their remodeling and modest
construction projects within a couple of years. The church continued to reach
out to the unchurched and within six years grew from 350 to 850.
It was at Fairview Village that I first began to realize that of the many churches that had hired me to design new buildings, few actually needed them. What most needed was to find ways to use their existing buildings more effectively. While fully using space may sometimes require remodeling, refurnishing, or making modest additions, in many cases it requires no money at all--only a willingness to do things differently. What seems obvious to me now came then as a fresh revelation: until a church is fully using the space it has, it doesn't need more.
Third, a church should not build when building would increase the risk
of financial bondage.
A congregation of about 175 on the West Coast brought me in as a consultant, but only after they had put up the shell of their new building. Someone had offered the church a piece of land visible from the interstate at a bargain price. The church had jumped at it.
Confident that an attractive, highly visible building would make a strong statement to the community about the church's importance and stimulate growth, they were building a luxurious thousand-seat sanctuary. "We didn't want the inconvenience of building in phases," the pastor explained, "so we decided to build it all at once. I believe that if we just have the faith and the vision, God will provide the money."
By the time I arrived on the scene, for all practical purposes, the church was bankrupt. All I could do was empathize with them and sadly recommend that they board up the unfinished shell, keep using their old building, and concentrate on growth until future developments enabled them to complete their move.
The Fairview Village Church faced a similar risk. When they commissioned my study, they were still in debt for their existing building and planned to borrow most of the money for their new one. This would mean taking on loan payments larger than the congregation could meet on the assumption that future growth would enable them to repay the loan.
Afraid this could endanger the church's growing edge, I prepared a detailed financial analysis projecting the potential impact of such a decision on the ministry and growth of the church. After extensive discussions the church leaders concluded such indebtedness risked not only the church's future growth, but even its existing ministries. The church then adopted a plan for paying off its debt and moving toward building future buildings debt-free.
These three situations in which it is a mistake to build--when a church's reason for building is wrong, when there is a better way to meet space needs, and when building would risk financial bondage--suggest three positive principles. These principles can guide churches in determining whether it's time to build (the time to build does come), and what to do instead when building is premature.
THE PRINCIPLE OF FOCUS
A church should build only when it can do so without shifting its focus from ministering to people to building a building.
THE PRINCIPLE OF USE
A church needs to build only when it is fully using the space it already has.
THE PRINCIPLE OF PROVISION
A church should build only when it can do so within the income God has provided and without using funds needed for the church's present and future ministries to people.
These three principles, which the following chapters explain and illustrate,
have for more than a decade guided my work with growing churches. Each year
I see more evidence of their power to unleash the church to do its real
work. They have enabled congreagations to leave behind limiting ways of
thinking about, using, and paying for church buildings in favor of approaches
that free up most of the time, money, and energy traditionally invested
in buildings. These resources can then be redirected to the true mission
of the church--ministering to the needs of people in Christ's name.
It can happen in your church too.
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