Facility Planning for Churches

Proper consideration of the ministry aims of a church is an important part of any church building program. Buildings form part of the 'tools' available to a congregation to undertake ministry. If the type of 'tools' required by the church is unclear, then it will be unlikely that the new building will properly serve the church. Few congregations have the luxury of surplus funds to allow for projects undertaken for comfort reasons only. Ensuring that the proposed buildings will meet the needs of the church will also greatly assist the church where fund raising is required. Most people are much more willing to sacrificially give financial support when they can see the ministry aims of a project, and be confident that people's lives will be changed. For further consideration of these ideas, a book by Kennon Callaghan called "Building for Effective Mission" is highly recommended.

Outline of Proposed Process

‘Preparing a Brief', as this process is known, comprises the following main steps.

Step 1 - Before any building planning is undertaken it is important that the church has clarified and determined its vision and identified the key areas of mission. This stage is essential to determine whether there is a real need for the proposed facilities and also becomes an important issue if it is required to raise funds.

Step 2 - A co-ordinating committee or building committee needs to be selected with a clear purpose of steering the church through various stages of the building project. Ideally this committee should represent diverse aspects of the operation of the church and include some specialist expertise in building areas. Where possible the committee should be selected for the duration of the project, rather than on an annual basis, as there is usually quite a lot of knowledge built up by the committee during the process and this assists with continuity.

Step 3 - A list of the relevant types of information needs to be established. These guidelines provide a typical starting point for this information.

Step 4 - Seek out and gather the information needed. (The committee may need to delegate some parts of this work to individuals and smaller teams to make this achievable.)

Step 5 - Analyse and consolidate the information gathered.

Step 6 - Determine the priorities and what can realistically be achieved. Nearly all projects will have some compromises. These relate to budget constraints and other constraints. Once an 'ideals' brief is developed it is then necessary to provide priority ratings to these ideals and start to analyse which aspects could be compromised if the budget demands. Sometimes the use of 'value management techniques' which relate the priorities to the amount of use and costs are also useful.

Step 7 - Prepare a summary document (referred to as ‘The Brief').

Step 8 - Present ‘The Brief' to the church for endorsement and ownership by the congregation.

Step 9 - Provide The Brief to the architect as a basis for the project.

PERMISSION FOR USE OF THIS ARTICLE - This article is freely available for use by churches as they see fit but it would be appreciated if an acknowledgment of source to Aibee Architects was always retained. Commercial use of these guidelines for publication in other locations or by other Architects is prohibited without the written permission of Aibee Architects.