What Building?

I'm surprised how many times I've already been asked, "What are your plans for a permanent location?" I always want to answer with some hyper-Christian answer like, "Only when Jesus returns to establish the new heavens and new earth will we have a permanent facility!"

Luckily I still have enough of a social filter to resist this urge.
Unfortunately it means I stand there with a bit of a dumb look on my face.

What is most interesting is that this question comes from both "churched" and "unchurched" people. I expect this from churched folks- we've been conditioned to associate the church with a building and the programs that run out of it. We know in our heads, because we've been taught, that the church is much more mysterious than that- she is the bride of Christ, the gathering of the redeemed which cuts across space and time, she is the mission of God to a broken world. But for all practical purposes the church becomes the building and the thing we do Sunday morning. (FYI, the Sunday morning thing is worship, which itself should not be limited to one hour Sunday morning.)

What is a little more surprising to me is how folks that haven't spent much time with a church assume we have immediate plans to build. On one hand this is flattering. Apparently Connections already comes across, at some level, as a large enough, mature enough, active enough, resourced enough group of people that we should have a building. At least this is how I choose to interpret that question. It also tells me that the world too closely associates the church with our buildings.

Now I'm not knocking buildings. But I'm very happy to be at a time and place with Connections where our building, or lack-there-of, is equally as significant in communicating who we are and what we are about...

We are about going to where the people are- so we worship in a theatre. We are about people- so we gather in their homes. We are about community- so I meet with people at Starbucks more than my office.

Right now NOT having a facility, not even talking about having a facility, is essential to who we are and what we want to be. And right now, and always, we are foremost a mission to those who are far from God. We don't need a facility to do that. In fact, it would be a distraction.

Will we ever need a facility? I absolutely hope and pray that the time comes when we have to have an awesome, amazing, multi-functional venue of our own. But even when that day comes I pray we are still, at the heart of it, a mission to the lost.

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If you want to read more about facities, this is from a blog I read often...

When does the “church plant” meeting in a portable location make the jump to a permanent facility? Is there a certain attendance or financial goal that you have to reach before you “get your own place”?

I’m no expert but we’ve tried to learn from other churches that have made the transition both successfully and unsuccessfully. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any secret formula for transitioning to a permanent facility. But I can tell you the top priorities that drive Elevation Church’s decisions on facilities (in order of importance) and some important questions to ask yourself:

1. Vision- How big is your vision? It all starts here. It sounds basic but this drives the rest of the factors for us.
2. Goals- How big are your goals? Numeric goals, for us, drive the direction we look for facilities.
3. Density- How dense is the area you are looking at? How many current attendees are in that area?
4. Capacity- Pastor teaches this all the time. God is an unlimited God whose blessing never runs out. Our capacity to receive that blessing is the limiting factor. We love full rooms at Elevation but the goal is to have (some) empty seats. Empty seats means we have more capacity to reach people. Our facility decisions on adding capacity.
5. Access- You can only reach as many people on Sundays that can access your building at a given time. This requires some forward thinking. This is also a lot of the reason why a lot of churches do multi-site.
6. Money- Probably number one on a lot of church’s lists.

In the end, if money is the number one factor driving our facility decisions then I’ve just cut myself out of finding anything with good access in a dense location near our current attendees with more capacity to meet the goals that the vision drives. And I’ve also limited God from being able to do what only he can do.

Making the shift to a “permanent” location is a complicated process. Multiple campus strategies make it even more confusing. But I love it, I love thinking about it, and I love researching what’s out there. And if we don’t continue to factor in the above priorities and make facility changes, then we will stop growing which is not an option.