Planning is Paramount
Shortsightedness makes for poor stewardship

ONCE YOU’VE DECIDED TO grow your ministry, it’s easy to get lost in the details. Short-term needs, technical considerations and price tags flutter about and often serve to cloud a church leader’s vision of the bigger picture. It is important, therefore, to develop a plan that will help guide the church well into the future … a master plan.

“To plan just for the phase or building that a church is presently building is shortsighted and a disservice from a fiscal perspective,” advises Dale Reiser, president of Crete, Ill.-based Professional Building Services Inc. “To be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us means we must do our very best to consider future ramifications of the work that we are doing today.”

A ministry may decide to develop a master plan on its own, hire a master-planning firm, or work with a design-builder to develop one. For a successful plan, it is important to makes sure everyone involved fully understands the church’s character and philosophy, says Rick Bettilyon, a master planner from Chandler, Ariz. “Choose a planner who understands your ministry, not just your building capacities, and can offer fairly accurate predictions about where your church will be five to 20 years from now and design for that.”

Building consultant Stephen Anderson agrees, emphasizing the importance of using the church’s mission as a guiding principle in developing a plan. “The primary consideration should be vision and mission. What has God called the church to be when it ‘grows up,’ and what is the church going to do or accomplish (its mission) in order to become that vision? The current and future needs of the ministry need to be identified and quantified, and the building plan and master plan need to be molded around the needs of the ministry.”

The first step toward designing a master plan is developing a planning committee. “Whether you call it a building committee, expansion and relocation team, vision committee, or any other number of names, the church needs to put some good people in charge of the process,” he states. The best committees, says Anderson, follow one of two models. The first comprises three or four key decision-makers that speak for the whole of the congregation and have a significant amount of time to donate to the process. The second is a slightly larger committee augmented with several subcommittees, each in charge of a different aspect of the planning process. Regardless of what model you choose, the master-planning process is complicated enough, and it’s important to avoid compounding those complications by having too many cooks in the kitchen, experts caution.

“I think you need input from a lot of people, so one of the first things you think about is, ‘Who do we need to include in the actual decision-making process?’” says Jerry Halcomb of HH Architects in Dallas. “I think it’s important, and usually more successful, if you keep the core planning team from the church side as small as possible, but include a larger number of staff in the research and solicit input from them, but keep the decision-making group as small as possible.”

A good way to increase participation in the planning process and foster a greater sense of involvement within the congregation is to select subcommittee members based on their personal interests and experiences. Members of the main committee should be excellent organizers, communicators and negotiators, Anderson advises. “It is also important to note what qualifications are not significant when selecting team members,” he continues, warning against choosing members based on their financial contributions or position within the church.

One of the biggest missteps smaller ministries make when designing their master plan is underestimating their potential for growth, Reiser adds. “Often churches are unable to see the increase (in attendance) that most often occurs when taking the step to provide more attractive usable space. Soon after completing the first phase, they immediately have to start planning the second and third. A good question to consider is: ‘Is it possible through a more future-oriented and modular perspective that we can increase space now to extend the use of the new building further before being forced to build again?’ Having to build again is a good problem, but avoiding the challenge through good planning is a much preferable option.”

The need for personal space is an important consideration in the planning process as well, as you must account not only for the number of bodies that will occupy the space, but a buffer zone as well. “Churches should recognize the 80 percent rule, which takes into account society’s insistence on personal space. Regardless of how large a facility is, it should be considered full when it reaches 80 percent of its capacity,” says Greg Lefler of Lefler and Associates in Camarillo, Calif.

Looking forward and developing a grand plan to complement your church’s mission can be exciting, but can also lead to frustration if your church is short on resources. “Vision can sometimes be a terrible burden. God may give a vision without the context of time it will take to become the vision. Sometimes church leaders feel that because they have a vision, it must happen quickly,” Anderson reveals. “God’s vision for your church may be far larger than its budget. If you have a God-given vision that exceeds your ability, the vision may be realized in phases as the church grows and has the ability to support that growth.”

Because church growth is bound to be a long, fluid process, a highly detailed and rigidly structured master plan may not be the best choice for every church. Rather, a general plan outlining the church’s goals and plans for the future may suffice. “Each phase of the church’s master plan should have clear and quantifiable goals,” advises Anderson. “But spending mega-bucks on a highly detailed master plan is not a good idea since the passage of time has a way of modifying the church’s needs, and the church will want to be able to adapt without having invested too much in long-term plans.”

Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., is a prime example of how a ministry can succeed despite the lack of a detailed master plan. During the past three decades, the ministry has grown from a congregation of 200 meeting at a high school to a congregation of 20,000 meeting at a state-of-the-art $27 million, 120-acre campus. Though it won’t work for every church, the Saddleback story is an inspiring illustration of how a ministry can succeed by allowing the hand of God to guide the planning process.

Most churches, however, thrive under a strict formula. “We relocated Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville with a master plan and it just went like clockwork,” remembers Halcomb. “In the first five years, the church followed the master plan to a T, and they doubled their attendance and giving in that time. Since then, they got an additional 40 acres and are even going beyond that master plan.”

The number of people involved in the planning process and the level of detail in the plan will vary from church to church, but most builders agree that having some sort of a long-term plan is not only a good idea, it’s a necessity.

“Today, I think pretty well everybody understands it only makes sense,” concludes Halcomb. “That’s what its all about … helping the church succeed and move forward, and not just building buildings.”