God is a God of Order

The scriptures say that God is not the author of confusion. I had the pleasure of presenting the results of my needs and feasibility study today to a congregation that has needed to build for several years. In analyzing church and Sunday school attendance, it was apparent that this church had "hit the ceiling" several times on capacity over the past 10 years and then dropped back in attendance, always oscillating up and down past their maximum sustainable limit.

Conventional building and church growth wisdom tell us that a church is effectively full when it is at 80% of capacity, and this church certainly bore that out, with Sunday school at 80% of capacity, sanctuary seating at 85% and parking at 80%, the church just could not grow. The church knew they needed to do something, but was split almost 50-50 on how to address the question.

Enter the church building consultant. Within 90 days, the pertinent data on attendance, finances, land and ministry needs was collected and analyzed along with information that came out of personal interviews, congregational and community surveys and demographic studies. In the final analysis, neither of the two proposed solutions would have provided any long term growth to the church. This was not the fault of the church, for they had no real experience or training that would have equipped them for this work. They did not have was the experience to understand the proper questions to ask and to then evaluation the answers in a manner that would indicate the proper building strategy.

Knowing what process to follow, what questions to ask and what the answers mean brought the church from disorder to order, with a firm and sensible plan for the future, in just 3 months and will equip this ministry to make a greater impact on their area and win more souls for the kingdom. If you don't have this type of expertise in your church (and few do), there is no shame in getting some outside counsel; after all both Moses and Solomon got outside, expert help for their building program.



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