C H R I S T I A N I T Y T O D AY D O W N L O A D A B L E R E S O U R C E

THE
CHURCH
BUILDING LOVING MY
LABYRINTHINE

AND CHURCH

MINISTRY TAKE TIME TO

LINGER OUTSIDE

LIFE
THE CHURCH DOOR

WHAT MY CHURCH
GAINED WHEN WE
STOPPED RENTING

INSIDE THE
CHURCH BUILDING
OF 2017
 CONTENTS
Loving My Labyrinthine Church
3 Our tangled building tells an evolving story.
HANNAH ANDERSON

Take Time To Linger Outside the Church Door

5 In churches as in neighborhoods, sometimes the front lawn is the
best place to build community.
MANDY SMITH

What My Church Gained—and Lost—

7 When We Stopped Renting
I never thought I’d miss it . . .
AARON ARMSTRONG

Inside the Church Building of 2017

10 What’s hot, what’s next, and what needs to die.
MARIAN V. LIAUTAUD

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 HANNAH ANDERSON

Loving My
Labyrinthine Church
Our tangled building tells an evolving story.

T
he first time I took my children to Sunday school at our small
country church, I doubted I’d be able to find them again. To reach our
“educational wing,” I had to exit the lobby into the fellowship hall,
pass through a swinging door, go up two steps, down six, turn, go
down six more, follow a narrow hall, proceed through a basement classroom, up
seven more steps, down another hallway, up five steps, about-face, and ascend
another five steps. There, at long last, I found a hallway with five classrooms and
a supply closet.

Who knew that dropping my kids off at Sunday school would require a
certificate in orienteering?

Like most of the spaces in our church, the educational wing was added

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when it was needed, and without much thought for overall design. When
the congregation first gathered in the early 1920s, all they had was a tent.
Eventually, the farmers and factory workers saved enough to build a small brick
building at a cost of $8,250. (I know because the original contract hangs framed
near the front entrance.)

Over the years, and as the ministry’s needs changed, the congregation added
on to this original structure—classrooms, a new sanctuary, a fellowship hall, a
nursery, a kitchen. All the usual elements, only cobbled together haphazardly
over decades. There’s a complicated beauty in the resulting disjointedness,
an account of the highs and lows of a century of faithful ministry—years that
included the need for large spaces for worship and fellowship, spaces for babies
and children, spaces to grow. But there were also years that included tight, dark
hallways, waiting rooms that seem to serve no purpose—and yes, occasionally,
even a dead end.

In an age when congregations hire architectural firms to design spaces that flow
organically, our church building is decidedly inorganic. And yet, additions like
these give churches something that intentional design can’t. Such sprawling
architecture—the odd anterooms, the multiple levels, the dead-end hallways—it
tells our story. To walk through my church is to walk through the history of
God’s work on this piece of ground for more than 90 years.

One of the unintended consequences of our eclectic layout is that our church
also has seven different entrances (not counting the window through which
my husband boosts our nine-year-old son when he forgets his office keys). A
security specialist would probably say it is unwise to have this many avenues
in and out of a building. But to me, these seven doors represent the avenues by
which people find their way to Sunday worship. Older members enter through
the door that is handicap-accessible. Visitors come through the front entrance.
Children scurry in from the doors nearest the playground. And on days when
we have dinner on the grounds, men and women both enter by the kitchen
door, their strong arms toting casseroles in glass dishes and cakes in vintage
Tupperware.

I like to think this also means that the people in our community can join us
through just about any of these seven ways, too. Whether they come into the
church through Sunday school, a fellowship dinner, or weekly worship, our
church—both body and soul—is open.

If they can find their way out of the educational wing, that is.

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 MANDY SMITH

Take Time To
Linger Outside the
Church Door
In churches as in neighborhoods, sometimes the
front lawn is the best place to build community.

Y
ou learn a lot serving on the school PTA. One lesson in particular is
transforming my ministry.

When I joined my kids’ parent-teacher association, their school was

housed in an old building with a green space—a grassy, urban oasis, complete
with trees for climbing and the longest slide in town. When we let our kids run
around there after class let out, we thought it was for their sake. But so much
else was going on. While her kids were playing tag, one mother shared that
she had just lost her accounting job, prompting other parents to offer to bring

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her meals. While their children were fighting over who got the next turn on
the slide, one couple with food allergies in the family offered support to a dad
who had just discovered his six-year old daughter’s gluten aversion. As PTA
members, we listened to the concerns of fellow parents and invited them to get
involved.

The value of all of this interaction for the broader school community remained
invisible until the school moved to a newer building that didn’t have a green
space. We watched as the school took on more of a car-line, drop-off-and-pick-
up culture. Those sweet after-school moments of hanging out on the lawn were
gone. As a PTA, we noticed how many more phone calls we had to make to
recruit volunteers, how parents no longer knew each other’s names. The sense
of community we had enjoyed became a thing of the past.

In our efforts to have the right approach to our church environments, it’s easy
to underestimate the value of physical space in our church and community life.
A recent Vox article, however, helped me name the green space phenomenon
I had experienced at my kids’ school. It references various studies which found
that “[a]s external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three
conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making
close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that
encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other.” The
article sums up what I had learned on the PTA: “The key ingredient for the
formation of friendships is repeated spontaneous contact.”

It may be hard to justify the value of these spaces in churches—after all, we may
never be able to measure the networking, community support, and pastoral
care that’s happening organically there. Even the folks involved may never
remember how the coffee shop we built was where they had the conversation
that led them to choose to become a foster parent, or how the community
garden we created was where they learned about a local depression support
group. But while common space may not lead directly to hard, measurable
growth, it still benefits the church by playing a significant role in our personal,
family, and community lives.

If this is the case, then it may be time for church leaders to think harder about
space beyond the sanctuary. How can we, as Christian leaders and churches,
tap into the need for a shared, communal gathering ground? How can our
church buildings create places that foster this kind of spontaneous contact?
How can the church not only inhabit, but also create those spaces in our broader
communities?

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 AARON ARMSTRONG

What My Church
Gained—and Lost—
When We Stopped
Renting
I never thought I’d miss it . . .

I
never thought I’d miss it. In fact, it annoyed me most Sundays: this little
sound—the shrill squeak of desktops being swung into place as our pastor
said, “If you have your Bibles, open them to . . .”

Up until the fall of 2015, our church had only ever met in public school
auditoriums. We used to jokingly describe ourselves as a “church-in-a-box,”
since all the sound equipment, resources, signage, and sign-in systems that
made up our church could be packed away in storage boxes and shoved in a

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closet. We owned that cliché about the church being “the people, and not a
building.” We were simple, stripped-down, unpretentious. Church-in-a-box.

But we knew we wouldn’t always be like that. As renters, we had our problems.
We had a great relationship with the school staff, but we knew we could be
hastily evicted if they received complaints about the message from the platform,
or if we left any significant evidence of our presence on Monday morning. We
had grown from around 400 to 1,400 in a few short years, and we had neither
more room to seat people nor the time available in our rental agreement to
allow the addition of another service.

So after many years of praying and fundraising, and after a couple of false
starts, we bought a building and traded the problems of renting for those of
owning. The congregation rallied around getting the building ready for our first
weekend. Hundreds of hours were freely given to paint the worship center and
the children’s area, knock out walls, build new offices, fix the roof, repave the
sidewalks, set up the new sound system, and finish a thousand other tasks great
and small.

And when that first Sunday in the new facility finally came, it was—well,
different.

In one respect, there was a sense of relief in the air. The work was done. The
fundraising was almost over. The new worship times were set. We were good to
go. There was also a new and tangible sense of excitement—we could now start
to think more concretely about how God might use us to reach people in our
neighborhood.

But on Sunday morning, when our pastor said, “If you have your Bibles, open
them to . . . ,” it hit me: we weren’t “church-in-a-box” anymore. We were
something else. We were meeting in a building where we could hold baptisms
whenever we wanted, where we didn’t have to worry about setting up, tearing
down, and hiding everything away until next Sunday. We could even preach
through Romans!
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But there was no squeaking—and in that moment, I noticed its absence.

Those years’ worth of squeaks, wince after wince, were a reminder of how good
God had been to us during our time in rented facilities, and in that one facility

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in particular. That we’d been able to preach the Bible faithfully for six years
there, every single Sunday, is nothing short of miraculous. That we were able
to build good relationships with the school’s staff was a gift from God. For six
years, that school was the place where I was able to sit under humble teachers.
It was where I brought two of my children to church for the first time as
newborns, and where they spent hours each week singing songs, playing games,
and hearing stories about Jesus. Our time there hadn’t always been easy—in
fact, it was rarely easy. But it was good.

It’s been several months now since that first Sunday. The excitement of the new
building has worn off a bit. The new commute has become routine. I know the
route to each of my children’s classrooms so well I could find them in my sleep.
Life has continued, and God continues to bless us in many ways. The squeaky
desks are an increasingly distant memory.

Sometimes, though, when I least expect it, I think I hear them—and when I do,
I still miss it.

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 MARIAN V. LIAUTAUD

Inside the Church

Building of 2017
What’s hot, what’s next, and what needs to die.

I
n church architecture, there are important movements that church
leaders should consider before embarking on a church building project,
a renovation, or a remodel. We asked Marian Liautaud, director of
marketing for Aspen Group, to identify the top trends.

1. LET THERE BE LIGHT

For decades, black-box sanctuaries were the rage. These highly-controlled
environments, devoid of windows and natural light, allow production teams
to cue lights, sound, and visuals for an emotive worship experience, free of
distractions from the outside world. Today, though, churchgoers, and especially
Millennials, prefer a less-produced worship experience, and they crave nature
as a means for experiencing God.

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“We’re seeing churches take worship spaces back from the Dark Ages,” says
Dave Wilde, senior project architect for Aspen Group. “The black box is dead.
Windows are in.”

“We forgot about the outdoors when we closed all the blinds,” says Derek
DeGroot, lead architect for Aspen Group. Churches are starting to look
outside their buildings to capitalize on the natural beauty of their grounds.
“Churches are adding jogging paths, nature playgrounds, outdoor chapels, and
amphitheaters to their campuses,” says DeGroot. Mark Underwood, a principal
at Hitchcock Design Group, a planning and landscape architecture firm in
Illinois, says the most popular outdoor church spaces allow people to gather:
patios, plazas, fireplaces, water features, and trellises. Brian Felder, principal
and architect at Felder Associates, sees memorial gardens for the interment of
ashes becoming more common too.

2. CONNECTING SPACE IS KING

“After worship, church is a social center,” says Dave Wilde. The church lobby
(or narthex for traditionalists) no longer serves as merely an anteroom to the
sanctuary. Churches are using this space to create a place for fellowship and
connection on Sundays and throughout the week.

Holy Family Episcopal Church in Carmel, Indiana, a steepled church with the
signature Episcopal red door, had a small narthex surrounded by the church’s
offices. Nobody lingered before or after services. People simply brushed their
feet off and shuffled into the sanctuary for Sunday services. By moving the
offices to the far end of the church, Holy Family opened its narthex to create
a comfortable connecting space. Now people mingle longer, and Father Mike
Galvin says they’re seeing more people sign up for adult education classes
between services.

3. A PLACE TO PLAY
Many churches are following fast-food restaurants by incorporating kids’
play areas. DeGroot says, “This year alone, we’ve designed three churches
with extensive play areas for kids and café spaces where parents can meet and
have coffee while their kids play.” These play areas work best for outreach in
neighborhoods where no such alternative exists. The Fields Church in Mattoon,
Illinois and Calvary Church in Springfield, Illinois have found their play areas
are a big draw for people outside of the church.

Similarly, there seems to be a resurgence of churches adding gyms into their

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building plans. But experts caution churches to do so with care. “Churches
mean for their gyms to be for community use,” says Matthew Niermann,
assistant professor of architecture at California Baptist University in Southern
California. “But after a new church gym goes in, there’s typically a closing of
the ranks—’Awana meets on Wednesday, so we can’t rent it out to a league.’ “
According to Niermann, churches that use their gyms well seek partnerships
with organizations like YMCA, Upward Bound, or other sports ministries.

4. FOR THE COMMON GOOD

To better steward resources, churches are finding creative ways to draw people
into the building throughout the week. For example, many churches provide
shared workspace for remote workers who need Wi-Fi and a place, other than
Starbucks, to plug in and work.

Community Christian Church—Naperville Yellow Box, in Illinois, added

a first-and second-floor lobby and a training room when they renovated their
church in 2014. The lobbies feature sturdy, high-top tables with seating for four
to six people—perfect for a meeting or to plug in with your laptop. Naperville
Yellow Box also features a glass-enclosed training room, which is tech-ready
with video capabilities and Wi-Fi and seats up to 40. The church invites local
businesses to use the room for training events and meetings.

Just as people more frequently shop local, they want their church to be in and
for the community. According to Lynn Pickard, interior designer for Aspen
Group, this value is reflected more often in church interiors. “Christ the Rock
Community Church in Menasha, for instance, is situated in an active outdoor
community. This is reflected in the church’s new lobby space. Similarly, when
Yellow Box designed their children’s space, they based the interior theming on
local Naperville landmarks.”

5. SMALL IS THE NEW BIG

Churches aren’t investing in big auditoriums anymore—at least not at the rate
we saw in the 1990s and early 2000s. “We’re seeing more churches go multisite
instead of building large auditoriums,” says Lynn Pickard. This squares with
the soon-to-be-released data by the Cornerstone Knowledge Network and
Barna Group, which looks at multisites and church plants.

“We see growing churches mitigating the risk of building through a multisite
strategy and standardization of program and facilities,” says Randy Seitz,
an architect with Blue Ridge Architects in Harrisonburg, Virginia. “In

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Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, we’re not seeing many main—or
sending—campuses larger than 2,500 people. Receiving campuses typically
seat 700 to 900 people, and there is an emphasis through service format, décor,
children’s ministries, and such to make the experience the same across all
campuses. This standardization helps control costs and enable churches to
move more quickly from rented facilities to more permanent facilities.”

© Christianity Today

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