Worship Space

Sorry, I missed this earlier ... I was off on vacation and not looking at the Internet at all.

One thought strikes me in reading this and the blog in general ... are you asking the question - how does the church look to the community as far as portraying Christ as His hands and feet? That is your primary resource.

Facility presentation has its place,but ultimately it comes down to the old question of will the church split if we get green carpet instead of purple ... or do we really see the facility as just a place to glorify God in all we do and say and we shove aside the physical as not of primary importance. ... secondary, something to be entrusted to those with the gifts in that area?

Maybe because I have heard a lot the last several years in our church about how the church should look to encourage new comers to return, that I wonder what the church is besides a socially acceptable place. I have heard that we need to look nice or some will not return at all ... so we now have rose beds. That we need to have nice looking classrooms for the children or parents will not bring their children. So the rooms are being painted (not a bad idea, but is that really all that a parent looks for, for their children? Personally, after sitting in the class, I objected to the teacher's obvious lack of preparation, the pretty room was very secondary at that point.)

We visited a lot of churches one year in conjunction with visiting friends and family and were struck with one thing: how very much the newest and best all looked alike: clear pulpit, PowerPoint projections of songs and sermon points, casual dress of pastor. That was the flavor of the year in appearances. One in particular was trying to impress new comers but they never got around to asking our names or anything about ourselves.

Me? With all that moving around, I just wanted to be in a place where folks actually wanted me there and spent enough time to have a conversation with me to find out about me rather than just checking me out from a distance and making some obvious assumptions. Long term, personally, I remember the people and the interactions far better than the facilities - the interest shown better than the improvements.

Another ideas, check with your community resources ... your neighbors, visitors and see what they think or how they respond.

At our church we now have some mighty fine powerpoint projectors used at every meeting, excellent sound system, fantastic musical instruments, a newly recarpeted auditorium, are in the process of refreshing the overall look - including moving away clutter, expanded youth meeting room for the big crowd on Wednesday night, BUT, the church has been slowly shrinking the last 15 years - while we improved looks, the church shrank in population size, except for the Wednesday nite live with teens.

That explodes. But then the youth pastor did a lot of praying and searching God's will. God impressed on him that if he would reach out to the kids on the fringe and quit worrying about just reaching the sport stars and cheerleaders, he would reach both.
He reached those on the fringe, the kids came, the space and AV were all inadequate, but the church improved facility needs as they became obvious for facilitating reaching out to all the teens. Funny thing happened on the way to growing, we didn't hear from parents about wanting perfect facilities, nor from the kids about wanting excellent AV or PowerPoint. They got them eventually, but the people were there first, and there rather regularly.

Just a few thoughts from the pews, from a non-reader of "Church growth and improvement" books.

Thanks to all of you for your great comments and suggestions. I'm looking forward to this and hopefully sharing with you what we too learn in the process.

Kim, thanks for the hint on tom long's book. I'll have to definitely look into that.

I was on a task force such as this at my home church. It is a daunting task. Also, these issues are before the congregation I serve as we prepare this next year to also make some major renovations. Not so much the a/v stuff, but new carpet, paint, sound system.

The best thing I've read that will offer guidance is a resource that perhaps you are already aware of - Tom Long's "Beyond the Worship Wars: Building worship that is vital and (something else that I can't remember right now - faithful, maybe?). I think it was put out by Alban. While it is mostly focused on what happens during the worship service, there are also chapters on sanctuary furnishings, hospitality, etc. It provides a lot of foundational theology behind worship, so in that it also offers good guiding principles. It is a quick and easy read, and written in Long's vibrant style. I've given it to a couple of worship elders who have enjoyed it and learned a great deal (or at least that's what they told me ;)

In re-reading my comment I realize that it looks like we need an elevator to reach the platform! LOL No, the abundance of stairs are in other places in the building.

I would try and get a group of people together who are similar to the type of people you want to bring in - and talk with them. See what they would like, feel comfortable with and get ideas.

Also - do some tours, look around at how other churchs have do it.

Good luck - I'd love to come take a look when you figure it out.

We went through something similar a few years ago re: how we use our building (not just the sanctuary) but we didn't really have 'a resource' that we used.

From experience though, I'd suggest considering some of the following:

re #1 - sightlines for screens/projected materials - have people sit in many/all areas of the room. Can they see well? Different ages of people would probably be good too :)
- recording sermons - get the best equipment you can afford, otherwise things can sound fuzzy very easily.

re #2 - we discovered there was a lot of clutter in our building. Solution: we removed one table at the back (everything seemed to get put there); we weeded through things somewhat mercilessly. (Don't tell but sometimes I still 'disappear' certain things!)

re #3 - we took out the orange 70's carpet and red linoleum and put wall to wall light beige carpetting (yes the acoustics survived) and the whole room looks so much brighter; we also lowered the platform by one step (about 8" or so) which makes a big difference in viewing angle. We still have too many stairs and not enough $$$ for an elevator...

At one time we had before & after pics on the church website, but they seem to be gone now. If you are interested, I (well, actually my teenager) could figure out how to send them to you.

I wrote a little bit of open source software, Songbee, to handle displaying worship song lyrics, and while doing so had a scout of the competition: see its web site for my roundup.

2.0 is coming out as soon as I've finished updating the manual, at which point it will be better than some of the others in the field, so please give it (and them) a look.