Some More Lessons From Building Two Buildings

7. Do not make the building the vision. The building is not the vision; the building is a tool to see the vision come to pass. It is very important to keep the church and yourself focused on the ministry that will take place because of the new building and not on the new building itself.

8. Make sure you have enough parking. For the first Sunday in our first facility, we only had 166 parking spaces. I listened to my architect, and he did not offer me good advice. We added a gravel parking lot on the Monday following our first service in the new building.

9. Make sure you have functional kids’ space. The design of the kids’ space in our phase one building is horrible. The traffic flow bottlenecks, so there is major congestion that could have been avoided if we would have designed it better. Be sure to think about traffic flow when you are in the design phase of a building.

10. Schedule a vacation after you preach your stewardship campaign and shortly after you move into a new building. The most exhausting and draining time of ministry for me was following our two stewardship campaigns. The second most exhausting season of ministry was after we moved into our first phase.

11. Be sure you realize how taxing it is on your staff to pull off an effective campaign and to build and move into a new facility. It can be a draining process, and you need to make sure your team is in a healthy place following those grueling seasons of ministry.