Build a Building and Empty the One You Have
by Josh Hunt www.joshhunt.com

Question: How many pickles can you get in a ten pickle jar?

Answer: Ten pickles.

Question: How many pickles can you get in a ten pickle jar if you pray about it?

Answer: As many as God wants. Usually ten.

Question: How many people can you consistently get into a 500 seat auditorium?

Answer: About 400, because of the 80% rule. (Explained later.)

Question: How many people can you consistently get into a 500 seat auditorium if you pray about it?

Answer: As many as God wants. Normally about 400, because of the 80% rule.

Let me cut to the quick. We will never reach America for God with a paradigm that says we can only use our buildings once a week. We will never reach America for God with a system that means we spend $6000 for every man woman and child who attends our Sunday School. Where did we get such an idea?

From the farm. On the farm the traditional church model made sense where we built a little chapel and put along side of it an education building with one or two rooms for preschoolers, one or two rooms for children, one of two rooms and three or four rooms for adults. We all met one time a week for Sunday School at 9:45 with church following. (As if Sunday School is not church.) The building process was not accompanied by a sell-the-farm fund raising drive, because much of the work was done by the men of the church, while the women fixed up some home-made mashed potatoes, fried chicken and sweet iced tea. Ahhh, for life on the farm again.

Today, we can't get the men to show up for a work day and the women are tired of cooking for the annual church pot luck dinner. I don't know if you noticed, but this is not the farm anymore. Men today think like this: My carpentry and painting skills cannot possible be worth more than $10 - $20 an hour. I am a lawyer. I bill out my time at $100 and hour. After overhead, I still come home with over half that. Why I don't I just work a couple of more hours, and pay someone else to paint. They will probably have to pay someone to fix up what I mess up anyway. I'd gladly write a check for the whole she-bang. But, please don't ask me to give up my kids soccer game so I can paint. We pout and talk about how uncommitted boomers are.

Building church buildings are not great barn raising events anymore. They are not great sources of unity. Quite the contrary, building projects usually stop the growth of the church and the pastor usually ends up resigning.

Once solution is to employ the home group system. Four times as much space is required for Sunday School than worship (40 square feet per person verse ten square feet per person). If a church does not use a Sunday School system, they can save a pile of money on buildings. I think it is a costly decision, because, as I have argued previously, I believe Sunday School is an inherently superior system to home groups. The problem is, Sunday School space is just awfully expensive. Southern Baptists have spend $6000 a chair for Sunday School space. We know people will bring about $20 a weekend so that the cost to provide space for Sunday School seems almost prohibitive. Amortized at 8%, this would take nearly ten years to pay for. This is why many churches are opting for home groups. Sunday School space is just too expensive.

There is a better way. It is called the multi-congregation paradigm. I discuss it fully in Let It Grow! The long and short of it is that I dream of a day when we think of multiple services as the norm, rather than the exception. I dream of the day when churches routinely have 6, 8 and 10 services. I dream of the day when we regularly see churches with a team of preaching pastors and worship leaders. I dream of the day when we see churches providing services in a wide variety of worship styles, from traditional to contemporary to country to rap. Why not, that is what is in the population. We would only be doing the work of good missionaries.

The multi-congregation model offers two impressive advantages. First, it is incredibly less expensive. You can cut the costs of buildings in half by planning from day one to use them twice instead of once. You can cut the costs of buildings by 75% if you plan to use them four times. If you dare use them ten times they become downright inexpensive.

The second advantage of the multi-congregation model is variety. Variety in time; variety in music style; variety in preaching personality and approach. There was a day when the market would tolerate a, "You can have a car any color you like as long as it is black" attitude. No more. This is not the farm. The city loves variety. We all love choices. The multi-congregation paradigm offers the advantage of being able to present the gospel in ways that make sense to the various segments of our culture.

The multi-congregation paradigm is easy enough to wade into gradually. Just start another service. When you get comfortable with that, start another and another. Around 4 or 5 services per weekend you need to think of strengthening the bench with an alternate preacher and giving some relief to your musician.

It is amazing to me that people are sill wondering about whether to go to two Sunday Schools. To me, the question is not if, but when. Two Sunday Schools are a year or two before three Sunday Schools.

There is one very good reason why a church ought to build instead of using their buildings over and over. If the condition of a church building detracts from the work and message of the church, they ought to build. Buildings ought to be as nice as the banks and schools and Burger Kings in the community. Many church buildings are not. Business think nothing or razing a building and constructing a new one because they know that atmosphere matters. They know that functionality matters. Taco Bell is running all around the country abandoning their old buildings and building new ones. Why? Because they are not content to be the best fast food mexican food provider in the country. They want to go head to head with McDonalds, Subway and Burger King. They know they got to have buildings that are 70% customer area and 30% kitchen area to do it. So, they are building bright, attractive new buildings all around the country. I would love to see a movement of bright, new, attractive buildings used to propagate the gospel. They will cash flow if we use them often enough. They never will if we only plan to use them once a week.

Listen to a pastor talk about how many people a building seats. He will rarely say this, "We want to build an auditorium and Sunday School space to seat 500. If we use it 4 times, this will enable us to reach 2000." No. We think of reaching 2000 by building 2000 seats in SS and 2000 seats in Sunday School. We need to think in terms of four to five hundred seats that are used four or five times.

Again, as we staff, this is an area where the savings are not minimal. We are not talking about a ten or twenty percent savings. We are talking about cutting costs by half or seventy five percent or more. That is not only good stewardship, it is the only way we can consistently double a church every two years or less. It simply costs too much to do it any other way.

20 Questions

1. Let's review some of the main themes we have covered so far. First: quickly, what is your vision for your church?

2. What is your plan for reaching your vision?

3. What are the major obstacles that will have to be overcome?

4. What progress have you made toward the vision since we started this study?

5. What is your percentage growth in Sunday School attendance right now?

6. What is your personal involvement in Sunday School right now?

7. What improvements have you seen in your facilities?

8. What improvements have you seen in your pastoral care? Have you implemented a system where you contact people who have had a loss on a regular basis?

9. Have you begun meeting with church members one afternoon a week to keep you hand on the pulse of the church and "drain off the venom" when necessary?

10. Have you implemented a benchmarking system that enables you to effectively track the progress of the church?

11. On to this week's study. Why does Josh feel so strongly that multiple services are necessary to an effective paradigm?

12. How many services can a church offer?

13. Has anyone read Let It Grow! According to that book, what are some of the advantages of the multi-congregation paradigm?

14. How many times a week can one pastor preach?

15. What do you think of sharing the pulpit with someone else on a regular basis?

16. What are the advantages of multiple services?

17. Financially, how much could multiple services save a church?

18. What is the one compelling reason to build a new building?

19. If your church were to double twice in the next ten years, what would it mean for you in terms of building?

20. Does anyone have any challenges in terms of space right now? Let's talk together about what solutions we see.