Churches are notoriously bad at planning for the future. Much of our work comes from helping churches creatively adjust an existing facility that has become a “train wreck” due to a legacy of poor planning. Reactions to urgencies over a long period of time is the most common culprit. As an urgent need arises for a larger nursery a quick addition is slapped onto the nursery space. As additional classrooms are needed a Classroom wing is slapped on to the easiest spot, as the Office needs to expand the fellowship lobby is diced up into Office space, and on and on. The church grows like bacteria; in all sorts of random directions. Often this is the point at which we are called to see if anything can be done to fix the mess. Our job in these situations is master planning in reverse. How can the church re-use and re-orient what they have to work and allow them to grow into the future. One specific example that I can recall was a church that began about 50 years ago as Worship Center, lobby, and small nursery space. A Classroom wing was soon added in a way that worked for the moment but made it difficult for future growth. As additional growth needs for classrooms, offices, and youth developed temporary trailers were put up around the site. These trailers soon sprouted additions and second floors, and soon the church became a city of disconnected, disoriented cheap buildings that were falling apart. To make matters worse this group of trailers contributed to an area of their site that experienced poor drainage, and lack of maintenance, which turned this area into unsuable wetlands. In this extreme case our only solution for the church was to tear down all of the accessory buildings and build a new building that was roughly equivalent in square footage to what they were losing. The church was forced into a million dollar building program, but they did not gain a single square foot. Please don’t let this happen to your church. Even if the project is small, master plan for the future, so that you can know with confidence that this small, phase one program will fit within the long term vision of the church.

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