Winston Churchill said “we shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”
Church facilities are crucial to how you carry out God’s vision for your congregation. When it comes time to address space and facility issues where you serve, here are 10 questions your team should consider before choosing a designer, architect, or builder:
- Do they have a solid understanding of ministry?
- Do they know how to discover the correct tool for your church?
- Do they have good listening skills and will they take the time to understand your church’s DNA?
- Can they communicate plans and processes well?
- What kind of track record do they have in regard to handling challenges?
- Have they demonstrated patience and empathy to clients?
- What do other pastors say about their integrity?
- Are they prone to desire a business relationship or ministry relationship?
- How do they protect a church’s ministry?
- Is the price going to be fair and not put the ministry in a financial strain?
There is no right way to build the wrong building. Do your homework and pray God will lead you to an architect/construction firm that has ministry experience. Remember, the bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.
Posted on June 17, 2020
Tim Songster is the president of Cosco & Associates, Inc, a national specialist in church design and construction. Having completed over 1,000 church related projects, his firm offers a turn key solution including first impressions, church health, financial and facility analysis, strategic master planning, design, engineering, financing, and construction.
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9 Comments
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Tim, you haver done a good job in mapping out the procedures in choosing a builder. One of the things I would do is to visit a site where the builder has completed a project. This would give first hand knowledge of the skills of the builder. Phillip Basinger.
In the process of selecting an architect/builder. the building committee on which I served in the 1980s visited the sites of the churches which each candidate had designed and constructed. We also looked at secular buildings that they had designed and constructed and interviewed the owners of the buildings.
I served on a church building committee in the 1980s. We were a new church plant and the building would be our first. One decision that we made at the outset and kept foremost in each phase of planning and constructing the building was that the function of the building would determine its form and not the other way around. In our choice of a church architect this was a major consideration. Whoever we picked, would be able to put function before form. It took some work but we found an architect who had experience in designing and constructing attractive but functional church buildings.