There’s No Right Way to Build the Wrong Thing

Unless you know the right questions to ask, you have no way of knowing if what your church is planning to build is the right thing or not. As I have probably said several hundred times, “answers are easy, it’s knowing the questions to ask that is hard.” Knowing what questions to ask, and asking them in the right order, that’s the tricky bit.  Oh yes, then there is that other hard bit about knowing what to do with the answers – but other than that, its all pretty straight forward! (Just kidding, by the way; the water is much colder and deeper than it looks.)

Humor aside, it is much easier to get a church building program somewhat wrong than to get it all the way right.  And no matter how well executed the wrong plan is, it will still produce an inferior result.  When speaking of spending hundreds of thousands or millions of church dollars, should you not as good stewards strive for the best possible outcome?

Some might argue “better a bad building than no building at all,” but I would take issue with that position.  With no building of your own, your possibilities are, while not unlimited, at least plentiful.  However, the church with the bad building is saddled with it, and the debt it probably created, for many years; it can be an albatross hanging around the  neck of the church.  A church building program is not like an etch-a-sketch, you can’t just shake it and start over.  You will have to live with the mistakes in building and will pay for them (literally) for years to come.

So, how does a church avoid mistakes in church design?  The answer to this big question is, “by having an objective understanding of its needs and financial ability.”  The answer to the big question, however, is derived by answering a lot of smaller questions.  Now, remember how we started this article – most churches don’t know the right questions to ask.  Asking and answering questions is the main purpose of the church needs and feasibility study that is best conducted by an objective and experience church building consultant.

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