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A Simple Church Facility Strategy

Orginally published on Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 8:40 AM
by Todd Rhoades

David McDaniel has a very interesting post on building and facility strategy... He gives his input on when a church should build, and when they should not. He also gives some alternatives to building a new facility. One of the questions most people ask is... 'when should we build'? Many have used the 75% capacity (or I've also heard 80%) rule... (you won't grow after your worship center has reached XX% seating capacity.) David shatters this with a new thought:

As your crowd increases, maximize your capacity by utilizing multiple services in your current auditorium. Do this until your Seat Turns (total weekend adults in worship divided by auditorium seat capacity) is 2.0 or more. For example, you have an auditorium capacity of 400. Your 11am service has 300 and your 9am service has 200. Your Seat Turns are (300+200)/400 = 1.25. You haven’t grown in 6 months. You listen to church growth people who say that, at 75%, your auditorium is functionally full. That’s why you aren’t growing. You start a capital campaign to go buy land. YOU’RE DEAD WRONG. Exciting churches have standing room only at their 11am services. Make your church more irresistible and consider as many as 4 services on Sunday. An attendance pattern for a church that has 3 services (a 9am, an 11am, and a 6pm service) might be 60%, 110%, and 60% respectively. That’s 2.3 seat turns.

Hmmm... I like that... 'exciting churches have SRO at their main service'...

David also shares some other thoughts/strategies.

What do you think? When should your church build?

I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Todd

This post has been viewed 1331 times so far.

There are 12 Comments:

Posted by kurt oberlin

Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 10:49 AM

I couldn’t agree more. We do combined services for the summer since our attendance is sometimes down a little bit. We found that with it being so much more crowded during the summer, it created momentum and our attendance actually didn’t drop more that 2% on average.
Posted by Bart

Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 1:09 PM

“YOU’RE DEAD WRONG”, thank you God for the correct answer. How is it that all the other formulas are wrong but McDaniel is correct? This is more a local chruch decision and depends on local criteria. And no we are not in a building project nor are we planning one. I would consider this formula and all others.
Posted by

Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 2:13 PM

WHO has SRO at their 11 a.m. services? Names please.
Posted by

Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 4:55 PM

We did in Filipino Ministry and he’s right there was this huge energy and enthusiasm that came from that.
We were holding services in a hotel conference room, and people would arrive early to get a seat (which is huge in Filipino ministry since everything typically starts at least 1/2 hour late)

And there was this counter / bar thing, people would sit on it and lean against walls etc.

When we moved to a bigger facility, we lost some of that momentum, though it was a necessary move.

This was an interesting article, since we are just getting to this stage in our ministry here. We had 10 extra seats on Sunday.

Interesting…
Posted by

Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 7:26 PM

We had a lot of people leaving our 11am service due to a lack of parking and seats. The church was over 2000 people, and most of our visitors came to that service, and they were turning away! Our solution was to add a Saturday night service and the Pastor plead with regular attenders to consider the much more laid back, but equally good Saturday night. They all loved it. It made it easier for some of them to volunteer on Sundays, or just enjoy the whole day with their families. That saved us a bunch of money building on or building new.
Posted by Peter Hamm

Friday, February 06, 2009 at 7:24 AM

In a few weeks we launch our first “multi-site”.

I think that might be the answer for a lot of us. I used to think it wasn’t.
Posted by Carl Thomas

Friday, February 06, 2009 at 9:03 AM

I think going multi-site and multi service often has more to do with parking then actual seating. People are far less put off by inconvenient seating than they are having to encounter parking lot gridlock.

I am a big supporter of the “build bigger” approach but that is rarely an option outside rural areas. Land prices climb exponentially with larger lots.
Posted by

Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 8:52 PM

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Posted by Natural Menopause

Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 7:47 PM

Our solution was to add a Saturday night service and the Pastor plead with regular attenders to consider the much more laid back, but equally good Saturday night. They all loved it. It made it easier for some of them to volunteer on Sundays, or just enjoy the whole day with their families. That saved us a bunch of money building on or building new.

Natural Menopause
Posted by

Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 8:16 PM

very nice post thanks!!!!

Blue Eyes
Posted by Online College

Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 1:29 PM

All of us pray that God will continue to use our church as powerfully as He does now, for decades to come.
Our community has a bright future, and we believe we are in the right location to be a vital part of it. Our own church demographics support a long term commitment to our current facility.Your church leaders have developed a strategy for us to maximize our spiritual effectiveness. This plan also includes renovating part of our present facility.Online College
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Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 11:55 PM

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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.