Stages of the Church During Expansion

We're currently finishing up a 25,000 square foot expansion on our church building (should be in within 2-3 months) and it's been a long road. I don't know of too many detractors of the project but it could be in the way we have done it. We knew it was obvious that we needed more office space and classroom space as well as someplace for our disabled to meet and to have an elevator to assist those disabled to get around the church. We broke ground on this building in May of 2004 - yep, it will be 4 years before we're finished. This is because we didn't do ONE step on this job without having the cash to pay for it. NONE of the projected final cost of $2 million was financed but all paid in cash. This was one measure of what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. After the initial work of foundation, framing and enclosing the addition, the majority of the work is being done "in house" - with "Extreme Makeover, Church Addition" weekends. The congregation has stepped up and done most of the work and even 8 of the pastors work every Friday from 8AM to 4PM (the senior pastor is not that healthy for the manual kind of work that they're doing AND he's working on his messages then) to get this building done. We have the second floor of offices almost done, the main lobby will be opened next month, I figure - once the other side is almost done (then it's a big push to "meld" the two together), and the basement is pretty much done with just having ceiling tiles put in as per the fire inspector. It's taken us twice as long as originally planned but we didn't have the money to pay others to do it so we did it ourselves.

I think you'll always have opinions in a church and obviously not everyone is going to agree with you. You need to prayerfully consider what GOD wants you to do and to His will rather than the will of part of the congregation.

 

Then use the idea of the "Extreme Makeover" that we've done. We started out working from 8PM on Friday evening and went through until midnight on Saturday night but then we found that it was best to have a 6PM to midnight on Friday night and 2 sessions on Saturday - from 8AM to noon and noon to 6. We would make sure that we provided food for all shifts. It worked out really well because we had a number of people who were skilled and even those who were not. Those who were not learned quickly how to screw down subflooring, paint and wallpaper. We even had some of them do sheetrocking (and then had a GREAT spackler come in. LOL). Even in a small church, you should be able to get a few men and women to help out, I'd think.

 

Yep - fortunately, our missions pastor is a licensed contractor. LOL! Before he became a pastor, he was a contractor and he kept his license current. He's acted as the general contractor over the entire project saving us a TON of money. But even just having congregants doing ceiling tiles, wallpapering, trim, painting and such really helps a LOT.

 

Our building finances were a different budget than the general budget so no one's tithe went to the new building. It was completely separate and we had to actually mark it for the other account (Operation Jabez). If we didn't have the money to do something, it didn't get done. Period.