Use of the Local Church Building

[saturneptune]

I would be very interested in knowing how your church handles either renting out or letting others use your building for college classes, weddings, baby showers, birthday parties, or other gatherings. We are pretty open minded about it, espcially to members. We make sure it is a Christ like gathering. The one thing that seems to be our biggest problem has been the people not cleaning up their mess, and our custodian having to clean it up. I feel it is not his job, and now we insist they clean it up before giving permission.

Thanks for your responses.

 

[abcgrad94]

I know of a church who had this problem. They do not charge to use the facilities, but they started charging a $100 cleaning fee for weddings.

Your church may want to require a cleaning deposit up front before the building is used. Then, if it is not cleaned properly, the church custodian can keep the cleaning fee for their extra work.

 

[saturneptune]

I know of a church who had this problem. They do not charge to use the facilities, but they started charging a $100 cleaning fee for weddings.

Your church may want to require a cleaning deposit up front before the building is used. Then, if it is not cleaned properly, the church custodian can keep the cleaning fee for their extra work.

I agree with that, if the custodian is willing. Do you have a fellowship hall? We are a smaller church and use partitioned Sunday Schools to make our fellowship hall.

 

[HAMel]

In a church we attended ten years ago a new set of by-laws were proposed. After the vote to accept these new by-laws and after a long delay, the new rules were distributed to the membership. We discovered a slight alteration to the original language.

"Use of any facilities of XYZ Baptist Church must be approved exclusively by the pastor, in writing".

We left soon after that.

 

[abcgrad94]

I agree with that, if the custodian is willing. Do you have a fellowship hall? We are a smaller church and use partitioned Sunday Schools to make our fellowship hall.

The church I spoke of had a fellowship hall. The main problem came when people would hold weddings and the poor janitor would end up cleaning the entire sanctuary and fellowship hall (sometimes on a Saturday night) before church the next morning.

 

[annsni]

We do not rent out to outside organizations unless it's been approved by the pastors - and it's a group that is like minded to us. We also don't rent it then - it's a ministry that we allow them to use the building. So we've had Passion at our church, LeCrae, Youth for Christ do stuff - that sort of thing.

For things like weddings and showers, one of the party (bride/groom/mom/dad) needs to be a member of the church. Any even that someone has at the church requires a $250 fee for the custodian, sound man (if needed), church supplies, etc. That has to be paid up front.

 

[abcgrad94]

One thing I forgot to mention--have a checklist on hand for the groups using the facilities. On the checklist, let them know what is expected, like lights turned off, dishes washed and put away, trash picked up and taken to the dumpster, floor vacuumed, bathrooms supplies restocked, etc.

 

[preachinjesus]

We allow outside groups and people to use our facility so long as they meet certain requirements and are qualified by our facilities team. Given that we have a pretty large facility we want it used by the community. The challenge is that we usually get around a thousand requests a year. We screen them and then have them go through the team.

We also have baseline pricing to offset our facility costs for external events. For instance we just approved a graduation in our worship center. We are charging the school $1500 for the use of the facility. That us very close to our actual costs for that event. Its also cheaper than any other civic venue. We have some pretty rigorous guidelines so it discourages extraneous requets.

If you're considering opening up your facility for outside, and inside, groups make sre you have definite guidelines in place. Talk to other churches, even the huge ones because they are definitely helpful.

 

[sag38]

We charge a reasonable fee mainly to cover the cost of clean up. We also have clear guidelines as to its usage.

 

[SaggyWoman]

If they don't clean it, don't let them use it. Or, they can pay for the custodian (or someone else who wants a job) to do it ahead of time.

 

[Deacon]

Well just this week a Jewish group asked us if they might use our facilities for their weekly meetings.

Rob

 

[Salty]

One thing no one has mentioned - does the group have insurance?????