Begin by considering how people perceive the church at every point of contact. For example, how would a first time guest (FTG) perceive the church driving into the parking lot….walking in the front door….walking into the auditorium….or walking out? Think through how to make them feel noticed, appreciated, legitimate, and understood. Have trained greeters in the parking lot for example, people inside the front door orienting them to your culture and facility, as well as people ready to share with them afterwards and get them connected in ways comfortable to them. One church ensures each FTG leaves their first visit with a committed relationship and a ministry responsibility when they come back. Size isn’t the issue to feeling personable…..intentional efforts are.   

"Code"(who we are....our DNA) and "Calling" (where we believe God is calling us) should guide and influence everything we do. "Code" and "Calling" influence the type of ministries we pursue, staffing we develop, and of course facilities we should consider to support those activities. Buying property or designing buildings without clarity of both “Code” and “Calling” is analogous to beginning a vacation without a clear destination…..resulting in the risk of backtracking, wrong destinations, frustration, and hesitation.

Ed Bahler, Aspen Group

www.aspengroup.com 

Please visit the Discussion section entitled Sucessful Stewardship Campaign for the questions and answers provided by the speaker,Pat Cummins of RSI.  www.viscern.com  

Full question: we are a small church of 70 members and can utilize some of what we hear today. I'm curious as to how many here are under 100, how many 100-300, how many 300+ are represented here today.

Response: The average weekend attendance of the churches represented at the conference was as follows:

Avg. Attendance	# of Churches
0-100	3
100-200	13
200-500	19
500-1000	4
1000+	3

We are often asked how a small church can apply the examples that seem to be from larger congregations. Our encouragement is to look at the examples as demonstrating “transferable principles” that can be “scaled” up or down.

Consider an example of connecting space, like at Living Water Community or Vineyard Urbana (www.aspengroup.com/ProjectLibrary.asp). Even if you don’t have enough space for an area this size, you could ask, “where could we create space where people could relax and spend time together?” Perhaps you could carve out part of your lobby for a cluster of furniture. Or convert a classroom to a gathering area.

The point is that the principles are universal – it’s all about people whether you’re talking 100 or 1000 – so “steal” what you can from the creativity of others, whether larger or smaller than you, and see where it leads!

Other related questions:

1) Does Aspen coordinate all phases of a building project: vision casting, fundraising, communication venues, etc?

2) What is the quickest way to get started? If you have just begun talking about this, what is the most important step to begin?

Response: we realize the day can be a bit overwhelming and feel like you’ve been drinking from a fire hose! The conference is meant to do three things:

• Inform (that’s all the information you had presented to you – much of it from original research as well as many years of experience on the part of the presenters)
• Introduce (there were many people there who will be helpful to you as you move through this process)
• Inspire (by God’s grace you can do this! And it can be a blessing to you and your church body!).

That said, yes we at Aspen can help coordinate the various phases of your project. Some of these things we offer as direct services, and some, like fundraising, we coordinate with industry experts in the various fields.

It’s very important to start by selecting an internal team who will lead the process. I would be happy to expand on the principles shared in the Selecting the Team presentation if you would like to contact me at beisenmann@aspengroup.com. Very early in the process you will want to select external partners who can assist you in the various phases of visioning, feasibility, architecture and construction.

We at Aspen would welcome the opportunity to connect with your team to explore how we can best be of assistance. You can start by contacting any one of us from Aspen but specifically, for Indianapolis and the surrounding area: Lynn Cobb at lcobb@aspengroup.com and for Illinois and Northwest Indiana: Yolanda Fields at yfields@aspengroup.com.

Brad Eisenmann, Aspen Group. www.aspengroup.com