[BONUS EPISODE] From portable location to permanent

Speaker A: 00:00:08

Hey, welcome everyone to our unfiltered podcast. My name is Lee Stevenson and it's my privilege to serve as the executive director of church planning with Converge.

My co host here, Danny, Danny Parmalee.

Speaker B: 00:00:19

From Converge Mid America.

Speaker A: 00:00:21

And we're excited to have real conversations about real life, about ministry, about church planning today. Today our topic is going to be talking about the portable church versus permanent church.

And really we're going to kind of zero in on the transitioning aspect.

I know every church planter that I think I've come across and probably you can say the same, like you look forward to that day, you know, where you get to the point and you're like, man, I'm just so tired of set up and tear down and putting things in a trailer. And I'm ready to move into more of a permanent situation.

I know for us, we, we did church in both a movie theater and we did church in a high school before we transitioned into what actually became our purchased facility. But we moved in as a tenant originally.

And there are pluses definitely of having permanent space in the community, but there are challenges to it as well. So tell us a little your story, Danny.

Speaker B: 00:01:17

Yeah, so we were renting a facility on Sunday nights from another church, but we had to take our stuff kind of in and out because they still had their church in there on Sunday, Sunday mornings. We ended up purchasing that facility. And then for our second location, we actually had purchased a facility for that.

But our third location then we did a high school. So we went from permanent to not permanent. So a little bit of a reverse that way. So we've had a few experiences around.

Speaker A: 00:01:45

How long total were you guys in a kind of portable situation before you were able to move into a more permanent.

Speaker B: 00:01:52

So we launched in: 2005

Speaker A: 00:01:58

Okay, so about four, four solid four years. I know for us, we were almost three years when we finally moved into a permanent facility. And honestly it just kind of, we fell into it.

But we moved into what I would call in every way was a foreclosed property. You know, we, we, we moved in as tenants with the hope that we'd be able to purchase it. So the owner refused to sell us the property at first.

I think they, they were more interested in the income stream.

When we moved into the property, every wall in the property of the building was peach and the carpet was this horrid like 15 year old blue carpet that literally bubbled. So the glue wasn't even holding the carpet. Down on the floor anymore. And that gave us some major challenges as well.

There are fondness I still have of those days being portable.

You know, I remember vacuuming up the popcorn in the movie theater to make sure that the babies wouldn't crawl over and eat it, you know, and some of that made for fun.

But I think when we're talking about portable church versus permanent church, I think this is one of the most critical decisions that a church plant has to make in their early years of ministry. It's kind of, when do we buy a building, when do we move to that permanent, when do we decide?

We, you know, I think in our terms, a lot of us think of the fact that when we are out of a portable situation now, we are a real church and we have to move away from that thinking and realize it's not the building that makes you a real church. Right. What kind of, what did you guys wrestle with when it came to moving through and realizing some of that?

Speaker B: 00:03:48

So I think, and most people would, would say that as well too. They would know that the church is not the building.

The interesting or one of the harder things is that for non Christians or the people that you're trying to reach for, some of them, they, they do kind of hold that. So there can be some importance kind of in that.

But I think you have to, you have to act and be a real church before you get a building, because that's not going to solve the problems that way.

Speaker A: 00:04:17

So, yeah, we have to be careful of making buildings the, you know, that's when we make it aspect, because the reality is buildings are just a shell. There's no life in the building itself. I mean, I oftentimes come back to thinking through the early church and how the early church got moving.

The earlier church was alive, and for the earliest lifespan of the church, the church just gathered in homes or wherever they could find a place to meet. Having a permanent home does help in practical ways, but it's never a thing that makes us a real church.

And so I think we have to challenge our paradigm as church planners to realize that's not necessarily the case.

Speaker B: 00:04:59

And the other thing is to understand there are a ton of advantages of being portable as well.

So I mean, everything from even financially, not all the time, but a lot of times your financial and honestly, the freedom, because once you, once you buy that building, you can't control the neighborhood, you can't control highway and roads that are coming in and out and all those different things where in a portable situation you can say you Know what this is? This no longer works for us. We're too big or we're too small, so we need to try to find a different location.

Speaker A: 00:05:32

Yeah, we had to sacrifice things when we went from portable to a permanent situation. For instance, like parking. We had phenomenal parking. When we were in a high school or in a movie theater. Parking just was never an issue.

And when we moved into our permanent facility, more cars parked on dirt than they actually did on pavement. And that was just what the reality was for us to be able to hold church in that. Same with lobby.

When we were in a movie theater, we had phenomenal lobby space and it smelled great because it smelled like popcorn. But we never were able to replicate the lobby space that we had ever, once we left the movie theater. I think it's too.

It's helpful for, as planters in a portable situation to realize that when you move into a permanent established area in your community, that move isn't going to solve all your problems. Talk to us a little bit about how you saw that come into reality.

Speaker B: 00:06:31

So I just think, and especially anything that you have going on leadership wise or even volunteer wise, like, oh, well, you know, we're struggling to get enough volunteers. And so once we get into a permanent facility, you know, then we won't, we won't have that issue anymore.

I mean, if you're struggling to get volunteers, you probably have more of a vision and mission issue going on than you do a facility problem.

Because then you'll just get in there and you're going to have people that maybe they just wanted to sit and they have this consumeristic idea of what church is and that they, they thought that that's what the goal was.

They thought that the mission or vision of the church was get into a building so that we can just have all of our friends here and you know, and you know, have. Have church every Sunday that way.

Speaker A: 00:07:17

So, yeah, I would add, like, if your children's ministry is a disaster, it's probably going to be a disaster when you move into a permanent facility. You know, those things don't go away. Those are more leadership defined than it is, you know, related specifically to the location that you're in.

Speaker B: 00:07:34

And I think that one of the things that, going back to the volunteer thing is we think that people don't like to volunteer. Okay. Just in our minds, we think that we're always asking them to do something that they don't want to do.

And so you think that you're saving them by. All right, well, you're no longer going to have to come and set up chairs. You're no longer going to have to, you know, set up sound equipment.

And granted, there's times where it's hard and it's rough or people may go through seasons of burnout, but for a lot of people, that is one of their number one ways that they're able to serve God, number one and to connect with others.

And there can be a major shift that if you're not careful when you go from portable to permanent, you're taking away people's responsibility and value and identity, even that. So you have to, you have to be careful of, of that, of those switching natures and figure out.

Because there is still plenty to do within a permanent situation. But you just need to redirect those.

Speaker A: 00:08:35

Yeah, I know. For us, we found it difficult as well to speak to that. We had a guy that he just owned. The fact I drive the trailer, I'm the trailer guy.

And every morning he loved getting up early, taking his big truck out to pull our 30 foot trailer. And that just made him ecstatic.

He went through a major identity crisis in the life of our church when we went to a permanent situation and going, we don't even own a trailer now. Like, I gave our trailer to a church plant in our city. You know, I thought maybe you'd have.

Speaker B: 00:09:06

Him still just drive it up, try.

Speaker A: 00:09:09

But he didn't buy into that. And so we had to try to figure out how do we, how do we find a new connection point for him? Because that was, that was what he was known for.

That's what excited him every single weekend. And it, it was more of a challenge than I even thought it would be when we made that move.

Any other areas that you saw a challenge for identity outside of even setup and tear down or was it mainly connected to setup and teardown team?

Speaker B: 00:09:34

Yeah, I think most of it had. Yeah, had to. For us, it ended up being a very positive thing because the excitement.

that was built in the latter: 1800

And so there was pink carpet with all sorts of coffee stains and everything. And so it was really.

So when we took ownership of it, there was a lot of excitement around it because people were able to kind of, you know, kind of put some of their own blood, sweat and tears that hey, this is, this is going to be ours. And it allows us to kind of be this this beacon within, within the community.

So for us, there was probably more excitement, but it was also, we were on kind of a growth path at this time, which, you know, I know we'll talk about here in a moment. And so for us, the, the, the facility ended up being a great tool. So.

Speaker A: 00:10:27

Yeah.

And which I think, you know, anytime you do make that move, if, if you have health in the life of your church, you have the ability to have incredible momentum that comes from making that move. I would caution any planter, just know that it's still a change, even though it's a positive change.

You know, when you go from a portable situation to a permanent situation, if you're healthy as a church, you're going to gain momentum. It's a fun ride to enjoy that. You're still going to lose people.

Anytime there's change, you're going to lose people, even if it's good, healthy change. Every time we moved, I mean, we moved three times in the first three years of our existence as a church plant. We lost people.

And I couldn't understand why even when we went into a permanent situation, like, we don't have to set up and tear down, like, we have a place to be 247 in our community. We actually have a place to have offices for our staff. Like, this was such an exciting thing.

And really, honestly, our rent really didn't go up that much and people left the church and we're going, this makes no sense. This is what we worked hard for. I think you just have to understand that change. People are going to leave. They look at.

This is my opportunity to get out.

Speaker B: 00:11:49

And just a little bit of our story as far as timing wise, when we started renting this Presbyterian church, it was. They were struggling as a church. They were down to about 25 kind of older people.

And so they, they were looking forward to the income stream of, you know, a couple hundred extra dollars a month to kind of keep them afloat.

But they told us pretty early on, within the first couple weeks, they said, you know, we see the writing on the wall and when, when, when we decide to close as a church, we're gonna, we're gonna give you our building. And so we were excited about that Was the only time I really prayed for a church to just, you know, crumble and crumble and close.

And, and what would happen is that someone would die in the church and they would give, like, a certain amount of money to the church. So it, like, kept them afloat as people were literally dying in the church. And I'M like, oh, my goodness, this is horrible.

Like, why can't we just get our hands on this thing? But God's timing was perfect in it.

So just everything that was happening with the economy, everything that was happening with the city, and actually everything that was happening with the growth and health of our church. And so during that time, I'm like, oh, we're still in this portable situation and we should really have this building.

And probably even prideful and egotistical about it.

Like, we already, you know, were three to four times the size that they were, and they still wanted to have Sunday morning and they wouldn't give that up. And it wasn't going to be until we took control of the building to do that.

But it was, it was at the perfect time that they, you know, came and said, hey, so we voted last night, we're closing as a church. They didn't own the building to give us, so the presbytery owned the building. So that was a little bit of a shocker to us.

And they decided to just put it up on the open market. And whoever, you know, highest bidder is the person that they were going to sell to, they didn't, they didn't care.

So I was literally there during some of the showings and we were right next to the university and there was, there was people that were coming, like, we could turn this into a bar because it's beautiful, stained glass, you know, and all this stuff. And they're like, this would be so cool. And I'm thinking, no, like, how is this happening? But God knew.

And again, just with the economy and everything provided a way for us to be the ones.

Speaker A: 00:14:00

Which I think is a good reminder because you guys planted in an urban corridor of Milwaukee.

Speaker B: 00:14:04

Yes.

Speaker A: 00:14:04

So it's not a suburban area. It's not like there's a lot of new buildings being built in. Costs can be fairly significant in an urban corridor.

Speaker B: 00:14:14

Yeah, very costly area. And everything is. So there's not even a lawn or anything. No parking lot.

You can stick your hand out the window and there's a high rise apartment that's right next to it. And so there was challenges for us and even fear at that time. When I realized, hey, we closed the church, it's like, yes, we got the church.

It's like, no, we're putting it up for a sale. It's like, oh my goodness, what are we going to do during this time?

But, and this goes back to our generosity talk as well too, is that we did set money aside. So even as we Were giving and supporting other mission stuff. We were setting money aside.

So when that time came, we were able to purchase that building.

So I do think that there is a principle in there as far as, like, hey, as you're being generous saving as well, too, that if God does provide that opportunity for you to purchase.

Speaker A: 00:15:05

A building, that you can move when.

Speaker B: 00:15:07

That you can move when it happens, and that you can say, hey, we're. We're legitimate here. We've got some money that we can put down and get a loan.

Speaker A: 00:15:13

And our situation somewhat similar that we. We planted actually in a suburban area of a lot of new growth.

s. They started the church in: 1959

And in: 2001

And they built this facility, paid cash for it, and they were really the ground center of the community that we were trying to reach, and it didn't work. I talked with the elders, and the elders even told us, like, their pastor and all them.

They didn't think you could actually grow a church in that community. And they end up foreclosing down on the property. And this is just another great reminder.

You never know how God is going to reveal these doors when the timing is right. We were prepping for Easter.

We were having conversations about sharing your faith and the importance of having spiritual conversations to all of our people and just challenge them. Would you have three spiritual conversations between now and Easter? Well, my executive pastor.

I'm glad my executive pastor at the time took that very seriously and personally was like, yeah, I need to do this as well. He put a refrigerator up for sale on Craigslist, and an old crotchety guy showed up to buy his refrigerator.

And he just went, I know Easter is a couple weeks away. I don't know if you have a church, but we'd love to invite you come to church with our family.

And he very quickly, like, no, no, no, I'm not a church guy. And I think he was trying. He felt bad that he just cut the conversation off.

And he goes, well, my daughter takes our granddaughter to church to this preschool during the week, you know, and that was like it. And. But he threw in there, what they're closing down. And he's like, what church is that? You know? And he says the name of the church.

And my executive Pastor calls me up and goes, do you know anything about this church? I said, yeah, I know exactly where it is. And he goes, they're closing down. I said, I'm picking you up. You know, we ran down there and we. We.

We walked in and the preschool is still there. And it was the most eerie thing I've ever experienced. I mean, there was still music on the music stands and things like that.

Their number board was up in the. And they were done. They were done doing church. It's like the rapture happened. And we walked in, and the preschool security was kind of an issue.

The preschool director walked down and said, can I help you? And we kind of share. I call a realtor friend and say, hey, I'm staying at this property. Is the property for sale by any chance? And he goes, no.

He looks it up. He goes, but this name's on a lien. I'm like, well, how do I find out where that guy? I have no contact.

So I end up calling an insurance broker that I knew insured a lot of churches in the Phoenix metro area, said, do you know this guy? He goes, yeah, I've actually worked with him for 20 years, and he was willing to bridge the gap, introduce us.

And we began to have a conversation and were able to eventually move into that facility. So don't underestimate the little things and how God will open that door when the timing is right. But it does create momentum. I would liken the move.

When you move into a permanent facility, it's kind of like a surfer riding a wave, and it has the ability to create a major wave for the church. But the challenge is, are you a surfer that can ride that wave? You have to decide. And can your church handle the wave that potentially could come?

If you're not, you may need to work on systems, work on your structures to make sure that you're actually ready and have the ability to ride that wave. What did you guys see when it came to the wave and some of the challenges that the wave presented to you, maybe even personally as a leader?

Speaker C: 00:19:26

Well, I'll say.

Speaker B: 00:19:26

And even going back wave or magnifying glass wave in the sense that this goes back to what I said before. If you're not healthy, it will just magnify that, or it will be a wave that just sucks you under, and the undertow will just obliterate you.

So if you've got staff and leadership problems, buying a building will magnify your staff and leadership problems. If you've got volunteer problems, if you've Got elder board problems, all of those things. Facility will just magnify all those.

buying that first location in: 2009

And for us, a big reason for that is it allowed us to have not only Sunday evening services, but to have Sunday morning services. So it kind of, it did in a weird way, legitimize us in the community, especially since we were so young.

In the beginning, we were like primarily 20, 30 somethings. We were right next to a big university and people just thought we were a campus ministry.

But it's like, oh, you're an actual church because you own this building. So it did allow us to have a little bit more of an impact in the community that way.

And we ended up multiplying to three services and without any parking spaces. We were kind of at this kind of crossroads of what are we going to do? Are we going to plant a church?

Are we going to sell this building and get a bigger building? Are we going to go multi site?

And we decided to plant a church and go multisite at the same time because God presented a great opportunity for us to be able to plant a church and also was kind of leading us in doing multi site. And so once again, we were looking for another facility. And for us we found.

. It was built in: 1929

Like just, just a beautiful facility. But it was in, it was in horrible disrepair. And that's what it said on there.

So I went in there and I came in through the back and all the electricity and everything was shut off. So they had to start a generator. And all sudden two big lights like, lit up, like the whole thing. And I was just like, this is it.

I'm like, even if we have to put a hundred thousand, no, even if we have to put $200,000, this is like the most amazing facility. And we brought contractors in there and they said, yeah, this needs about a million dollars worth of work on it.

I had never used that word in my vocabulary referring to anything dealing with me, with money. So I was like, I just, I don't think that we can do this. And that started a journey for us.

And actually, I know many of you are involved with Converge, one of the best Kept secrets that Converge has is a cornerstone fund that loans money. So they actually loaned us our loan for that first facility. No one would have given our church, no bank would have given us a loan.

I mean, we were a bunch of ragamuffin, 20, 30 somethings. We had no business owning a building, but they gave us a loan for that.

And so they, they began that process with us as well too, for the second location. And it actually needed $2 million worth of work. And I was like, there's just, there's no way.

But that's when we had gone through a capital campaign and you know, we had again, we had a young congregation, no real rich people. Our launch Sunday, we had a thousand people show up. So we were 600 people. At that other location, we had a thousand people show up.

And that was like, oh my gosh, like we essentially almost just doubled in size to be able to do that.

Now you had some people, of course, trickle, trickle back and we, we, we were scrambling to make it every week and people would come be like, wow, like you do such a great job. And it's like, we're just exhausted because.

Speaker A: 00:23:16

You have no idea how much duct tape.

Speaker B: 00:23:18

Yeah, yeah. I mean, oh my goodness.

And, and I mean, so because we were a church that didn't have a lot of financial resources, and so we were very volunteer heavy. But that's hard when you have that many kids and you're in a new space.

And so I'm thankful that we had a healthy staff culture where during that time people were able to express if they were having a hard time, they were able to express, I'm having a difficult time. For us in our campus model, we were truly one church, so we were having to borrow people from all over. No one said, oh well, this is my location.

And so to ride the wave for us, it was because we had healthy staff culture during that time to really ride the wave.

Speaker A: 00:24:01

That's good.

I know when we made that shift from portable to permanent to kind of give you perspective of momentum, we saw in the first 12 months a growth spurt of 115%. I know everybody in the room is going, man, I would love to have 115% growth.

It was fun, but oh my goodness, it was chaotic and it was hard at times trying to figure out that. And so it does have the ability to create a wave. Let me kind of give you some signs that, you know, you're now ready to ride that wave.

The first sign that you need to be aware of is take a look at your growth track, do you have a constant growth rate in the life of your church? If you're in a season of decline, this may not be the moment to actually bite off that and move forward.

Speaker B: 00:24:47

And I think you said this already, Lee, but just say it again. If you're not growing, the building will not be your key to.

Speaker A: 00:24:54

It will not be your key to growing. Yeah. Number two, people's lives are actually being transformed. You're seeing people walk from death to life.

Baptisms are happening, People are coming to Christ. That's a sign of great health in the life of your church.

If you haven't baptized anybody in two years, don't think a building is going to change that. Number three, you have a growing voice in the community. And I would say a positive voice in the community.

You know, one of the things that you want to pay attention to is what is the reputation? Is there a positive reputation or a negative reputation?

We all talk about our dream is that if we didn't exist tomorrow, that our community would actually notice. I think that's a great perspective to have on your mind as you're looking at the community. But are you involved in the community?

You know, will people even notice the fact that you actually moved in a permanent facility and be excited about that? Those are the type of things you want to pay attention. Number four, you have a healthy culture.

There's a healthy culture of volunteerism, a healthy culture of generosity, healthy culture for the staff, you know, and all the other pieces that are important from a culture perspective. Again, this is a magnifying glass moment.

And so if the culture isn't healthy in one of those areas, I promise you it will stand out big time the moment you make that move. And you'll have to adjust and you'll have to create and it'll become more challenging than you probably want it to have.

Number five, you actually have financial margin. You have financial margin. I promise you everything will look great and you'll be excited and you'll be on a high and you'll be happy.

You don't have to show up to a facility at 5:30 in the morning and be there when the setup crew shows up and unlock the doors. I mean, there'll be a lot of excitement. But I promise you, there are hidden costs that you have no idea that are there.

When we moved in the facility, we actually did a two week campaign. We called it Dominate. And we said we need to dominate this moment that God has placed in front of us. We need to dominate the weeds.

We got to dominate the paint. We took pictures of the facility. You couldn't even see the building because the weeds were so grown up. And we just said, let's dominate this.

And we gave a number and they received all that money, came in in a two week period and we threw that money immediately into the facility to help with that. But pay attention to financial margin because we didn't realize until we were in the facility. We moved in June in Arizona. It's hot.

We had to replace five AC units in the first six months. Yeah, yeah, they're not cheap.

So we had an AC guy in our church that basically put them in at cost and it still cost us $75,000 for those, those five AC units. So you just. We had no idea. We had no idea. And number six, you have healthy systems and structures. Healthy systems and structures.

You got to be thinking about the fact like, is your children's team ready for 30% growth? If you grew 30%, could you actually handle that? Or what's going to have to change?

You know, when we were at 115% growth in 12 months, we'd have a conversation about children's ministry one week and in two weeks that system was already obsolete. And we have to come back again and go. And that took a lot of sober mindedness on the team to realize that you may not have all the answers.

And we got to work together and you got to allow other people to speak in to that area of ministry because this is a problem we have to solve together. There are at the same time. So those, those are signs that you're ready to make the move.

Let me kind of go through Danny and I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about problems that do exist that are created by having a permanent facility. So there are kind of three key things.

Problems that will arise that you won't face in a portable situation that you will now face because you're in a permanent situation. The first problem is this. Buildings attract church people. Do I have to say anymore? Buildings are going to attract church people.

Who's putting the biggest pressure in your church to get into a permanent building? Church people.

You know, the people that came to Christ in your church think it's awesome that you meet in a movie theater or they think it's awesome that you meet in a ymca. Christians are those who came to, you know, they don't know any difference. But church people have a way of smelling church buildings.

Like they just like a new church in a church building. Like, boom, they're there. And you're going, where did these people come from?

And they want to change your culture, and they're going to challenge your leadership. And you know that you're sitting here going, we've been doing this for years. I mean, I think about Mark, we've been doing this for 15 years.

And I'm sure there are people that showed up their first Sunday when they moved into a permanent facility, and we're like, what do you got going on with women's ministry? You know, Or I want to become a member now. And you're going, you don't know us.

You know, you've been here one week, and so you're going to face all kinds of problems that exist just from that. Now, this can be a blessing, but know that it will also challenge the vision and the mission of your church.

What did you guys see when it came to some of this?

Speaker B: 00:30:43

Yeah, so like I said, for us, some of it was. Was the positive, you know, positive part of it. So I. We didn't.

We didn't have too many negative things as far as people coming in and kind of doing that. But again, so much that is because of the urban environment that we were in. If people were willing to park four blocks away and.

And walk, they were usually not too inconvenient.

Speaker A: 00:31:05

So. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

Number two, that problems will create for you having a permanent facility is that buildings you need to know having an unquenchable thirst. Buildings will drink your budget over and over and over again and never apologize for it.

I mean, Danny just shared a little bit about some of the money that they had to put in their facility right away.

Speaker B: 00:31:29

Yeah. And I would say this is where, again, reserves were really important for us. So we had the same thing.

We had a boiler in the old building and then even AC unit in the new building that both went at the same time. And it was about. It was about the same $75,000.

And if we wouldn't have had stuff that was set aside specifically that we actually called our boiler fund, because we knew that it was. That it was coming.

And it's funny because to this day, I think even on our balance sheet it says boiler fund, even though we have boilers that'll last like 30 years now. But it was a helpful reminder for us that you always have to have some money set aside for that type of thing.

And then churches are supposed to be tax exempt. Be prepared that a lot of that stuff is changing. So we basically had to negotiate what they call now pilot, which is payment in lieu of taxes.

So it's not called taxes. It is a voluntary. Twist your arm behind your back. You have to pay this to the city because otherwise.

Speaker A: 00:32:26

Otherwise it would make your life difficult.

Speaker B: 00:32:28

Yes. And we're not going to give you access to stuff. And so there are all of these different things that facilities do take.

The one challenge that we had was actual use of the building.

So this may be a little bit less with church people, but I remember when we didn't have a building and I saw churches that, you know, Monday through Saturday were empty. And I'm like, that will never be us. We are just going to have that place utilized up and down. And so we rented our facility out.

We were right next, again, next to the university. And so they wanted to have classes in there. So they had everything from kickboxing to dance classes to belly dancing classes. Okay.

Then they wanted to have a belly dancing recital the same time that we had service. And so I thought, well, that's not too big of a deal, and I don't want to, you know, disrupt the relationship.

So they had belly dancing upstairs, the service downstairs. So this guy sat through the entire service and he leaned over to one of our leaders, said, when do the dancers come out? So, but.

But here's, here's so. So the belly dancing too. Even though probably culturally appropriate at certain places, it became confusing for people. But our big one was weddings.

So everyone wanted to use, because again, old building downtown, beautiful stained glass. We want. So we were like, yeah, anybody can have a wedding here. Like, we're not gonna do it.

So then someone came in and a woman shamanist Indian person was doing a smoke ceremony. And then someone had a conversation later, like, oh, I go to Epcos Church. Like, oh, I went to this beautiful wedding there.

And you guys are the ones that do, like, the smoke and the, you know. And she was describing the wedding that was taking place there. And it's like, oh, my goodness.

So now people are associating our church with these different things that we are trying to open up to. So I'm not saying that we all sudden closed it down, but we had to start writing all of these different policies.

We had to try to figure out what is best use.

And then the other thing is we had to start using volunteers and time just to, like, clean up and to have someone open and lock the doors and security and all these different things. And so then for us, it became a stewardship issue. So it was weird then to all sudden go.

Now I get why certain churches where it's like, you can't be open 247 because there is still a cost to that, you know, so. So that was, that was probably our biggest challenge and still is because you don't want to say no to people.

And now we're just much, you know, Epico is just much more choosy on what they allow and what they don't. So.

Speaker A: 00:35:13

And I would, I would caution you as well. You need to think through the fact that people's experience changes when you go from portable to permanent.

You know, it's okay to have pull up banners and different type of portable signage when you're in a portable situation, but the moment that you move into a permanent building, those portable signage, it looks cheap.

And so there's a cost going to be involved just, you know, replacing children's ministry signage that you may have used in a school that now you have to think about and plan and put specific cost into that new permanent facility that you're in.

Speaker B: 00:35:50

Yeah. And so when we did that theater, it was a historic theater. And so lots of attention around town.

We got a bid for what it would look like to make a theater. The. I forget what they're called now. You know what I'm talking about. The little. Yeah, marquee. Putting a marquee out front.

And I thought, oh, that'll be really cool. Kind of, you know, we tried to keep the historic look to the whole thing and it was $20,000. And I thought, oh my goodness, going.

Speaker A: 00:36:15

In the sign business.

Speaker B: 00:36:16

Yeah, I'm going to the sign. And we decided to do it.

I'll tell you what though, it was some of the best money that we invested because, you know, there's 30,000 cars that pass it every single day. And you think of like, okay, a mailer, 5,000, do that four times. And this is up every single day for however many years that you're there.

So, yes, some of those things like signage that used to be just, you know, a vinyl sheet that was $150, now you got to invest a lot more.

Speaker A: 00:36:41

So, yeah, completely. And again, there are things going to creep up you're not ready for, you don't know, exist.

I mean, when we moved in our facility, I think it, we found out the hard way about six months in that certain times of the year in Arizona when the seasonal change took place, where it went from really hot to hot, you know, there was a really nasty sewage smell that would come up through the pipes in our building. And I remember contacting the church going, did this happen when you guys. Oh, yeah, we just put up with it. And I'm like, it's rancid.

Like it makes you sick.

When you walk in the building, it smelled so bad, it cost us $10,000 to get a plumber that had to actually, you know, get, dig down through the concrete and fix the pipes to take care of that smell. So just know that there is an unquenchable thirst that happens when you actually own a building.

And last piece, number three, buildings will challenge your vision and mission.

And what I mean by this is now that you have a mortgage and financial drain because of the building, it becomes very easy to modify your vision and mission because now you have these costs that are involved. You have to remember, why did we do this in the first place? What did Jesus call us to do? Why do we exist as a church?

And don't lose sight just because you have a mortgage to pay to the mission that God has called you to focus in on. Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:38:12

And I think of what Mark even shared earlier, like it probably was totally God's sovereignty in the sense that they didn't get that building because it allowed him to plant some of those churches. Because most, most church planters start with a mission and vision to be a church planting church. And it is just so easy.

And I, you know, I'd admit that we definitely like, you know, our eye was off the ball. Even though we did a plant at the same time that we were doing the site, we probably could have done a lot more, a lot more planting.

And it's something you'll have to wrestle through and to just think about and be honest and have those discussions with, with leadership. Because again, a building can be a great tool and facility to set you up well to do even more planting.

But it can also take over the vision and even become the vision. And that would be a warning. Never let the getting a building be your vision. If that's your vision, you're going to be.

Speaker A: 00:39:03

You need a new vision.

Speaker B: 00:39:03

Yeah. You need a new vision.

Speaker A: 00:39:05

Yeah.

And I mean, just think about from this standpoint, to take it another step further, think about how many churches you're aware of that went from a portable situation, a permanent situation, and they seemingly took their foot off the gas pedal and within five years they became irrelevant in their community. Don't allow that to happen, please. It is too critical what God has called us to do to take the foot off the pedal.

So there's too many churches out there that have taken their foot off the gas pedal. The moment that they move into a facility, when it Came to the mission and accomplishing the mission.

And what happens is a lot of times, five years after they move in that facility, they're now irrelevant in their community. Don't let that happen. It is too important what God has called us to do. Think about the creativity that you used in your portable situation.

Stay reliant upon that creativity even if you have a permanent facility.

Speaker B: 00:40:07

And I know I mentioned this very briefly before, but I'm going to say it again. This is an unpaid commercial for Converge Cornerstone Stone Fund.

If you're thinking about facility, talk to them because they exist to, yes, supply money and supply loans, but they really are there to help you and serve you. If you can get a better loan from a.

A bank that's right in your community and you really want to use that and leverage that even as part of your philosophy of ministry, they are great with that. They'll help. They'll help you. They'll give you a rate and say, well, now bring this rate back to them and see if they can match it.

So do at least make them part of your process. They really are there to help and to serve and they give back. And that's what was awesome for us. As we're paying these mortgage payments.

That money actually gets funneled back to churches into church planting. So it's a really great.

Speaker A: 00:40:55

And they really look at being on mission with you. I promise you, bank isn't going to do that. So they're on mission with you. Let's take some time. We're going to take questions.

So we've got a microphone moving around the room. If there are any questions that you may have moving from portable to permanent.

I'm assuming some of your list of how to do it right has come from how it didn't work out.

Speaker B: 00:41:19

Right. Could you share in some of your failures? I'll give you a really quick one.

Volunteer help is maybe the most costly thing that you can do from portable to permanent.

As far as, like, oh, well, we're going to get this place and we're going to use our volunteers to do the plumbing, the drywall, the painting that especially painting. Everyone thinks get volunteers to do the painting, we can save so much.

Speaker A: 00:41:43

Everybody thinks they're a good painter.

Speaker B: 00:41:44

So it is one of the most costly things as far as time, as far as relationship, as far as that, honestly, one of the biggest mistakes we made.

Speaker A: 00:41:54

Yeah, I was. I'll add one on that that, you know, we did leverage our painters in our church and it was. Some places was great, other places was horrible.

And we had to come back and figure out how to fix it. But one of our big mistakes was we actually used somebody that was self proclaimed muralist to do our nursery.

And when they were done, it was terrible. And now I had a major dilemma on my hands.

How do I paint over this mural that this lady spent so much time on and help her understand it wasn't good and it didn't accomplish the mission that we wanted to accomplish. And so there are pain points that you're going to wrestle with and you're going to trip over yourself.

And luckily she was able to laugh it off, at least to my face. And they never left the church. But I mean those are, we had.

Speaker B: 00:42:56

Almost the exact same thing with an actual mural as well too. Miro deco, all of that, all that different stuff. And again, it's, it's, it's costly. And it's costly relationally as well too.

When you have to do that, it's costly for time. You think, oh, we're going to save all this money.

It's like you may not actually getting in there two months earlier or six months earlier maybe actually what you need and spend more time encouraging generosity and pay a professional to do it. Get it done, get it done. Right.

Speaker A: 00:43:28

So here's one of my favorite failures that we ever had too. So we, we had our very first baptism in our new facility.

I mean we were ecstatic because we've always been using people's backyards or whatever we had to do, you know, to figure out how to do baptism.

So we're like, we, we called a church that had a portable kind of, you know, roll in, roll out type of baptistry and they're like, just keep it, we'll give it to you. We want to replace it anyways. And it looked 20 years old. I mean, so we repainted it.

I mean we were, we were just ecstatic that we're going to have our first baptism in our facility. And my executive pastor is like, I'll take care of making sure it's filled, I'll put the heater in and all that kind of stuff. I say, fantastic.

You know, we've done a lot together. Saturday night at about 9 o'clock I see him calling me and I'm like, that's weird. He doesn't ever call me on a Saturday night.

I'm like, okay, I'll go ahead and answer it. And I answered. I said, what's up man? And all I hear is, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'M sorry. I'm like, first of all, what did you do?

Like, my mind is going all over the place. And he goes, lee, I was filling up the baptismal and I calculated in my mind how long I thought it would actually take to fill the baptismal.

And I, I overflowed it and I need help. And I'm like, all right, I'm heading down to church. And I'm like calling anybody I could think that would answer my phone call at 9:00 at night.

You know, I'm like, can you get down to church? We got this issue. Would you, would you please be there? And I kind of put it in perspective. So our facility was like a rectangle.

The baptistry was on the opposite side of the building from where you pull into the parking lot. So it's a complete opposite corner. As I'm pulling in the parking lot, there is water coming out the front doors of our facility.

I mean, it was like, you have to be kidding me.

I mean, that was like, sorry, doesn't count it right now, you know, and, and we, we, we are brooming waves of water down the hallways and out the front doors. We went to Walmart, bought every fan that we could possibly buy. We flipped the AC units on. I mean, we did what we could do.

And we were there till one in the morning trying to clean up the facility. And then we had to explain to everybody why it was so musty in the building the next morning when they walked in.

And I'm not kidding, we saw the old carpet. The carpet bubbled this high. It was well over two feet in places. And we had to cone it off.

I don't know why we coned it, because you could see I can't walk on it.

But we, we had to try to move people around these bubbles and I mean, you're going to face things that you just never thought you're going to face in this journey of church planning. But also making that move to portable.

Speaker B: 00:46:39

I think one other quick thing is that make sure you create margin if you're doing a launch date, if you're doing some sort of renovations or whatever. Because we end, we, you know, we set our date and we, you know, postcards and did all of that type of thing.

And we didn't get our occupancy till Friday evening at like 5pm and that, that inspector kind of had it out for us anyways and they have a lot of power. And so just make sure that you have margin on when you think it's actually going to get done.

Especially if you start building towards something because it's easier to kind of just have some preview services or whatever, soft.

Speaker A: 00:47:14

Launch, and then do a grand opening.

Speaker B: 00:47:15

Once you're actually whatever. And then do like a huge, huge grand opening.

Speaker C: 00:47:18

So, hey, you mentioned having good systems in place. And especially thinking around children's ministry is probably the wildest system you could handle. How do you balance that with.

Usually when you're about to move into a bigger space or taking an influx, you're probably dealing with growth and there's a little bit of a scramble anyway. How do you balance kind of taking the plunge to get ready for taking on more, but making sure you have a good enough system to handle income?

Speaker A: 00:47:47

Great question. I don't know what you guys did with some of that. I know for us, we evaluated everything. And so that was part of our culture.

So we had an evaluation meeting on every aspect of our Sunday experience every Monday. You just count on it. And so we were able to make quick changes as necessary. And people got used to the fact that this is just how we operate.

So it made some of that easier when we actually had to make some of those adjustments quick. And they were major adjustments. People are already conditioned to kind of make those. Those moves. The other thing is we.

We kind of always were thinking about 20% growth. So we were operating as though we were 20% larger than we currently were.

And so our classroom teachers and things like that and children's ministry were always looking at, if this classroom grew 20% in this service, would we still have space or how would things need to change? And so that allowed us to always be ready if an influx came. I'm a big believer that God isn't going to give us more than we can steward faithfully.

It just doesn't make sense to me. Why would he do that? So why don't we prepare ourselves to be faithful with the things that God has given us and even beyond.

So that way, you know, if he chooses to bless us, we can be faithful with it. Doesn't mean he necessarily will, but I can guarantee he won't if you're not ready for it. And so we try to always operate on 20%.

Why we chose 20%, it was a little. Just kind of a weird number for us. We went. We feel like if we're really good at our jobs, we can probably manufacture 10% growth. An extra 10% was.

Was a faith thing. And so we were just, God show up and give us an extra 10% beyond that. And so that's. That's how we got to 20%.

Speaker B: 00:49:42

We used a sophisticated system called Wing It. I don't know if you're familiar with that. So, no, I would say that most systems we tried to make were scalable.

So it was a matter of just adding more people or doing more. But a bigger thing probably for us, really was the culture. There was a culture of, we're going to do this together.

So if we're short someone in this area, someone is willing to step up and to cover double, to do double.

Speaker A: 00:50:11

Shift, to do whatever we called it zone defense.

Speaker B: 00:50:14

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:50:15

So, you know, if somebody went out, somebody else moved to that zone.

Speaker B: 00:50:18

Yeah, we don't do football analogies at epicos, only hockey analogies. So. But yeah, so culture is really important. And for us, it was. There was just a lot of. There was a lot of grit for us. And again, that was just.

That's who we were at the time. And, you know, I wish I could say that we had better systems, but for us, it was probably just the systems that we did have were scalable.

So it's just doing a little bit.

Speaker A: 00:50:42

More, a little bit extra and make it fun. I mean, it. It. It can give yourself headaches and stress yourself out way more than is necessary.

Just enjoy the ride and make it fun for your people and let them see that, hey, the mission's actually happening. And we're figuring this out too, just as you are.

Speaker D: 00:51:01

Two questions are not necessarily related, but is there a certain amount of money or a percentage that is healthy for a church to borrow when you're moving to permanent? That's the first question. Second question is, we are right in that stage. We've done our first capital campaign. We're looking for property.

We haven't found the property yet, but one of the things that I've heard from a number of churches is that Setup Team is such a key ministry to the men of the church, and you lose that when you go to a permanent. How have you been able to fill that specific role for men within the church?

Speaker A: 00:51:40

Yeah, great, Great question. Rule of thumb when it comes to finances and borrowing is 30% is the max that you would ever want to consider.

Above 30%, you know, the tail is wagging the dog. We chose 20%. We never wanted to borrow more than 20%.

And that really allowed us to keep a lot of margin, but allowed us to be faithful towards the mission and not become a slave to the lender, to put it that way.

Speaker B: 00:52:09

Yeah. I would say to be careful of any specific number because each context is so different and this is where getting cornerstone.

But also just even you know your church better than anyone because the ratios are going to be different because people ask the same question about staff as well too. I mean what it costs to facility wise do church in parts of California is going to be a lot different.

And so don't just take how another church has their structured even if they're doing really, really well. So really look at your needs.

But to what Lee is saying, be a little bit more conservative because there's going to be more costs in there that you have no idea and you just don't want to handcuff yourself with your mortgage.

Speaker A: 00:52:56

When it came to the transitioning, the setup and tear down team, when we made the permanent move, I can't say we did that exceptionally well. We tried to figure out, we tried to walk with them relationally. We ended up losing some of our guys eventually in that process.

We tried to find ways to use their skill set, maybe to work with single moms and try to shift them into some of those areas. Some made that move and did phenomenal. You know, I like our truck driver that I illustrated earlier.

We ended up losing them and it wasn't that we didn't try, but the reality was he just wasn't good with people and he was really good at task type of things and using his hands. And so we used them in, you know, areas that we knew he couldn't screw up the church too much or you know, work behind the scenes.

But again, there's a liability factor. You know, we talked about everybody wants to paint. You have to figure out how do you manage that tension.

And he was more eager than we were willing to give him responsibility to do. And so part of it we knew by the decisions that we were making, we may end up losing him in the long run. And he just wasn't willing to adjust.

But I don't know what did you guys.

Speaker B: 00:54:19

We had less of a setup and takedown crew in our first scenario where we're more in that now with our third campus.

Speaker A: 00:54:26

So the tech area was really easy to transition. You know, you're going to need tech both in a portable situation. And we just kind of, hey, now we need you to focus on this within our facility.

And that was a real smooth transition. Children's area, when it came to set up and tear down with our children's space, easy transition.

I would say the most difficult was probably guest services and then the actual people that delivered the trailer and took the trailer back. Those were our most difficult areas. To transition. So, guys, it's been phenomenal.

We've enjoyed the conversation today, talking about permanent and portable and what you need to know in making that transition. This has been our unfiltered podcast and we look forward to joining, having you join us next time. Until then, keep it real.