The future of church buildings

Lee Stephenson: Everyone, welcome to the Unfiltered podcast. Lee Stephenson here, executive director of Church Planting.

Danny Parmelee: I'm Danny Parmalee, and I oversee church planting for Converge MidAmerica.

Lee Stephenson: And this is the Unfiltered podcast, just real conversations about church and anything else that Danny and I feel like talking about. But we are kind of just continuing the pattern of just talking about church, virtual church, how things have changed in the midst of the pandemic. And if we don't know the answer, Danny and I are going to make it up.

Danny Parmelee: That's what we do. It works every time. Fake it before you make it, right?

Lee Stephenson: In our mind, it works. Our listeners may be a little bit different, but a question for you, Danny, as we get started. I know for so many years, church planting the focus was you feel like you're a real church when you get a church building. Now part of the problem is we've got a whole bunch of church buildings that nobody can actually meet in. And so, you know, our buildings have been used, at least hopefully they've been used for churches that have buildings, as an evangelistic tool. How do you think this has changed? I mean, will building still be effective for ministry and evangelism post-COVID? I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, great question. And I love talking about buildings and real estate stuff, just in general. And this is obviously fascinating now with exactly what you said, where we can't really gather in them anymore. So what's going to happen post-COVID? One of the things that as I've been discussing with church planners, because we have a number that aren't in buildings yet or have been kicked out of their buildings, especially movie theaters, and schools who have said, Hey, I'm sorry, we just we can't take on the risk. We're trying to protect people. And they said, so I need to go find a building, what should I be looking for?

Well, a couple things come to mind in that. Number one is because so much has gone to virtual, it may be more important to be looking at where you can have some amazing studio space than the actual seating capacity of the church, where before it was like, wow, we found a place with 600 seats. You know, you have to have good seats and a parking lot and good children's ministry. Where now maybe on that list, you really ought to be looking for studio space for where you're going to be able to record and edit and your, you know, the production element of being able to put your stuff online, not that those other things aren't still important, but for some people that might even be the number one thing that they need to look at.

ch for that space during that: 10:30

And then the final thing that you know has has come to mind is that I do think that church buildings may then be used in other ways throughout the week. And this goes right back into community engagement. So if less of the focus is how you're, you know, producing the Sunday service, it might open up some different opportunities for the building to be used for other things, whether that's, you know, social needs and food distribution or tutoring now that school is all up in the air. Maybe there's some sort of daycare because parents need a different way to kind of work from home. I don't know. I just think that there's going to be a lot more possibilities for church buildings to be used differently.

Lee Stephenson: I do think we're going to have to figure out how to maximize the facility usage throughout the entire week. And how to leverage partnerships for the community in the way that the buildings are used. The interesting thing will be: Will that create other tax issues for churches down the road in a post-COVID? It could. And so I think that's something that churches will have to navigate a little bit, especially if there's some type of financial beneficiary to the usage of the facility. I also tend to think that, and you began to touch on this a little bit, we'll probably see a different church building designed. The kind of traditional usage of a facility will change significantly. And so I think people when they do come to building a facility, they're going to think differently about the capacity and the overall usage in the way that they've designed the building.

inue to work your way up to a: 3000

Lee Stephenson: Which honestly would really allow you to maximize your budget in a much more unique way, you know, to put it towards more people specific ministry and operations versus just into facility usage.

I mean, think about renting a: 4000

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, I mean, I've said it a little bit before. This is the season for the apostolic leader to take as much ground as you can. Leverage your strengths and your gifts. The church in this season needs you as an apostolic leader to step in and help.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah. And going back to your question. So do I think the buildings are going to be important yet? I actually do. I still think that buildings communicate permanency, longevity. It also gives you the freedom. So I know a lot of church planters are doing borrowed space right now to do their livestream like, Hey, we're borrowing this other church's basement, we've got a set up and we've got to take down, whereas even if you had a smaller space, it's yours. You own it. 24 seven, because now we're talking way beyond just Sunday services. Hey, we're going to record our discipleship curriculum. We're going to be doing our small groups from here. We're going to do a chat. We're gonna have all the leaders come in and so you can meet them all. I mean, to me, the possibilities are endless. You're just having to look at, okay, well, now I need, yeah, just the space is used different. But if you own it, or you have the access to it 24 seven, it's still an important kind of component to it. So I'm still a huge favor of buildings. It's just maybe different than before.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, I just think it's being sharper and the way that you go about building or using a facility to maximize your presence in the community and beyond. Yeah. Well, thanks, Danny. I appreciate your thoughts and been fun conversation just dreaming about what could the future of post-COVID church buildings be, look like? And I'm kind of curious to see what actually becomes reality on the other side of this. So that's been the Unfiltered podcast. Until next time, please keep it real.