Preparing to Build: Practical Tips & Experienced Advice to Prepare Your Church for a Building Program - Softcover

Anderson, Mr. Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0983920400 ISBN 13: 9780983920403

Publisher: Anderson Marketing, Incorporated, 2011

Synopsis

From concept to completion, your church will not undertake a more demanding or complicated task in terms of money, risk, and effort than it will in a building program. Preparing to Build will educate and guide the church through the process of becoming prepared to build in a manner that will save time and reduce costly mistakes.

They don’t teach this in seminary and most church leaders are unequipped by experience or training to lead their church through a building program in the most optimum manner. Being prepared to build, in its simplest terms, means the church has objectively quantified as many of the variables as possible and developed a building plan strategy within the financial ability of the church.

A church that is prepared to build can articulate, based on factual analysis, what it needs to build to meet future needs, it understands the cost of construction, has measured its financial ability, and knows the vision can be built on the selected property. It’s about the process. The result of an objective process is objective fact. In the absence of an objective process, all a church is left with is subjective opinion, and in a church of a few hundred people, you will have a few hundred opinions.

Preparing to Build discusses the process from visioning to selecting a builder and discusses topics including: space planning, design, financing, capital campaigns, land acquisition, organizing a building committee, and special information for smaller or start-up churches. The book concludes with several appendices, including a readiness to build assessment.

About this title

About the Author

Steve Anderson has served his church in a variety of roles, including: administrator, treasurer, building committee chairperson, capital campaign chairperson, and small group leader. He also currently volunteers as a church building consultant for the NC Baptist Convention. Since 1999, Steve has ministered to churches large and small as they prepared for building and capital stewardship programs. He is the founder of AMI Church Consulting which was merged into Church Development Services in 2010. As a partner at Church Development Services, LLC, Steve serves as the director of the church consulting division. He is a seminar speaker, webinar host, and has been a contributing editor for various church industry magazines.

From the Back Cover

How blessed is the man who finds wisdom
and the man who gains understanding.
Proverbs 3:13

My hope and prayer is that you have found a measure of wisdom and understanding in the pages of this book. May the Lord bless you as you do all that which is according to His will.

From the Inside Flap

Foreword

In church ministry, the phrase "Building Project" can raise emotions of both excitement and dread. The excitement comes because a building project has the potential to grow a congregation's faith in God like nothing else can. They tend to dream about the ministry potential of the new space and what God is uniquely calling them to do for His kingdom. The congregation will often pray, sacrifice, and invest in the life and ministry of the church in such a way that the on-looking community can't help but notice. Yes, building projects are exciting.

While exciting, building projects can also evoke some serious emotional dread. They have the potential to be poorly led, put excessive financial strain on a congregation, and severely damage relationships. Too often, we hear the horror stories of churches that split and projects that never get completed. Building projects also can strain the pastoral staff! One statistic thrown at me when we were starting our program was that 83% of pastors leave their church within 12 months after the building project is completed, either because of personal burnout or the relational damage during the project. Maybe dread isn't a strong enough word...

Factually, pastors and their leadership teams often lack the "nuts and bolts" know-how of building programs. The concepts of budgeting for construction, reading architectural plans, leading capital campaigns, and working with contractors are foreign to many church leaders. This leaves us wide open to poor decisions; which could cost a congregation thousands of dollars in unnecessary costs, months of extra work, and compromised relational trust.

That is why both Stephen Anderson and his book, Preparing to Build, are such a blessing to the Church. From personal experience, Stephen's insight and principles helped us realize the purpose God had in our building project. Stephen first laid out the realities of a building project, and then gave us practical and orderly steps to take. He showed our church leadership teams how to lead in such a way our people felt a strong sense of ownership in the project. He stressed cultural sensitivity and gave us latitude to make the process personal. Ultimately, he helped us discover the answer to the all-important question, "What is God calling us to build for the sake of vision fulfillment in the context of what we can afford?" And he did this while never letting us forget what we are about is truly is "Bigger than a Building!"

Like Jethro being a blessing to Moses, Stephen's insight, experience, and principles will be a blessing to so many pastors and church leaders who believe God is leading them to trust Him in a building project. Before entering into your building project, as a leadership team I urge you to prayerfully read and apply Preparing to Build to your unique ministry context. It will be the best first step you can take if God calls you to believe in him in for a building journey that lay ahead.

Dr. Paul W. Smith
Lead Pastor - Warner Alliance Church, Lewiston, ID

Edition details

• Publisher: Anderson Marketing, Incorporated
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0983920400
• ISBN 13: 9780983920403
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 198