Granger Community Church recently hosted their annual Innovate conference in Indiana. You can watch each of the sessions online, and I highly recommend doing so. You can get to the list here.
I watched three yesterday. The second session was Pastor Mark Beeson on That's Going to Leave a Mark. He talked about how churches can make the greatest impact on visitors and spent some time talking about ... you guessed it ... the church facility.
Some quotes I caught:
"Every person matters, so we try to create space. ... We designed this space (their church building) for the simple reason that we're trying to reach people who don't understand how much they matter, and they don't go to church. We built this facility that looks like safe territory for normal people."
(Talking about their children's ministry space downstairs:) "The architecture communicates a message. You don't need a guide. ... The architecture screams, when you go downstairs, 'These people must love kids!'"
He talked about how the excellece of your ministry space communicates value to visitors. The design and the maintenance of your building tell people who haven't yet met your greeters or passed the peace, that you value them and you want them to be there.
He goes on to talk about the importance of women's restrooms. Because as young couples become young families it is usually the woman who decides its time to take the kids to church and sets out to find a good one. I think a lot of this was Mark being funny, but I can say there are places that I avoid (or would if I could) because of the state of the women's restroom.
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