Sometimes it’s right to use your church building

Imagine that a spaceship lands in your back garden, and a friendly alien invites you in to look around.

For the vast majority of the population, entering a church building is like that. It’s only the brave or the foolhardy that are likely to want to take the ride.

That’s why using our homes is such an effective means of engagement. It’s also the reason why taking engagement out of the church building and into the playground, community centre and school is so important.

But there are things we can’t very easily do - engagements we can’t make - without the use of a building. Things like parent and toddler groups, nurseries, day care for the elderly, lunch clubs, after school clubs, breakfast clubs, contact groups, support groups for a whole range of people – single parents, addicts, and so on.

The key thought is: only do in your building what you cannot do outside of it. In the past, we’ve expected the community to come to us. It’s easier and more convenient for us. But the way of true service requires that we put ourselves out and go to them.

But when the only way to meet a need requires the use of a building, then the community has to come to us. Is there anything we can do to make the building more accessible and approachable?

Recently I visited St Mary’s Baptist Church in Bristol - a church set in a multi-cultural area of social deprivation. Over the past couple of years the church has researched their community.

They visited key community leaders, including those from other faiths, and also conducted door to door research in their neighbourhood. They simply asked three questions:

1. What’s good about living in this neighbourhood?
2. What are the needs?
3. What can the church do about those needs?    

The conclusion they came to was that there was a need for community space. They are now looking to reconfigure their buildings to make this possible, and they’re choosing to do it with an eye on what will make people feel welcome and comfortable.

So they’re creating a coffee shop. They’re also designing a mural that will be painted on the entire outside of their building; it will depict scenes from the community placed in a modern re-working of the Gospel of Mark.

This is an excellent example of meeting community need where the need is a meeting space. Obviously it can only be done with a building, and it means only a limited number of people can be involved in its running. The whole church is likely to be involved in its financial support, and many will use it as a way of drawing their friends closer to the centre of church activities. It’s the next best thing to mobilising them to engage outside the church!

Last Updated 04 February 2011