Joining The McKnight Group for our free i3 webinars is a good idea for many reasons. For one, we cover a great range of information on church building and church design. Another reason is that our webinars give you a chance to ask us questions
In this post, we respond to some of those questions that have been put to our presenters during recent i3 webinars.
Question 1: Do you often suggest tearing down a church building rather than remodeling?
Actually, we seldom recommend tearing down a church building. We do know that, frequently, church leaders and even attendees can come to dislike their church building. Maybe they think it doesn’t present the right first impression now that there’s a new church vision in place. They might be frustrated with an aging boiler or a leaky roof. They might get caught up in church building envy, wanting something new and fresh, like that the ultra-modern church design two towns over.
However, the bottom line is that it almost always costs a lot more to create a new church design and build a new facility from scratch than it does to undertake even an extensive remodeling of an existing church building. If you’re going to be good stewards of your property, it’s usually a good idea to investigate how your current church building can be remodeled with an excellent church design to meet your current needs.
There are a very few exceptions to this rule. If your church building is no longer structurally sound, then it makes little sense to remodel it. This doesn’t just mean the leaky roof; this means the entire structure is too far gone to be salvaged. Another reason that it might make sense to tear down a large, old church building in disrepair is if the congregation has become so much smaller that they literally cannot afford to care for their property—even if it was repaired.
Question 2: Have you ever dug out a basement under an existing church building?
No, and we wouldn’t recommend it, either. It’s technically possible but creating a basement floor under an existing building is an engineering challenge and an expensive proposition.
If you want to expand your existing church building and have very limited land available, the best church design option is to build additional floors, rather than creating a basement. Even if your existing church design requires significant shoring up to support additional floors, it will still be cheaper and a lot less hazardous to build up rather than down.
Question 3: Does The McKnight Group have availability to begin a church building study in the fourth quarter of 2018, for projects that would begin in 2019?
If your preferred schedule has us visiting you by the end of the year that should not be an issue. The completion of a study will vary depending upon the complexity, size and the availability of the land and/or facility documents. A design study typically requires six to ten weeks to complete after all information is gathered. To find out what information we need from you, email us at request@mcknightgroup.com or give us a call at 800-625-6448.
If you’re not quite ready to take that step, we encourage you to continue gathering information. You can learn a lot from our free i3 webinars, so register for our upcoming events at the bottom of our home page. Also stay tuned, because we will respond to more questions in our next post.