We live our lives in stages. It took many steps to reach where we are today. The same is true with the lifecycle of a church and of the church building itself. There are many steps and stages that occur over time — some large, others small. Sometimes, church leaders work with a church design that addresses immediate needs. At other times, it’s possible to intentionally plan ahead. In this post, we share the story of a church that actually included a future renovation into their current one when planning their new church building.
Introducing Beavercreek Nazarene
The leadership of Beavercreek Nazarene in Beavercreek, Ohio, had a vision to grow their church. In the beginning, during the early 1990s, they had a worshipping congregation of about 300 people and they needed a new sanctuary to keep growing. They had dreams of seeing 1,000 people in attendance in the future, but they also knew if they built a worship center to accommodate that many, those current 300 attendees would look small and lost in comparison.
Introducing an Innovative Church Design Solution
Their innovative church design solved this problem with two stages of church renovation. They decided to construct a full-size church building but build a pair of walls into the back of the sanctuary, as you see here in this first picture. Behind those walls are classrooms and offices. This left space for 600 in the worship center, which was plenty of room to grow without the congregation appearing too small.
A dozen or so years later, when the Beavercreek congregation had become large enough, they took out those back walls, as you can see in this later photo, and enlarged the worship center to seat the full thousand they had originally envisioned.
Advantages to Planning Multiple Church Renovation Stages
There were several advantages to this staged church renovation process. First, the outer shell of this worship center only needed to be constructed once. All the infrastructure was in place for expanding the sanctuary, which made it very cost-efficient to do when the time came. It also meant that attendees didn’t lose what they felt was “their” worship space when it came time for the second church renovation.
In the beginning, that first church design also housed offices and classrooms in one consolidated church building. Later, when the entire sanctuary space was needed for worship, they also had a larger congregation to draw from in funding the construction of a second space to house the classroom and offices for the church.
Planning ahead with your church design is an excellent way to be good stewards with a limited budget but without limiting your church’s vision for the future. If you’d like some help thinking about innovative solutions, sign up for our free i3 webinars on our website, which give you lots of examples of church designs that address specific church visions and needs. You can also give us a call at 800-625-6448 to talk about your particular church building needs.