If you build bigger churches, will they come?

MUNCIE, Ind. -- As Glad Tidings Church nears the end of a $3 million expansion, the Rev. Kevin Holt knows he isn't seeing the last of the construction dust.

 

This month the 700 people who attend Sunday services at the church will move from a 250-seat sanctuary, built in 1972, to a new, 800-seat, state-of-the-art space.

The church, including classrooms and offices, is doubling in size, from 20,000 to 40,000 square feet.

Yet, in a few years, Holt said he expects a need for even more room.

"It's kind of build and they will come, but you have to have your act together," said Holt, the church's senior pastor. "We are planning on doing more."

The Rev. Phil Rogers knows what it's like to double a church's worship space. Two years ago the Middletown Church of the Nazarene opened the doors of its new 45,000-square-foot facility.
And just like Glad Tidings, the Middletown church built a new, expansive sanctuary, and also settled into new classroom and educational space.
The sanctuary is large enough to seat almost half the town of Middletown, and though the new space has attracted a few new members, Rogers said it hasn't led to a drastic increase.
"It's not been probably as dramatic as some (other churches) have reported," Rogers said, noting that a typical weekend includes services for 500 to 550 people, which is an increase of about 50 members.

Kurt Williams of T&W Church Services of Indianapolis, leads project development efforts for churches. Williams said churches have undergone a transformation in the past 20 years.

On one hand is a theory that people basically live their lives in three places: home, work, and in fellowship with one another.

But as people's lives have been filled, or even overfilled with obligations and a fast-paced society, the opportunities for fellowship have waned. Churches are trying to become, or become again, the center of that fellowship world.

"How do they do that? Church almost has to play the amenity game. To the unchurched or dechurched, the last place they want to go is church," Williams said, noting churches have added classrooms, gymnasiums, coffee shops and book stores as a way to fill that void.

"Church, in the last five years, has really accelerated in the understanding you have to be at least at pace with society technologically, if not ahead."