Managing your Building Program: Four Keys to Success

Staff Writer, Arks Incorporated

Organize
Building programs can last anywhere from 9 months to several years. Adding onto an existing building where you already own land is relatively easy, but building your first building or relocating will take much longer. You need to organize for the long haul. Proper organization will help spread the load evenly among many people, promote accountability, reduce the chance of burnout, personal bias or poor decision making and will also create and maintain unity within the body.

Plan
Your church needs an objective, fact-based methodology. A proper planning process will insure that you “know that you know” what to build and how to get the job done. Planning reduces the risk of the unknown and keeps projects on time and on budget. Planning is where you “count the cost” in determining what needs to be done, how it will be accomplished and how it will be paid for. Proper planning will save money in your construction program. Said the other way, a failure to plan will, not may, cost you money. An issue that can be addressed by proper planning may cost a hundred times more to correct during construction.

Document
The person with the most documentation wins. Over the months (or years) of your building program, you will make hundreds of decisions, deal with various county and commercial entities, and otherwise need to keep track of what was said, promised or discovered. It will probably become important at some time to explain or defend to the congregation why certain decisions were made. If you cannot document these issues, you will be at the mercy of whomever you are dealing with. Document, Document, Document.

Communicate
One dangerous situation that you can get into during a building program is when the congregation feels that all the decisions are being made in a back room by a small group of people. Communication goes hand in hand with Organization to help keep everyone knowledgeable about what is happening and why. Communication is bi-directional. Not only do you need to inform the congregation, but the congregation also needs to know they had input into the process. Keeping the congregation excited and involved is one of the key ingredients to a successful church building program.