Town Hall Meeting: Getting Down to Business

The Cross Road Fellowship Bible Church fellowship hall filled with nearly 200 people recently for a Town Hall meeting. Church building guru Brad Oster of Austin, Texas, talked with church members about how we might like to see the building designed and what kinds of ministry programs we anticipate as we grow God's famly.

While Pastor Brad paced around the rear of the fellowship hall, Brad Oster took the reigns to talk about how, first and foremost, a church facility is a tool for ministry. He then asked the group to begin considering what we would like to see in a new building.

To do that, we broke into groups of ten or so to brainstorm about the features this facility should include. About 20 minutes later, group spokespersons took the stage and delivered each group's top ideas.

As might be expected, there was some overlap, but some of the ideas included:

• Chapel/and or prayer room
• Crown Ministry that is outreach centered with mentor program
• Signing for Hearing impaired
• Monitor or projector system so that choir can see pastors face during service
• Coffee shop ministry
• More space between the rows with larger aisles
• Music/fine arts storage room
  
• A fittness and activities area or perhaps a sports complex with gym to encourage community involvement.
• Volunteer training/recruiting
• Large vestibule with plenty of room to hang up coats
• Latchkey program
  
• A counseling center
• A K-12 Christian School
• Small prayer chapel which can be used for small funerals & weddings
• Easily accessible kid zone with heightened security with lots of space to drop off & pick up kids
• Veterans ministry
• Lots of storage
• Adequate parking, including parking for trucks & RV parking area, considering our location, with signage to encourage truckers and travelers to come for services.
• Plenty of rest rooms in all areas
• Walking path that goes around the property, accessible to neighborhood, with fountains.
• And this from the youth group contingent: a paintball ministry, go cart track, aquatic center (pool), indoor football/soccer field, and, naturally, a horse arena.

And the list goes on..... As you can see, some are dreaming big. It should be noted, these are brainstorming ideas, not confirmed plans.

Next the group munched on cookies and looked at slides of the exteriors of 50 different facilities, most of them churches and one Harley-Davidson dealership, of which Pastor Brad seemed quite impressed. Each person in the group scored the buildings on a scale of one to five. The results will be tallied and we'll take it from there.

After that we broke into small groups again and discussed our top ten fears or concerns. These included:

• Financing
• Starting programs without appropriate funding, leadership and planning
• People will come for activities and not to know Christ better
• Adequate volunteers to take care of grounds & building
• Loss of God focus
• Maintaining connections with one another
• Not losing existing ministries as we add new ministries
• Traffic concerns, parking
• That some long-time, regular members might bolt
• That Brad might bolt
• Enough Sunday school rooms for classes & ministries
• Too much money spent on aesthetics
• Distance; too far away for seniors to drive.

And again, the list goes on....

That about sums it up. If you were at the meeting and noted something we missed, please post a comment below. It's lonely out here-- I'd like to hear from someone.

And a muy grande muchas gracias to my lovely wife, Johanna, for taking notes while I was busy taking pictures and eating cookies. Without her help, all you'd get from me would be a slide show and a rambling treatise about how good the cookies were.