{"id":246,"date":"2008-09-17T20:33:24","date_gmt":"2008-09-18T01:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.185.166.32\/~davidfoster\/?p=246"},"modified":"2009-10-08T20:36:45","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T01:36:45","slug":"7-conditions-under-which-you-should-never-build","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/7-conditions-under-which-you-should-never-build\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Conditions Under Which You Should Never Build"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"buildingtools\"I received a great comment last week from Aaron<\/a> who asked, \u201cShould a church ever build a building or should it continue to meet in public space?\u201d<\/em> Since I\u2019ve had a little experience with that, I want to respond with the seven conditions under which you should never build.
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\n1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You should never build within the first five years.<\/span> Without question, it takes at least three years to get a church planted.\u00a0 It takes three years to gain confidence, momentum, resources, and begin to gather a crowd.\u00a0 If you build too soon, it will be a case of the shoe telling the foot how large it can be.\u00a0 Building before five years almost always incurs a debt and it becomes staggering and limits the future ministry.
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\n2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You never build when there\u2019s something out there to rent or renovate. <\/span> At The Gathering our prayer is, when we outgrow the theater, that God would provide in the Cool Springs area a warehouse or a building to renovate.\u00a0 That\u2019s so that as the community and The Gathering both change, we have the flexibility to move over time.\u00a0 Don\u2019t give up too soon.\u00a0 There are a lot of things out there.
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\n3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You don\u2019t build when you don\u2019t have the money.<\/span> There is a lot of controversy over whether a church should ever have debt. My belief has always been that you can leverage other people\u2019s money and do it in a way that you protect the long term financial health of the church, but you get it built particularly if you\u2019re in the situation where you have to get out of the space or you\u2019re growing so rapidly that it\u2019s hard to take the time to raise all the money you need.\u00a0 While I have to say that the older I\u2019m getting the more I\u2019m leaning toward waiting to build until you have the money, or at least being creative.\u00a0 We way too easily go out and put the church into heavy debt.
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\n4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You don\u2019t build in order to promote stability.<\/span> Owning your own building has absolutely nothing to do with stability.\u00a0 Stability is a sign of the health of a church and the people in it, the health of the leadership and the confidence the people have in them.\u00a0 Stability is more an organic sign of health rather than some institutional form created by a building.
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\n5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You never build in order to be seen as legitimate. <\/span> How many times have I heard people say to me, \u201cPeople would come if we had a building, because then we would seem legitimate\u201d?\u00a0 That\u2019s a bogus argument.\u00a0 You\u2019re legitimate by whether or not people trust you and your message, you have something to offer, a promise to make that they can benefit from.
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\n6.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You don\u2019t build until everyone supports it. <\/span> I know by \u201ceveryone\u201d not \u201ceveryone\u201d is going to be for anything.\u00a0 We know that to be true.\u00a0 There is a big difference between having a building campaign take the church into debt just because the pastor and staff who think about this stuff all the time think it\u2019s time.\u00a0 You need to garner support from all your influencers, your givers, people who make your church or organization happen.
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\n7.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You don\u2019t build unless you understand the very fact that a building will force you to focus more inwardly.<\/span> No one avoids this unless the people who realize that having land and a building leads a church toward being an institution that leans more on management and maintenance than vision and leadership.<\/p>\n

Think about these seven conditions and give me some suggestions of your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I received a great comment last week from Aaron who asked, \u201cShould a church ever build a building or should it continue to meet in public space?\u201d Since I\u2019ve had a little experience with that, I want to respond with the seven conditions under which you should never build. 1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You should never build within … Continue reading “7 Conditions Under Which You Should Never Build”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}