Church Planting Mistakes and Blunders—Part 3

By Robin G. Jordan

Mistake # 5. Failing to use to its best advantage the space that a new congregation rents. New congregations often do not use this space in a way that is most helpful to achieving what Rick Warren has identified as the five New Testament purposes that Jesus gave to the church—outreach (evangelism or soul winning), worship, fellowship, discipleship, and service (or ministry). Those planning the use of the space neglect to ask these important questions. They are adapted from “The Five Basic Purposes for the Church That Jesus is Building.”

How can we use this space to our best advantage to reach the spiritually lost with the Gospel of Jesus?

How can we use this space to our best advantage to glorify God by the means of the singing of his praises, the proclamation and exposition of his Word, prayer, and the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper?

How can we use this space to our best advantage to stimulate Christ-centered conversations that encourage believers to grow and mature in the things of the Lord?

How can we use this space to our best advantage to teach the basic doctrines and beliefs of the Christian faith to believers?

How can we use this space to our best advantage to serve others in the Name of the Lord? How can we use it to the best advantage to encourage believers to discover their gifts and calling and to undertake the ministry that they are to do for the Lord?

Asking these questions may help those planning the use of the space from making a common mistake that Anglicans make. They attempt to replicate in the space that they are renting the interior of what they mistakenly believe is that of a typical Anglican church building.

The problem, however, is that the interiors of Anglican and Episcopal church buildings that were erected in the past were not designed for the twenty-first century North American mission field. Their form was not always determined by their function but by other considerations. The interiors of a number of Anglican and Episcopal churches built in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century were influenced by an ecclesiastical fad. The Cambridge Cambden movement which was one of the outgrowths of the Oxford movement was obsessed with Medieval architecture, Medieval church ornaments, and Medieval clergy ornaments. Medievalism was one of the characteristics of the Victorian era and this obsession was an expression of the spirit of the times.

The interiors of the Gothic Revival church buildings harkened back to a time before the English Reformation when the priest celebrated the Mass while the choir overlaid its celebration with polyphonic renditions of the Propers of the Mass. The more devote laity in attendance said their private devotions while they waited for what was for them the highpoint of the Mass—the elevation of the consecrated host for adoration. They did not receive communion except at Easter, after confession and absolution and outside the Mass. The interiors of the “auditory churches” built in the eighteenth century were far better suited for Prayer Book worship.

Asking these questions may help those planning the use of the space to keep focused on the principal function of a church building which is to serve the five New Testament purposes of the church. A healthy church maintains a balance between these five purposes. How a new congregation uses its rented space should reflect this balance.

Anglicans and Episcopalians are generally unaware of how the two-room church buildings that they mistakenly believe is a typical Anglican church building came into existence. The smaller room—the chancel with its choir stalls facing each other across an aisle and high altar on a stepped platform against the east wall—is the original church building. The altar was originally free standing and stood in a shallow apse. The congregation was a community of monks who gathered in the church to chant the Daily Offices and to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. The monks who tilled the soil and raised livestock when they were not praying would add a barn onto their church for convenience. This barn would eventually become the nave of the two-room church. The monks stored grain, fruit, vegetables, and farming tools in this barn as well as kept livestock. The more pious of the local inhabitants would gather outside the church to hear the monks chant the Daily Offices and to imbibe some of their holiness. If the weather was inclement, the monks charitably allowed them to huddle in the barn next to the church.

Pews were not introduced into English churches until the eighteenth century. Until their introduction the congregation stood or sat on stools that they had brought with them. Until the English Reformation they had no part in the service. The more pious said their private devotions while the priest celebrated the Mass in a language that they did not understand.

The term “hocus pocus” is a corruption of Hoc est corpus meum, "This is my body.” By the early seventeenth century it had become a magic formula used by by English conjurors and was a telling commentary on how the English had come to view the Latin Mass. But it also points to the fact that the priests who celebrated the Mass in pre-Reformation times were often poorly-educated and did not fully understand what they were saying. The Latin words of the Mass were for priest and people little more than a magical formula that the priest recited to turn the bread and wine into what the English Reformers derisively referred to as the Catholics’ “god of bread” for the adoration of the people.

Only the upper classes—the nobility and the gentry—were able to afford to own or rent a pew. The common people still had to stand or sit on stools that they brought from home.

Until the late Middle Ages the nave of the two-room church was put to a variety of uses. Medieval mystery, miracle, and morality plays were performed in the nave. These plays might last several days and were a popular form of entertainment. The nave was also used much in the same way as a modern community center or village hall.

Those planning the use of the space that a new congregation has rented can benefit from studying how successful church plants have made use of the space that they have rented. I have put together a list of dos and don’ts. They are in no particular order.

Make the entryway to the space that you are renting warm and welcoming

Place a welcome station close to the main entrance of the building. If you share a lobby with the other tenants of the building, place this center in the lobby where it is visible to anyone who enters the building. Station volunteers at this center whose responsibility is not just to welcome guests but give them directions and escort them to wherever they wish to go such as the Children’s Ministry area.

Use attractive professional quality signs to direct visitors and newcomers to the various ministry areas, e.g., Nursery, Children’s Ministry, etc. and to identify these areas. Use floor standing sign holders, portable sandwich board signs, and retractable banner stands.

Establish a gathering area where people may congregate before church services. Borrow a couple of ideas from Starbucks and have a coffee bar staffed by friendly volunteer baristas in the gathering area. Arrange the gathering area into conversation areas. At a minimum have a coffee station where people can grab a cup of coffee before the service. People are more likely to chat with each other over a cup of coffee. Most people are not going to linger after the service for a traditional coffee hour. They may stay for a newcomers’ lunch if it is announced in advance.

For the ten years I was involved in the Journey Church here in Murray, the hospitality ministry/guest services team operated the Journey Café which served free of charge several different kinds of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, bottled water, a selection of fruit flavorings for the bottled water, bananas, granola bars, and other ingredients for a light breakfast. Students and parents with young children seldom had an opportunity to eat breakfast before they came to church. The university cafeteria was not open until 11:00 AM. It served only brunch on Sundays, assuming that most students sleep late. Parents were often so rushed for time that they were not even able to go through the drive-through at McDonalds, Burger King, or Hardy’s. Before the first service we set up tables and set out chairs. We used round tables since they not only created the atmosphere of a café but also facilitated conversation. We put table clothes on the tables and on certain occasions we also put decorative center pieces. We also arranged two sofas into a conversation area. The Journey Café also had a hanging sign to identify the area used as a café. It was located to one side of the entrance to the worship area.

Place the gathering area in front of the worship area. What some Anglicans may dismiss as idle chitchat before the service is a part of the gathering process that forms a loose aggregate of people into a worshipping assembly. They may be catching up with other members of the congregation on what happened to them since they last saw each other. These same members of the congregation may be people for whom they have been praying during the week. They may be introducing themselves to guests and introducing guests to other members of the congregation. They are coming together as a community

If the gathering area and the worship area are in the same room or the worship area doubles as the gathering area, one way of signaling that the service is about to start is to play a recording of church bell ringing. The ringing of church bells is an ancient Christian way of summoning people to prayer. The early Irish monks used a quadrangular iron hand bell for this purpose. After the people have taken their seats, a minister can ask them to observe a period of silence and stillness in which they center their hearts and minds on God. This is how we started services at St. Michael’s for a number of years when we were a new congregation. We used a large hand bell in place of a recording of church bell ringing.

At the Journey Church the band began playing to signal that the service was about to begin. We used the Curris Center ballroom as a worship area and the second floor atrium concourse in front of the ballroom as a gathering area. The doors of the ballroom were kept shut until the service began.

Don’t choose for the worship area a room that has no fire exits, a low ceiling, acoustical ceiling tile, thick carpeting, space heaters, and through-the-wall or window air conditioners. The worship area should have several exits in case of a fire, earth quake, shooter, or other emergency.

A low ceiling, acoustical ceiling tiles, and thick carpeting will muffle the sound in a room. The congregation will not be able to hear itself sing and will be discouraged from singing. Even a sound system cannot compensate for an acoustically dead room. A room that may appear to be acoustically alive may become acoustically dead when filled with people. Human bodies absorb sound.

If they use natural gas, propane, or kerosene space heaters can produce dangerous levels of carbon monoxide in a poorly-ventilated room. Both electric, gas, and kerosene space heaters can cause serious burns. Kerosene space heaters can also tipped over even though they have weighted bottoms. In some areas buildings cannot be heated any other way and a new congregation has no other choice. In that case the new congregation should use every precaution to prevent injury and loss of life.

Through-the-wall and window air conditioners produce a lot of noise. So do some central air ot conditioning ceiling diffusers and baseboard registers. As in the case of a room with poor acoustics, a sound system cannot make up for the background noise that they create.

If the space which a new congregation rents has central air conditioning, the unit should be adequate enough to cool a room full of people. The room will grow warmer as the more people occupy it.

At St. Michael’s we turned down the thermostat to a low setting for this reason. However, a busybody in the congregation, when she arrived at church, turned up the thermostat, thinking that the empty room did not need to be so cold and she was saving the church money. When the room filled up with people, they would be mopping their brows and fanning themselves because the room was too warm. The priest and the other liturgical ministers sweltered in their vestments. We finally posted a notice above the thermostat warning people not to adjust it.

If the room’s ceiling is relatively high and the new congregation is leasing the space seven days a week and not on Sundays only, it may be possible to paint the acoustical ceiling with non-sound absorbing paint and to remove the carpeting. As someone pointed out on The Organ Forum, the paint fills the porosity of the surface it is applied to and can reduce the sound absorbing properties of that surface. Acoustical ceiling tiles dampen sound because they are very porous. If you paint them, you fill the pores and they become less efficient at absorbing sound. You should be careful NOT to use sound-absorbing paint that is made of ceramic microspheres and special soundproofing fillers. This will only add to your acoustical problem. It may also be possible to increase the room’s hard, reflective, nonporous interior surfaces. Glass, wood, plaster, brick and concrete absorb 2% to 5% of the sound striking a surface and reflect 95% or more of the sound. If the room has been painted with sound-absorbing paint, you may want to strip the paint and replace it with non-sound absorbing paint. There is a caveat. The thicker you apply a coat of paint, the more sound it will absorb. So if you repaint the room, strip off the sound-absorbing paint first.

Use stacking ganging chairs*, ones that easily put together and come apart; ordinary stacking chairs; or padded folding chairs in the worship area. This will enable you to put the area to other uses. For example, the worship area might be used for small group Bible study before the service. While some people may be able to attend a home group during the week, others only have time for a small group on Sunday. After the service circular folding tables may be set up, covered with a table cloth, and chairs set out for a newcomers’ lunch. If your lease is for seven-day-a-week use of the space, you can make the worship area available to community organizations and groups.

Avoid pews at all costs. They take up more space and limit how you can use the worship area. If you are leasing the space seven days a week, they are a total waste of space. You are not getting your full value from the space that you are leasing.

Arrange the seating in the worship area so that the people are able to see each other as well as the communion table and pulpit/lectern. This will foster a sense of community. It will also place the people in closer proximity to these two liturgical centers and will encourage their participation in the service. They will be in a better position to see the pastor’s actions, especially his laying of a hand on the bread, breaking the bread, and his laying of a hand on the cup and wine vessels, as well as to hear him. The pastor should face the people across the communion table as did those presiding over a celebration of Holy Communion did in the early centuries of the Christian Church.

A congregation does not need a lectern and a pulpit. A simple wooden standing lectern or  a adjustable lectern stand portable presentation podium can do double duty as a pulpit and a lectern. In this way the Holy Scriptures are read and expounded from the same liturgical center.

A strip of Velcro can be glued across the back of the top of the lectern next to the raised lip that keeps sermon notes, lectionaries, and the like from falling off the slanting top. Seasonal paraments may be hung from the top of the lectern  using a Velcro strip attached to them at one end. At the other end a thin dowel rod should be sown into the paraments.. They may then be draped over the top of the lectern to hang down almost to the floor in front of the lectern, held in place by the Velcro strip.

In inexpensive communion table can be made from a plastic top folding table like the one shown in this picture. Sections of plastic ABS pipe can be used on each leg to raise the table top to the best height for the pastor’s performance of the manual acts to be seen by the people—3 feet 6 inches off the floor. The table legs have a cross bar against which one end of each leg extenders will rest. The other end of each pipe section will rests on the floor. Duck tape can be wrapped around each table leg to make it fit tightly into a pipe section. The table is then covered with a Jacobean frontal.

Jacobean frontals are four sided and fall gracefully to the floor. My mother made a set of Jacobean frontals for St. Michael’s from broadcloth. They include a white Jacobean frontal with dogwood flowers appliquéd to the front of the frontal for use on Easter Day and during the Easter Season. Dogwood flowers take the form of a cross. If it follows what was the custom in seventeenth and eighteenth century English churches, a congregation needs only one such frontal—bright crimson in color, symbolizing the blood that Christ shed on the cross.

The idea for raising the communion table I learned from the founding pastor of the North Cross United Methodist Church, Madisonville, Louisiana. The pastor should not have to bend down to the table. On one website is a photo a very tall priest standing behind what looks like a very low end table or side table. The top of the table was barely large enough to hold the bread plate and the cup. The photo pointed to one of the dangers that new congregations face—well-meaning people who donate pieces of furniture and other articles which are totally unsuitable for liturgical use. At St. Michael’s we adopted a policy of showing various items that the church needed to would-be donors and allowing them to buy one of the items that we had shown them and then donating it to the church. People who show very good taste in decorating their own homes can show very poor taste in decorating a church building. The priest in the photo not only looked foolish but he also looked like he knew that he looked foolish. Congregations should not embarrass their clergy. They are quite capable of embarrassing themselves. This leads to my next don’t.

Avoid cluttering the worship area, in fact, any area, with Christian kitsch. It does nothing to beautify the area. It just looks tacky. You are not going to impress guests with tasteless church ornaments. In decorating the worship area, it is better to strive for a noble simplicity and apply the principle of less is more as you would in the liturgy.

Arrange the seating on two or three sides of the communion table and lectern/pulpit or in a semicircle around them, depending upon the shape of the worship area. The seating can be arranged in two sections facing each other across a broad aisle with the communion table at one end of the aisle and the lectern/pulpit at the other end. This is a particular good arrangement if the area is long and narrow like a chancel. It is the way that the early monks arranged their churches. The music group can sit together as a group with the rest of the congregation and lead the singing from within the congregation.

If the area is square, the seating can be arranged in two sections facing each other at a right angle like the arms of the letter “L” with a space where the arms would normally join. This divides the room roughly into four quarters. The people occupy two quarters; the music group, the third quarter; and the communion table and the lectern/pulpit, the fourth quarter. The communion table and the lectern/pulpit would be at a forty-five degree angle to the nearest seating section. A projection screen can be place behind them.  A multimedia projector can be mounted on a stand behind the projection screen. A curtain partition might be placed on each side of the project screen. The type of screen that I have in mind we used at the Journey Church here in Murray. It has a curtain skirt at the bottom. A slide of the cross can be projected on the screen when the screen is not otherwise in use. This can be very effective.

Keep the communion table free of clutter. The only things that should be on it are the communion vessels, a small cushion for the liturgical book, and perhaps two lights. There is some very attractive hand-thrown, glazed ceramic communion ware that may be purchased on the Internet. It costs far less than the metal communion ware. We used ceramic chalices at North Cross United Methodist Church. The cushion should be the same color as the frontal. The lights need not be tall wax candles perched on top of tall ugly brass candles sticks bought from a church supply house for an outrageous price. Two ball shaped decorative table glass oil lamps, weighted, placed on a square of plexigas, and placed on one side of the table are more than adequate. They are not expensive. Oil lamps were used in the early church, not candles.

Tall candlesticks cause the eye to move upwards and away from the action on the table—the laying of the pastor’s hand on the bread and so forth. Percy Dearmer who popularized the use of two lights recommended hand-turned wooden candlesticks made by a local craftsman and painted green. He was no fan of the ugly brass church ornaments that church supply houses sell.

Place the music group behind the people, within one of the seating sections, or to one side of the worship area. This is similar to the advice Dan Kimball gives in Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations” (pp.82-83). It takes the focus off the music group and restores it to Jesus and the worship itself. By “music group” I mean whatever musicians accompany the congregational singing and whatever vocalists lead and support that singing. The term “band” has a lot of “rock star” associations with it. A music group may use a variety of instruments, some which are associated with rock music—electric guitar, bass, keyboard, and others which are associated with other forms of music—harp, fiddle, uilleann pipes, tin whistle, flute, recorder, ocarina, melodica, djembe, box drums, Congas, steel drums. The term suggests a more diverse style of music.

Mistake #6. Treating visitors and newcomers as an inconvenience, not as guests. I have served as a mystery visitor and I am speaking from experience. At one storefront church that I visited, no one greeted me at the entrance of the building. I was finally approached by an usher who was holding a stack of church bulletins. Rather than offer me a church bulletin, he began to interrogate me. Satisfied with my answers, he launched into an account of how the group that had organized the church had broken away from the local Episcopal church and why. It was an ACNA church. I finally asked him for a church bulletin and went in search of a cup of coffee.

The church had an area which served as a gathering space/fellowship area but it was located behind the worship area and not in front of it and had no signs identifying its purpose or directing visitors to it. I concluded from the small groups of people drinking coffee and eating donuts, it must be the gathering space/fellowship area. I also observed a coffee urn on a counter at the back of the area. A woman stood behind the counter . I asked her whether the coffee was free. She ignored me. I assumed that due to her advanced age she might be hard of hearing and helped myself to a cup of coffee. I then sat down at a table where several people were sitting. They studiously ignored me. Their body language was very revealing. It said that they would have preferred that I had gotten up and gone to another table.

Shortly thereafter I discovered that this small group of people were the members of a Bible study group that the pastor was conducting. It was an open group. This made their behavior even more telling of the congregation’s attitude toward visitors.

As I recall, no one beside the usher and the pastor engaged me in conversation, much less introduced themselves to me. If a new congregation treats all of its visitors in this way, it will not be around for long.

I remember an usher who served at the church that I attended as a teenager and where I was confirmed. He was relaxed and friendly. He had a broad smile and firm handshake. He exuded welcome. His whole demeanor conveyed the message that he was glad to see you. People who have this gift and I believe that it is a gift are a rarity. Rest of us have to work hard at being welcoming.

Among the things that I learned during my six or more years as a hospitality ministry/guest services volunteer at the Journey Church here in Murray was that guests respond to your body language more than they do your words. It is important to take a genuine interest in the person in front of you. Your body language and words should convey that interest. The person in front of you has a story. He or she is someone about whom God cares and whom God has sent to your church. Welcome him or her as you would welcome Christ. Remember that you are also Christ’s representative. Christ in you may be the only glimpse of Christ that he or she sees in his or her life. Welcome each guest with the love that you have for Christ and the love Christ has for all for whom he died. The love that you show a guest may be the only time that he or she experiences that love. The guest’s brief encounter with you should be an encounter with Christ. Christ may use you to plant a seed or to water a seed that he has planted through someone else.

*Local fire safety codes may require stacking ganging chairs since they enable an orderly exodus from the worship area in case of a fire or some other emergency. Panicking worshipers can knock over loosely arranged chairs, causing further confusion and creating obstacles for others. 

Photo Credit: Grace Anglican Community, Katy TX, Anglican Diocese of the West Gulf Coast, ACNA