As churches throughout the state experience rapid growth in membership and ministries, many are beginning to build multipurpose facilities to accommodate their church needs. Instead of building a sanctuary, fellowship hall and educational building, many Alabama Baptist churches have constructed larger facilities with several transitional spaces to house these and other church programs throughout the week.
Although these spaces can be extremely useful to expanding churches, they may cause further discomfort without proper planning.
“With the cost of construction being as high as it is, you just about have to have numerous multiuse spaces in the church,” said David Payne, owner of Payne and Associates Architects in Montgomery. “The last thing a church is usually able to afford is the sanctuary.”
When Clearview Baptist Church, Pinson, began feeling growing pains a decade ago, they decided to construct a multipurpose facility as an intermediate step between their old sanctuary, which they had outgrown, and a new worship center, according to worship minister Wes Haley.
Using a master plan, church leaders decided that eventually the two-story space, which seats about 1,000 and contains numerous meeting rooms and offices, would be used for recreation, fellowship, educational and office space. Today, the building is used every day of the week for sports, midweek meals, youth activities and worship.
“We feel like it is very good stewardship of our resources because the building is in constant use,” said Haley. “It gets used week in and week out. A sanctuary tends to be the least used facility and the most expensive to build and maintain.”
While recommending these types of facilities to churches that need more than one building but can afford only one, he also advises church leaders to carefully consider the design and use of available space in these types of buildings.
He suggests that churches design the building with several small and medium meeting spaces within the large area. In addition, he says that church leaders should know whether they want to take the main large room and divide it into meeting spaces or make some of the Sunday School rooms larger than others before constructing the facility.
“There are times when just having small group rooms are (not) enough,” Haley added. “There are times when churches will need a larger room for an assembly or meeting or for some organizational meeting, so they need to take that into account. Sometimes (this) causes space conflicts.”
Another consideration when building multipurpose facilities is the length of time in which the facility will be used for various programs.
According to Gary Nicholson, architect and master planner at LifeWay Church Architecture, many churches build these spaces expecting to use them for a short period of time and build a dedicated worship space in their next expansion.
“Sometimes churches find that they need more educational space instead of worship space and this could lead to crisis in the church,” he said. “The way to prevent that is to have a (good) master plan and stick to it from the beginning.”
Churches should also prepare for the “very labor intensive transition” process necessary in rearranging the building space, according to Nicholson.
“If you are planning to use a room for recreational and worship you have to have enough storage space,” he said. “Many churches underestimate the effort and storage space this requires.”
Multipurpose facilities also look much different than the traditional church building, so churches using these facilities for their sanctuaries — at least temporarily — may need to be sensitive to longtime members who may not adjust quickly.
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