October 18, 2007
Recently we received a great question via the website about the proposed Phase IV building program. Someone who did not sign their name wrote the following: "I see many seats available in the pews at the 8:45 a.m. church service so do not understand why we are investing so much in a new sanctuary." That is a very valid comment and I'm sure others have the same question, so let me take a stab at it by referencing some real-world examples.
If you were to build a brand new restaurant and wanted to make sure that there was enough capacity so that no one was every turned away or had to wait in line, you would not build it large enough for the 5 p.m. dinner crowd, but for the crowd that arrives between 7 and 8 p.m. Anything less than that would not only be not hospitable, but it would be a poor business decision as well.
If you are a family of four that has decided to build a new home, and having the extended family over for Thanksgiving and Christmas is a major event for your family, you would want to build the living and dining areas of your home large enough so that they could accommodate the entire family on those major festive occasions. A dining table built for four or a living room only large enough for six people would not be adequate.
If you go to the mall on most days of the years you will find literally hundreds of unoccupied parking places. You might think "how silly for them to spend all that money on parking places that are never used." But if you go to the mall on the weekend after Thanksgiving you will discover that most of those parking places are taken. And if you ask the people that built the mall, they will tell you that there are a few days out of the year that literally spell the difference between success and failure. That is why they build so much capacity into the parking lot and other retail areas.
The church is kind of a combination of all three examples above. We are in the hospitality business (we call it the Welcoming Ministry), we are committed to building a home for our growing family, and we are in the retail business in the sense that we are offering a product (a relationship and journey with Jesus Christ) to the thousands of nameless persons whom we hope will come in from the streets and hear our message.
We have done extensive studies of our seating capacity, taking into consideration not just our low-attendance services (8:45 a.m.) and Sundays (July 4th weekend), but also those Sundays and services when we expect to reach the most people. It can be statistically demonstrated that if we expect our attendance to grow, we must add more seats.
Finally, a testimony from our history. Our seating at all three services in this sanctuary looks very much like it did in the old sanctuary on Glencliff. On most Sundays and at most services a person could find a seat. But when we built the new sanctuary and added capacity, our average attendance went almost immediately from around 750 to approximately 1,200, and then kept climbing until it leveled off at today's numbers in the 1,700 range.
Bottom line: if we want to reach more people for Christ and continue to grow our youth and children's programs, our extensive missions programs, our Bible studies and other ministries, added capacity is essential. Thanks for the great question and the opportunity to respond, and remember that our Town Hall meeting on October 28th at 7 p.m. will provide a great forum for asking more questions and offering your personal input.
