Evaluating if Your Church Building Is Underperforming Before the Back-to-School Rush

The summer is a slow time for church. People are on vacation. Their regular rhythms are thrown off. It’s hard to get enough volunteers.

Here’s the thing. The summer slowdown doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Those slower Sundays can also give you a chance to review your resources and strategy before a busy season ahead – including running a facilities audit.

Here are some questions you can ask your leadership and facilities teams to see if your building is underperforming before you’re managing the back-to-school rush in a couple of weeks.

1. Which rooms are sitting unused beyond Sunday?

Sunday is the main event for most churches, but it should never be the only event. Look at your church’s use throughout the week, Sunday to Saturday.

Often, church leaders feel the pressure of space issues, especially during seasons of growth or a sudden surge, like the back-to-school rush. In reality, they are simply using their spaces inefficiently after a slower season. Consider how you can use your building more effectively to stay ahead of the pressure.

2. Can we use rooms for more than one ministry?

It’s easy to feel trapped into using a specific space for what it was designed for. If you shift your mindset from dedicated spaces to flexible ones, it’s much easier to find more space.

Sometimes, this is a big initiative, like using Sunday school classrooms for a childcare program during the week. At other times, it’s as simple as clearing out the chairs from your auditorium to host a family Nerf night.

3. Do our current spaces align with our mission?

Using a space well doesn’t always translate to impact. A truly activated church space advances your mission-driven purpose.

Be aware that this can happen in different ways. Obviously, using a space to host a Bible study one day and a missions planning meeting the next day is effective and mission-driven. But hosting a childcare program throughout the week is an underestimated way to offset operational costs and improve local outreach, too.

4. When are rooms sitting empty?

Part of the inefficiency issue often comes from an unawareness of when a space is going to be used. Knowing that a group is meeting in the foyer “at some point on Thursday” might keep people from asking for the space for another event, even if theirs is in the morning and the other one is at night.

Use the late summer to recapture an updated, detailed sense of your facility schedule. If you start tracking the “when” behind your spaces, you might find you don’t have as much of a square footage problem as you thought you might have when things get busy in the fall.

5. Are our facilities operating efficiently?

Along with the mission focus, do some practical analysis. Start with energy benchmarking to improve your utility usage. Gather electric, gas, and water bills from the last year.

Then, look for changes in usage that stand out. Some might be seasonal. Others might be mismatches, like HVAC running high in an empty wing all week between services. Fleshing out your space usage schedule (see question 4) helps with this, too.

Auditing Your Church for Unactivated Spaces Before the Fall

The fall is one of the busiest times for the church. You get the huge surge as people return to normal rhythms in September. Then, there’s the lead-up to the holidays just a couple of months later.

As you prep for the busy season ahead, make sure to review your facilities, too. Ask the right questions and pressure-test how your building can support your ministry (and not the other way around).

If you find you have underused church space or you think there are areas where you can improve your church building efficiency, but you aren’t sure what to do, reach out for a Free Analysis from the Ministry Solutions Group. We can help you assess where you can responsibly invest in church facility utilization to make the most of your church building in the season ahead.