Thinking of the future
16/07/14 05:21
We have a capital funds process going in our church that involves groups of people studying our building and trying to project building needs for coming years. We are well aware that our building is nearing 55 years old and that the people who were involved in the design and construction of the building did a good job of planning for the future. Part of our congregation’s ability to engage in significant mission and outreach is that we have been blessed by a very functional building that serves our congregation well. While other congregations are faced with building needs consuming huge amounts of congregational resources, we have been well served by the generosity and foresight of those who came before us.
Now it is our turn to make the investments required to position the congregation to meet the needs of a new generation. The challenge of this is that we don’t really know what the congregation will need in the future. The congregation has served his community for 135 years without having an air-conditioned building. But these days we are not the preferred summer concert venue because of the lack of air conditioning. Our own people sometimes are uncomfortable because of a building that can hold significant heat in summer months. Virtually all new public buildings in our community have air conditioning designed into them from the beginning. Can we imagine that we will not have some system for cooling our building 25 or 50 years from now? Even if we could answer that question, we wouldn’t know whether members of the congregation decades from now will want to remain in the same building or have new construction of different kinds of spaces.
Currently we have study groups examining our roof and ways to make the building more fire resistant, our heating and cooling systems and ways to make the building more energy efficient, and a visioning group thinking about possible future uses of the building and how we make changes to provide for future needs.
Most of us think that our sanctuary will continue to be a place of worship, music and community gathering. We find its appearance to be timeless and don’t envision major changes. But our choir loft at the rear of the sanctuary is not accessible to those who have trouble negotiating the stairs. Installing an elevator is not only costly in this generation, but saddles the congregation with very expensive on-going maintenance. It may be simpler and more efficient to bring the choir and bell choir down to the main level of the congregation. That wouldn’t require major changes in the room, but we might want to think of seating. Doing that means trying to envision the worship style of future congregations - a challenge in itself.
This summer we’ve had some events that have taxed our building and perhaps show us a little bit about how the future might look. In early June we hosted the South Dakota Conference of the United Church of Christ. For parts of three days we had over 100 guests for workshops, worship and meals. Our kitchen, fellowship hall and sanctuary served the group well. We had room for the Board of Directors to meet comfortably. We had classrooms for small group meetings and spaces for informal gatherings. But we ended up moving all of the furniture out of our parlor. While the formal meeting room works well for some of our groups, it is not really a multi-purpose room. We made it work, but it got us to thinking about how a few changes in furniture might enable the room to serve our existing needs and also be a more comfortable place for some new uses. We also put a lot of energy into setting up and taking down projection systems and ways to share video. We might want to think of more convenient ways to provide for audio-visual presentations in some of our rooms.
The big strain on the building, however, was our bathrooms. We simply did not have enough for the constant use of the conference. Lines formed. Paper supplies dwindled. We had no appropriate rooms for families who needed to provide assistance for loved ones. Although our main bathrooms are ADA accessible and we have additional changing stations for babies, we simply didn’t have enough bathrooms for the event.
Throughout the summer we have been hosting visiting youth groups. The building provides a place for them to put down sleeping bags and spend the night. We have adequate kitchen space for them to share meals and both indoor and outdoor recreations spaces. But, again, we are short of bathroom space and have no showers.
Our building was designed for children’s’ programs. From the beginning our congregation wanted to have classrooms and other spaces for children. This week it is delightful to have our halls crowded and our spaces filled with children. Our program, with over 50 children and 20 adult and teen leaders fits in our building well. There are some moments of crowding in the hallways during transition times, but we have space for our programs. However, like the conference annual meeting, we did a lot of moving furniture to make things work. While moving furniture will always be a part of congregational life, we are aware that we need to think in terms of more flexibility when purchasing furniture for the future. Lightweight tables, stackable chairs, and more attention to floor coverings will make our spaces more flexible. The building was designed for graded education, with different sized furniture in different rooms, assuming that children would be divided into age groups. Some of our programs now involve mixing age groups and we find that not all of our adult furniture serves children well. For example, folding metal chairs pose a danger of pinching fingers and falling, whereas stack chairs allow little ones to kneel on the chair without risk.
We can’t predict the future, and we will never have a perfect building. But we are working diligently to think and anticipate as did those who came before us so that our investments will have lasting value as did theirs.
Now it is our turn to make the investments required to position the congregation to meet the needs of a new generation. The challenge of this is that we don’t really know what the congregation will need in the future. The congregation has served his community for 135 years without having an air-conditioned building. But these days we are not the preferred summer concert venue because of the lack of air conditioning. Our own people sometimes are uncomfortable because of a building that can hold significant heat in summer months. Virtually all new public buildings in our community have air conditioning designed into them from the beginning. Can we imagine that we will not have some system for cooling our building 25 or 50 years from now? Even if we could answer that question, we wouldn’t know whether members of the congregation decades from now will want to remain in the same building or have new construction of different kinds of spaces.
Currently we have study groups examining our roof and ways to make the building more fire resistant, our heating and cooling systems and ways to make the building more energy efficient, and a visioning group thinking about possible future uses of the building and how we make changes to provide for future needs.
Most of us think that our sanctuary will continue to be a place of worship, music and community gathering. We find its appearance to be timeless and don’t envision major changes. But our choir loft at the rear of the sanctuary is not accessible to those who have trouble negotiating the stairs. Installing an elevator is not only costly in this generation, but saddles the congregation with very expensive on-going maintenance. It may be simpler and more efficient to bring the choir and bell choir down to the main level of the congregation. That wouldn’t require major changes in the room, but we might want to think of seating. Doing that means trying to envision the worship style of future congregations - a challenge in itself.
This summer we’ve had some events that have taxed our building and perhaps show us a little bit about how the future might look. In early June we hosted the South Dakota Conference of the United Church of Christ. For parts of three days we had over 100 guests for workshops, worship and meals. Our kitchen, fellowship hall and sanctuary served the group well. We had room for the Board of Directors to meet comfortably. We had classrooms for small group meetings and spaces for informal gatherings. But we ended up moving all of the furniture out of our parlor. While the formal meeting room works well for some of our groups, it is not really a multi-purpose room. We made it work, but it got us to thinking about how a few changes in furniture might enable the room to serve our existing needs and also be a more comfortable place for some new uses. We also put a lot of energy into setting up and taking down projection systems and ways to share video. We might want to think of more convenient ways to provide for audio-visual presentations in some of our rooms.
The big strain on the building, however, was our bathrooms. We simply did not have enough for the constant use of the conference. Lines formed. Paper supplies dwindled. We had no appropriate rooms for families who needed to provide assistance for loved ones. Although our main bathrooms are ADA accessible and we have additional changing stations for babies, we simply didn’t have enough bathrooms for the event.
Throughout the summer we have been hosting visiting youth groups. The building provides a place for them to put down sleeping bags and spend the night. We have adequate kitchen space for them to share meals and both indoor and outdoor recreations spaces. But, again, we are short of bathroom space and have no showers.
Our building was designed for children’s’ programs. From the beginning our congregation wanted to have classrooms and other spaces for children. This week it is delightful to have our halls crowded and our spaces filled with children. Our program, with over 50 children and 20 adult and teen leaders fits in our building well. There are some moments of crowding in the hallways during transition times, but we have space for our programs. However, like the conference annual meeting, we did a lot of moving furniture to make things work. While moving furniture will always be a part of congregational life, we are aware that we need to think in terms of more flexibility when purchasing furniture for the future. Lightweight tables, stackable chairs, and more attention to floor coverings will make our spaces more flexible. The building was designed for graded education, with different sized furniture in different rooms, assuming that children would be divided into age groups. Some of our programs now involve mixing age groups and we find that not all of our adult furniture serves children well. For example, folding metal chairs pose a danger of pinching fingers and falling, whereas stack chairs allow little ones to kneel on the chair without risk.
We can’t predict the future, and we will never have a perfect building. But we are working diligently to think and anticipate as did those who came before us so that our investments will have lasting value as did theirs.