Ch-ch-ch-changes

Yes, it's been a while...

The task force has been hard at work, I've just been negligent in updating this blog. I'll be making up for that over the next little while, because I've go a lot to report.

The task force has made a couple of decisions. More on that in this blog.

I attended the More Franchises than Tim Horton's conference in Toronto in June. It was an incredible experience, and I'll be reporting on that over the next few days.

Decisions

We sent a survey out to all of the committees and groups that are associated with our church, asking them what they like and don't like about our existing facilities, and asking some brain-storming type questions on what an ideal TMUC building would be like. The answers that came back made it very easy to make our first decision.

Are you ready?

Sit down.

Status quo is off the list.

That's right. Whatever the task force recommends to the congregation at our next AGM, staying exactly the way we are now won't be one of the choices. There was overwhelming response (almost, but not quite unanimous) that those who are involved in governance of TMUC would prefer to have one service on regular Sunday mornings.

We also want a modern sanctuary, with full accessibly to all, up-to-date audio-visual capabilities. and flexibility for different types of service.

At present, our sanctuary doesn't meet these requirements. That means that there will have to be some sort of structural change - this could be major modifications to the existing structure, or an altogether new structure.

As for a new structure, we believe that finding a green field somewhere and putting up a brand new building on our own is beyond the financial means of our congregation unless everyone suddenly decides to double their contribution to the church. It's likely that if we decide that building new is feasible, it would have to be in partnership with some other organization. Other churches have taken this route and been successful at it.

So changes are a-coming. We recognize that change - even change for the better - can be unsettling. For many people, one of the reasons they come to church is because it's a familiar, comfortable place. Many of us (myself included) were baptized in this building, married in this building, formed treasured friendships in this building, and celebrated the lives of loved ones in this building. We know that whatever changes take place, we are going to have to be sensitive to the discomfort that we may cause. We will do all we can to make transitions as easy as possible.

I know that one way to make transitions easier is to ensure that you have input into the decisions that are being made. I welcome any comments that you may have, and we will be putting a survey up on the TMUC website to elicit opinion from anyone who cares to give it.

And stay tuned - comments about the "More Franchises" conference will be coming up shortly.

Till next time,

See you in church.

The Church is not a building

The Church is a community. The Church is not bricks and mortar, lath and plaster, and glass and cames. We need to be reminded of that from time to time.

I feel the need for some personal reflection on this topic. Please bear with me.

Our community is what makes our Church successful and vital. Our community gives the Church its compassion, its intellect, and its soul. Its physical structure, just like your or my physical structure, will change form from time to time - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. But the soul of the Church determines its real character.

We seek comfort in places that are familiar to us - places we've come to love. Injury to these places feels like personal injury, and that causes us pain. Sometimes injury can leave scars - some visible and some not. Even after healing is complete, the outward scars might remind us of that pain all over again. Our compassion and intellect give way to anger and fear. Inner scars need to heal too.

So where do we find solace?

We look to each other. We're fortunate to have this community of so many caring people with whom we can share our concerns. We talk to each other, and that helps us heal - helps us get our intellect, compassion, and soul back into the right place. When we get these things in the right place and the inner scars are healed, the outward scars don't matter so much anymore.

Let's make a special effort to be kind - kind to ourselves, and kind to each other. We might feel anger when we know we should be forgiving. We might feel something has been taken from us when we know we have so much to be thankful for. We might feel vulnerable when we know we live in one of the safest places in the world. It's in our nature to have these feelings sometimes. It's not pleasant. We don't like feeling it and it's uncomfortable to hear others express it, but it's going to happen. If we're kind to ourselves and each other, we can help each other work through it.

The building is not the Church. The building is the place where the Church meets.

Till next time, see you in the building.

Writing and reading

Well, there’s been a lot of activity behind the scenes, but not much activity on this blog. My apologies.

The survey for groups associated with our church is complete, and has been sent out to group leaders. If you lead any sort of group or committee associated with our church, and you have not received a survey, please let me know and you will receive one forthwith. Posthaste. Immediately if not sooner.

The survey is in two parts. Part 1 asks the recipient to rate various characteristics of our building on how well they help us fulfil the Vision, Mission, and Goals of our congregation. The second part asks a bunch of leading questions about what the ideal building would look like.

I’ve asked the various groups to complete this survey as soon as is practical. We really want to get the answers back before everyone heads to the cottage and the committees break for the summer.

I’m hopeful that the task force – hard-working bunch that we are – will continue to work through the summer as much as we can. We may not meet, but thanks to e-mail, Google Docs, and other technologies, I’m sure we’ll be able to take a rainy day here and there to think about our tasks and make a little progress.

Impromptu book review

I’ve bought a book. Building for Effective Mission – A Complete Guide for Congregations on Bricks and Mortar Issues by Kennon L. Callahan. I just received it this week, so I haven’t had a chance to complete it yet, but I am impressed. By the time I’d reached page 3, I’d already gone “hmmm” twice.

Hmmm number 1; the author draws parallels between the time of Christ and current times.

Welcome to one of the greatest ages of mission the Christian movement has ever seen. Welcome to the first century. Welcome to the twenty-first century. Welcome to a mission time.
Christ was born into an age of mission, a bleak time of empires and soldiers, palaces and kings, a time of the lame and the deaf, the blind and the poor.

Hmmm. Empires and soldiers, palaces and kings. Does sound kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

Hmmm number 2; a brief commentary on the church's place in society today.

This is no longer a churched culture. I encourage you not to mourn its passing. Do not long for a return to those days when going to church was the thing to do. The church is never at its best in a churched culture.
When churchgoing was a staple of social conformity, the church was nonetheless ill at ease and out of place. … Yes, it has enjoyed its prominence as a cultural institution and the pedestal on which it was perched. Yet the church has realized, albeit dimly, that it is not called to be admired by the world. Intuitively it has been restless to serve, not to be served.

Hmmm. The church is at its best when people don’t want to go to church.

Yes, I’m going to enjoy this book. As soon as I’ve finished reading it, I’ll make it available to the other task force members. Once they’ve all done with it, I’ll offer it to the church library. I’ll let you know when that happens.

So… long post this week. Hope it makes up for no post at all last week.

Till next time, see you in church (or not).

Spring is coming - really

Happy Easter everyone!

Easter - a time to celebrate resurrection and rebirth. A time when those brave crocuses poke their heads out of the bare ground between the melting snow drifts.

Melting snowdrifts. That happens in the spring, or so I've heard.

Notwithstanding what you see when you look out your windows, spring is arriving and it is a time of rebirth. A time to reflect on what's gone before, and plan for what's coming. Having grown up on a farm, I always see this time as the start of a new year. That day at the beginning of January seems very arbitrary, and is just a number on a calendar. This is the true new year.

Waxing somewhat philosophical, aren't I? There's a reason for that. Our task force has been given the job of investigating how TMUC can renew itself through its facilities. What physical structure do we need to enable us to accomplish the renewal that the congregation believes we need?

Our next meeting is tomorrow - Monday, March 24. We'll be finalizing the survey that we are going to send to various TMUC church groups. Once we get the answers back we can evaluate our facilities options. Through this process, I'm hopeful that one option will bubble to the surface as the best one.

I'm looking forward to renewal. Spring is coming. Really, it is. Have faith. That's what we're all about, isn't it?

Til next time, see you in church!

Questions, questions, questions

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

- Blaise Pascal

I have a first draft of a questionnaire that we want to send around to the various church committees and groups. I've distributed it to the task force and a few other select people for comments. The consensus is, it's too long.

I do tend to be a bit loquacious at times. And I have a bad habit of using a long word when a diminutive one will do.

We'll do what we can to make the questionnaire more palatable for those who have to complete it.

The reason we're developing this questionnaire is to establish exactly what we want a church building to do for us. As a group, we on the task force think we know what's important to the congregation, and what we should be doing. We think we know. We need to really know what the church community wants. We are, in effect, trying to establish the user requirements for a church building.

I'm also interested in hearing from those who are not involved in church governance. Just because you don't happen to be on a committee doesn't mean that your opinion isn't valued. If you have an opinion on what a church building should do for our congregation, I'm more than willing to hear it. If you're not comfortable leaving a comment for all to see, then send me an e-mail and let me know what you think. Your response will be kept in confidence.

I'm hopeful that we can get this questionnaire finalized, and decide who gets what questions, at our meeting on March 24. Shortly thereafter, I will distribute it to the leaders of committees and groups at the church so they can meet, discuss, and answer the questions. This will help us move on to the next step in our process, which is evaluating our options.

I'm enjoying this journey we're on so far, and it's only going to get better as the year progresses.

Till next time, see you in church!

Gotta love free advice

My apologies for the delay in posting. I had a good reason. I was having fun skiing in Jasper.

I was very encouraged by our meeting with Michael Boreskie of the United Church of Canada's Architectural Resource Group. He was genuinely excited about the task we've taken on, and had some very nice things to say about our church community and the steps we've taken so far.

I had expected an architect to spend most of his time talking about the technical aspects of a church building. I was surprised and delighted with the emphasis that Michael put on how the building should reflect our calling. He proposes a three step approach to building renewal, and suggested that we answer these three questions.

1. Who are we in God?


2. How do live out who we are in God?


3. What facilities do we need to live out who we are in God?

Our recently developed Mission, Vision, and Goals help us answer the first question and part of the second question. We will need to flesh this out, and will be distributing a questionnaire to all of the church committees. I've started working on this - really I have.

Once we've fully answered the first two questions, it will be easier to answer the third one. And question 3 is our whole raison d'être.

I had sent Michael some of our congregation's recently developed strategic planning material, plus some background material on what TMUC is all about. He was fairly impressed that we had recently gone through this process, and that that was the impetus behind getting the task force under way.

Having read the background material, and formed an opinion of our character, Michael had some interesting and candid comments after touring our building. It was difficult for him to reconcile the things we had identified as important in our strategic plan with the structure of the building. We are an active, progressive congregation that is moving boldly into the 21st century, but we're housed in this traditional, mid 20th century structure.

Reassuring for me that we're right to be asking the questions we're asking at this time.

Michael had some very good practical advice on how we should evaluate our existing space and its utility. We'll use the tools he's given us to help us decide how much space we really need, and how that space should be configured.

We're also a little (or a lot) smarter now with regards to the challenges we would face should we decide to renovate our existing building. We had speculated on the effect that major renovations would have on our compliance with various building codes and zoning requirements. Michael was able to confirm some of this speculation, and put some of it to rest.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention our other featured guest at this meeting. Jeff Cook provided us with some valuable insight into the wide variety of worship spaces that he encounter while on sabbatical last year. We heard of worship spaces that ranged from no space at all - the virtual church, rented facilities, worship in a coffee house, churches that incorporate coffee houses, non-traditional worship in a very traditional cathedral, and worship in a sanctuary that could seat hundreds and hundreds of people.

A few things that Jeff encountered struck a chord as things that would appeal to our congregation. The thing that seemed to fit best with us was to have a meeting place that was attached to the sanctuary where people could socialize before and after services. He witnessed this in several churches and felt that this sort of scenario would fit our community very well.

It was a pleasure meeting with Michael and a pleasure hearing Jeff's insights. Michael kindly offered to return at some time when we're further along in the process. If you're reading this Michael, rest assured that I will take you up on that offer.

That's all for now. I'll post again later this week.

See you in church.

Bigger is not necessarily better

Some common ideas keep bubbling to the surface as the Task Force members reflect on our existing facilities and the things that are important to our congregation. One notion that keeps popping up is that, no matter what our final recommendation is, we may not need a bigger facility.

Depending on how you measure it, we have somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 square feet of space in our building. That's a quarter of an acre for us rural folk. A lot of space to be under a roof.

So why do we feel so crowded sometimes? Why do we need two services to accommodate the size of our congregation?

Even though we're a very busy church, not all of that space is occupied at any particular time. Take the sanctuary for instance. Apart from Sunday morning services, wedding, funerals, and the like, that space is empty most of the time. It's an issue that many churches have had to deal with. The sanctuary – often the largest room in a church – is the room that is used for the fewest hours in the week.

Other areas of the church are used more frequently. The halls and meeting rooms are used for Bible Study, Committee meetings, Senior’s Meal Program, Explorers, Families Connecting, Beavers, Scouts, Ventures, Seniors Exercise, Food Bank, and more. But still, because of the layout of our building, most of the building is empty most of the time.

The group appears to be coming to the conclusion that, no matter what we do, our facility has to be more flexible – easier to reconfigure so that we can make better use of the space available. But not necessarily bigger. The big question is, "How we do that?"

Well, we will get a step closer to the answer to that question at our meeting this Monday. Michael Boreskie of the United Church of Canada's Architectural Resource Group will be meeting with the Task Force. Michael has a vast experience in church architecture, and his philosophy is to create spaces that suit a congregation's character.

We'll talk to Michael about the things that are important to the congregation, and then give him a tour of the church building. I'm hopeful that by the end of the meeting on Monday, the Task Force will have a much clearer idea of what options we might have available if the congregation chooses to stay at our present site, and what options we should consider if we want to build new.

And if you're wondering how I managed to convince the group to meet two weeks in a row, I promised them that I would bake a batch of cookies for them. I'm off to do that now.

Till next time.

Meetings, meetings, meetings

When I was out twisting arms, convincing people to join this task force, the first question everyone asked was, "How often do you anticipate meeting?" To which I replied, "I'm aiming for about once a month." So, what do I do? I set meetings for two consecutive Mondays (February 18 and 25). I hope I don't have a mutiny on my hands.

This Monday was a planned meeting. We're already making good progress, and the group generally agreed that meeting again two weeks after our first meeting was worthwhile. We have a good idea of what new construction costs are these days (a lot, by the way), and we're getting a handle on what the value of our present building is. We're starting to explore funding opportunities and interesting partnership opportunities. At our meeting this Monday, we're going to start working on questions that we can put in a questionnaire that will be sent to all of the church committees.

The meeting on the following Monday was unplanned, but we're taking advantage of an opportunity. A representative from the United Church of Canada's Architectural Resource Group will be coming to tour our present facility, and to provide us with some valuable advice on what options we have available to us. In addition, Jeff Cook will be sharing the experiences he had with different worship spaces while he was on sabbatical. I expect that we'll all learn a lot on the 25th.

On a side note, based on web statistics that I'm gathering, this blog has been visited by about 20 different individuals over the last week. If you're reading this, I encourage you to spread the word about this blog to everyone you know who might be interested. The more that people know about this process, the easier it will be to deal with what changes may occur.

Till next time, see you in church.

Welcome and Introduction

Hello all,

I've set up this blog for people who are interested in what's happening with the facilities task force at Transcona Memorial United Church. I expect that I will be posting something here at least once a week.

First, a few disclaimers. This is my blog. I do not officially represent TMUC or the United Church of Canada. Opinions expressed (and I do have them) are strictly my own. Having said that, I will do my best to provide a fair account of our progress, and try to keep my own bias out of the picture.

So, why a task force? Our congregation has met in our current building for about 54 years. As I understand it, we've been discussing its adequacy for about 53 of those years. We are a progressive congregation, and our demands on our building are continually changing. In recent decades the question, "What should we do with this building?" has been getting asked more frequently, but has never really been answered.

This past year, TMUC took a serious approach to creating a strategic plan for ourselves. We developed a Vision, a Mission, and a number of goals that direct us to do the things that we believe are important. One of the things that came out of this strategic plan was the desire to get an answer to the question, "What should we do with this building?" Hence, a task force. We have until January 2009 to come up with recommendations.

And why am I leading this task force? Because I volunteered.

The official board of TMUC presented the task force with 6 scenarios to consider.

• Status quo


• Upgrade Present Facility


• Rental Facility


• Building a new building off current site


• Partnering with business (seniors complex) to build a new building


• Virtual Facility/Site

We'll be evaluating all of these options, and possibly more in the coming months.

We'll do a comparative analysis of these scenarios, based on a cost/benefit analysis for each of them. The costs and benefits that can be measured in dollars will be relatively easy to compare. We can predict maintenance costs for our existing facility. We can get "ballpark" estimates for renovation, building new, etc. We can investigate funding opportunities from governments, philanthropists and other funding bodies.

The costs and benefits that are less tangible - how well each scenario will allow us to meet our Mission, Vision, and Goals - will require more creativity. We will probably develop a matrix and rating system for these issues, evaluating each scenario against our goals.

I'm very pleased with the calibre of people who have agreed to serve on this task force. I think we have a good combination of experience, practicality, and creativity.

We've had one meeting so far, and we're already making some progress towards our goal. We've contacted the Architectural Resource Group of the United Church of Canada, and will be meeting with their representative soon. We've got a good start on the valuation of our existing property and will soon have information about what sort of zoning variances we would need should we decide to undertake major renovations.

And of course, the first concrete step will be to determine user requirements - find out what we want our building to do for us. We'll be creating a questionnaire for all of the committees of TMUC to find out what they think is important. This will include the newly formed Youth Committee and Environmental Committee.

And now here's me, opening up a can of worms.

I want your opinion.

There's a link at the end of this post that currently says "0 Comments". As a friend of mine would say, I want it to say n comments, where n is a relatively large number. Click on that link and tell me (and the world) what you think.