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.