How can congregations imaginatively use their space? In this episode we speak with Bob Jaeger, president of Partners for Sacred Places, about re-imagining the space in your church building.

Transcript

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How can congregations imaginatively use their space? In this episode we speak with Bob Jaeger, president of Partners for Sacred Places, about re-imagining the space in your church building.

Doug Powe: Welcome to Leading Ideas Talks, a podcast featuring thought leaders and innovative practitioners. I’m Douglas Powe the director of the Lewis Center and your host for this talk. Joining me is Bob Jeager, the president of Partners for Sacred Places. Our focus for this podcast is helping congregations to reimagine building and space usage. I want to remind our listeners to please subscribe at ITunes and Stitcher and to give us a 5-star rating.

Bob, I’m so glad you can join us for this talk. I want to begin by asking, can you say just a bit about the work and mission of the Partners for Sacred Places?

Bob Jeager: Well sure, Doug. And thank you for inviting me to talk a bit about our work. It’s exciting to do so. Actually, this month is our thirtieth anniversary. We’re excited because we have grown and changed over the years, but we have also been very faithful to our original mission, which has really been to help both congregations and their communities find ways to keep our sacred places cared for and active and useful in living out the mission of the church. We have grown and changed in some ways, because we’ve don’t a lot of research which shows how sacred places serve a larger community role as well as a place where worships happen, and where religious education is done, and where congregations are living out their life. But they are also places that serve the larger community. So, a lot of our work is hands on work to help congregations make the most of their older buildings to live out their larger mission and keep these places alive and well.

 Doug: You talk about the spaces being critical to the community. Can you say a little bit about how you try to help congregations that are in transitioning communities to stay relevant to their community when in many cases they aren’t actually reaching the individuals in the community in terms of coming to worship or other opportunities at the congregation?

Bob: Yeah, that’s a really good question. A lot of our work starts with helping a congregation understand and articulate its value — both to its members and the larger community. And we kind of help congregations develop a case for why you should care. What have we done in this community? What do we mean to this community?  What does this building mean? Who have we served over the years? So, a part of our work is training churches to develop a case statement. What are all the reasons this place and this congregation means something important to you as a member of o the community? That is kind of really fundamental – telling your story and finding ways to deliver that story to the people around you is a very key part of what we do.

But a more recent development is that we do asset thinking and asset mapping with congregations. In fact, more and more often congregations are asking us to come in and help them pull together a community advisory committee that leads to a big asse