Guest-Friendly Environments: Aaron Stanski on Effective Facilities for Your Church

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Aaron Stanski, the founder and CEO of Risepointe, with fifteen years of church design and ministry leadership experience.

Do you feel frustrated with your church building, or like it’s holding you back from fulfilling your mission? Aaron’s experience has given him unique insights into the common challenges churches face with their buildings. Listen as he shares how a church can align its facilities with its mission and vision.

* Think about the problems as projects. // When it comes to building issues, there are common constraints churches face, such as seating capacity, kids ministry space, and parking. However, other considerations might include classroom usage, leveraging the lobby space, and the condition of facilities like bathrooms. It can be overwhelming for churches to discern what to prioritize in addition to raising the funds, navigating building codes, and dealing with construction costs. Start by putting problems in a project format and attack them in a way that won’t limit the ministry but rather support growth.

* Look through the lens of a new person. // When working on a church building, it’s important to view the facility through the lens of an invitation to a lost person. What in your church facility might be a hindrance to inviting guests? What environments are you missing? Buildings don’t do ministry, people do. So we need to create environments where it’s easy and effective to invite and engage with new people.

* The Needs Analysis. // To understand the needs of a church facility, Risepointe starts with The Needs Analysis. This process involves spending a day onsite with the ministry team and doing exercises to understand their mission, vision, and the context of the church and its community. Risepointe also takes pictures of the building and gets blueprints which they convert to 3D files. Finally, they ask questions to assess the long-term plan for ministry on the campus, identify the right next steps, and determine any low-hanging fruit solutions. Budget considerations are also taken into account.

* Lean Church Indicator. // As Risepointe has studied how churches have been using their buildings and how that’s changed over time, they’ve seen a lot of consistent data that can be used as a benchmark for other churches. Some factors they consider are how many seats a lean church has per square feet of building, how much storage and support they have so they can easily turn multi-purpose rooms, and how they are leveraging technology in their environments. With the data they’ve collected, Risepointe has developed a tool on their website called the Lean Church Indicator to help churches evaluate the effectiveness of their space and identify areas that may need improvement.

Click here to learn more about Risepointe and take advantage of their tools and resources, such as the free PDF “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.

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