Church Building Projects Part Two

My first encounter with a church building project was when I was five. Our church plant had outgrown the school that we met in, and a developer donated 10 acres to our church, so we built a modest building and settled in—nothing controversial.

My second encounter, and the first controversial circumstance, was when I was 12. I was a member of an Independent Fundamental Baptist church. Our pastor had been thinking about a new building for quite some time: When I was ten, our church reached capacity (a little over 200 seats), and he started talking about a new building, but a church split soon eliminated the need. After three years, the church had grown enough that we were again at capacity and about 20 people each week had to be in overflow in the fellowship hall, watching the service though a video screen. The pastor once again brought up a new building, that seemed a bit too grand for our congregation (The price tag was about 400,000 and the church budget every year was only 150,000). Some people mentioned other solutions such as adding a service, but the pastor would have none of that, and pushed through the building project. It passed, but almost a fifth of the congregation left. Seven years later, the new building is still not completed, and the church has continued shrinking, since every spare dollar goes to a new building instead of increased ministry.

Another major building project that comes to mind is at First Baptist Dallas. The church is pushing through a one hundred and fifteen million dollar new project. At one point, they were actually considering dissolving a ministry of the church that trained pastors—Criswell College—so that they could sell the property and KCBI to help fund the new project.

In contrast, when I was at Anchor, I saw a much more generous church with regards to its building. They owned a modest building, but there were actually four churches that met inside of it: Anchor, A Hispanic church (that met in the fellowship room), a Brazillian church (that met in the fellowship room before the Hispanics), and a Haitian church (that met in a classroom). The churches were each in their native language, and would usually meet every month or two to have a meal all together.