Transcription
If you were in the pastor's position, someone may be watching this video right now. And if you were in charge of some kind of a church expansion project—whether it's, you know, the big new construction or renovation, whatever it might be—what are those two or three things that you do first?
Well, first, going going back to the source and use first, determine what your affordability is. Sure, you know, and then get a good handle on the use. And thirdly, make sure that the two are talking to one another, right? Obviously, very very early stages and a project, it's hard to know what that's going to cost. So normally I would coach a church to to sort of really run those two things—determining source and determining use—concurrently to some extent. Certainly, you know, never spending any money or going going any further down the track of building a building until you really know what that source is. But but getting getting source and use nailed down initially is definitely that's a priority.
Parable, so you talked about what from a process standpoint. I know that one thing we've talked about is when do you get a lender involved, speaking to the ways to fund it, but also when do you get an architect involved? Yeah, so when a pastor is dreaming and maybe they're even talking to their church board about it, you know, saying, "Hey, this is coming in the future. I feel that we should do this," when do they bring in an architect? When should they start the conversation with a lender?
Sure, really depends on the project. You know, this is so project specific. Okay, generally speaking, I would say you want to you want to bring the right lender in very very early. A good lender will will will not just ask you, you know, "How much is your project gonna cost?" They're first gonna help you determine again your source of funding, what what can you really afford? And not only what can you afford, but what can you afford to a healthy level within your church so that your ministries can still flourish. Again, you can do all of the things God's called you to do without overburdening yourself with debt. Sure. So a good lender will will be able to give you your affordability within those healthy limits at the onset so that you can then go out and begin making your plans, sort of that project right, again with the goal in mind that the ultimate—at least the initial phase—fits within your ability to afford whatever that is, again considering your three sources of funding. So that that brings up the idea—I said phase—meaning when you when you begin dreaming about what you what you feel like God's calling you to do and and how your facilities should look, we know that often that that is an extremely large—we mentioned master planning—so right, so that can be a very very expensive, very large-scale project that that you may not you may not do that all at once. So oftentimes we'll see a church actually building in phases. And so obviously the goal there is that phase one, whatever you're going to do initially as part of that phase, fits within your ability to afford it.
Sure, that makes sense. So we talked about when you bring in a lender, architect, you talk about a master plan, which I know an architect usually helps with, correct? When should that phone call be made, or when should a church look at options for an architect? So once again, church specific, but I would say when they get to the point where they they have the DNA nailed down, they know what that is, you're very very clear on vision, you're very clear on mission, you have some idea of what you think you need to do at that point. And again, I think when you have an idea of what your affordability is, bringing an architect in. And so I think the timing is not as important as the way you do it, and here's what I mean by that. Most architects, they work within about four different phases of their process, and oftentimes an architect when they first start talking to a church, they'll they'll want to sort of, for lack of a better term, sell the church on all four phases at once. "Hey, I want to be your guy from phase 1 to phase 4." Phases one through four typically—and and I realize this could vary a bit—but typically would be they're gonna look at site work, feasibility is kind of that first phase. Then they're gonna go into schematic design—what's the building potentially going to look like? From there they would go to design development, so once we agree on that schematic design, we're gonna go the next step of developing that design a little a little more. And then the fourth phase would be actual construction documents or blueprints, right? So so my advice again would be not as not as much focusing on when do we bring them in as when we do bring them in, let's let's take this one phase at a time so that you're your only contracting with the architect for phase one, not all the way through phase four, so that you can then take take a stop, sort of hit the pause button after that phase one being the site and feasibility. Okay, based on this, let's measure that against our affordability. Here's what we've what we've thought about and put on paper with the architect's help so far. Does that still does that use still fit within our source? That makes sense.
So Sean, you've talked about if you were a pastor what you would do first. You talked about things that they should consider, when to bring in an architect, when to bring in a lender. And I know what I'm about to ask has a list, you know, this long, but if you could talk about even just one common issue or hurdle that churches have seen when doing a construction project, what would that be? What comes to mind?
Over designing for their budget. You know, the the use is out of whack from the source basically. So basically they're dreaming here and then an architect are designing here, but like they can afford here. Correct. Okay, that's that can be a significant tree. And that goes back to what you're saying even in the very beginning, sources of funds, what can you afford, all that. So that's great, Shawn. So Shawn is nice enough to have created a church construction white paper, which is available on the AG financial website. What we talked about today is like this much from all the insights that Shawn has made available through the white paper. So I highly recommend you download it again on AGfinancial.org. But Shawn, thanks so much for sitting down with us today, just cluing pastors in on what to consider when they take on a church construction process, which is a lot of fun, very exciting. So thanks, Shawn. Appreciate it. Thank you. Take care.