The faith journey of a church fellowship can be reflected in the growth and evolution of its built environment.  Church facilities expand to meet congregational needs, including worship, classrooms, and socializing spaces.  Expansion not only accommodates more people, but can also enrich the spiritual and social fabric with new fellowship and educational opportunities.

At Childress and Cunningham we have helped many churches grow, adapt, and transform to meet the dynamic needs of their congregations as they interact with their larger community.  One key to community interaction is a Multi-purpose Center, a flexible space that can wear many hats, and can be called upon to meet a large variety of ministry goals.

Social Programs and Ministry Goals

A well-designed Multi-purpose Center can support a wide array of social and spiritual engagement functions,  It can be designed to support many kinds of programs including:

• Lobby or Commons Space:  Before and after high-attendance events, like Sunday services, this space encourages impromptu social interaction without impeding traffic flow.  During such events, the space may have audio visual equipment allowing simultaneous display of the event space to allow a larger crowd to participate, or to create interest for those attending functions nearby.

• Wedding Receptions: Offering a beautiful and convenient venue for wedding receptions can strengthen community ties and support members during significant life events. This function is one of the most obvious as the church sanctuary may already be hosting the wedding ceremony itself. The adjacent flex space provided in the Multi-purpose Center should be made large enough to accommodate the guests in a banquet seating configuration.

• Charity Events: Hosting charity events allows the church to give back to the community and support those in need, providing financial support for church missions and outreach programs according to the church’s core values, be it locally or around the world.

• Capital Campaigns: Capital campaigns are essential for sustaining church activities and initiatives with the funds needed for anything from maintenance to missionaries.  Providing inviting space for these events can make a significant difference in the church’s success. These events often require versatile spaces that can accommodate a range of activities, including auctions, dinners, and sometimes entertainment.

• Banquets: Banquets can serve as a way to celebrate achievements, welcome new members, and bring the community together.  These events may be used to promote awareness of the church’s programs or promote volunteerism, enriching the spiritual lives of the community.

• Lectures: Creating spaces for educational lectures and seminars can enhance the congregation’s spiritual and intellectual growth.  The Multi-purpose Center may accommodate more participants than any single classroom.

• Gymnasiums: Gymnasiums can be used for year-round recreational activities, youth programs, and community sports leagues, promoting physical health and community engagement. This aspect of social life can institute a sense of team building.

• Casual Gathering: By providing comfortable spaces for relaxed gathering, social interaction can be encouraged.  This may include coffee service and small seating groups that subdivide the space, presenting residential scale features such as a reading nook or fireplace seating area.

• Community Outreach: Spaces dedicated to community outreach programs can help the church address local needs more effectively and foster stronger community relationships.

As the church formulates the list of programs and services it wishes to offer their congregants and the community, it may become apparent that the spaces needed to meet ministry programing will overlap, creating opportunities for efficiency. An open lobby equipped with audio/visual equipment and storage for banquet seating could serve as a lecture hall, host large church dinners, wedding receptions, or even function as a gymnasium with retractable elements.  Childress and Cunningham takes great care in finding these efficiencies in the early stages of design.

Once the church identifies the programs desired, the next step is determining the necessary spaces to support these activities. This assessment can determine whether to add new structures or remodel existing ones in order to most effectively and efficiently support those programs.

Renovating Existing Structures

Renovating existing structures can be a practical solution when other functions are relocated to an addition during church expansion. This approach makes efficient use of existing resources to meet a variety of social needs.

An illustrative example is Hope Church.  Childress and Cunningham designed a completely new sanctuary with state-of-the-art acoustics, lighting, and audio-visual systems. The addition freed up the former sanctuary at the heart of the complex for new purposes.

Hope Church’s Multi-purpose Center, includes a space called “The Commons” (below), a versatile, dynamic open space that serves as an extended lobby but can augment surrounding functions as needed.  The two levels include new classrooms, meeting rooms, prayer room, storage and toilet rooms. A variety of seating groups float on a polished concrete floor and encourage socializing and work/study groups.

This adaptable main space can handle large gatherings like banquets, outreach, and wedding receptions when not in use for more informal gatherings or serving as an extended lobby for the new sanctuary.

To give another example, Childress and Cunningham helped Epiphany United Methodist Church to double the size of their building with a new classroom addition.  Later, a new office wing was constructed.  These enhancements to the facility opened up centrally located space in the existing building to be renovated into additional seating capacity for the sanctuary and an inviting new multi-purpose space.  This Multi-purpose Center serves as a larger lobby to accommodate church gatherings and includes a cafe and reading nook to encourage socializing.

New Additions

Regardless of the available budget, church leadership is called upon to be good stewards of the resources at hand.  Optimizing the use of space can lead to thoughtful additions to the facility, and a Multi-purpose Center can be designed to be mindful of future uses as the church expands to broaden its critical ministries.

Childress and Cunningham has skillfully designed new additions that can fulfill a pressing need now, but be adaptable to different programing later.  Such is the case at Hopeful Lutheran Church (below), where our team designed a new sanctuary addition, centrally located between the existing church facility and future expansion on the site.

Hopeful’s new 350-seat sanctuary features an uninterrupted floor area preserving sightlines to the stage.  A lofty central “nave” is expressed with exposed trusses directing the worshiper’s eye to the altar, as angled walls acoustically tune the space to mitigate echo.  Ceiling and stage mounted speakers from the integrated sound system enliven the service.  Large side windows grant an abundance of natural light.  The front wall feels more cloistered and reverent, punctuated with small clerestory windows, and a larger central oculus over the cross.

Although designed as a sanctuary, this addition was carefully considered as to how it would integrate into the facility for future uses.  The Master Plan for the church will eventually include a larger sanctuary.  This interim sanctuary easily may be adapted to be a Multi-purpose Center or Gymnasium in the future.  This addition will prove useful long into the future as the church fellowship offers more programming to connect with the larger community

Planning for a Multi-purpose Center

While the simple approach might be to design a Multi-purpose Center as an addition to one end of a building, in truth, a hub space will function most effectively when it is central to the facility and in good proximity to the spaces it supports.  As the ultimate “flex space” of church function, a social/spiritual hub needs adjacency to other functions to ensure church programing can run smoothly without logistical challenges. Here is where Childress and Cunningham’s extensive master planning experience comes to the fore.

Hope Church’s new Commons was designed to integrate with existing functions as well as with the new sanctuary.  Master Planned to utilize the original sanctuary space between the front lobby and the newly added sanctuary, the Commons is optimally situated to allow worshipers direct access to not only the sanctuary but to all the other new amenities added within the large existing volume. A Master Plan for a future multi-purpose Family Life Center will also capitalize on the new Commons.

Relationships are enhanced as the Commons becomes an expanded lobby, new storage allows furniture to be swapped out for a banquet or lecture, and so on.  With storage for banquet seating, a wedding reception can be easily held in the space adjacent to the formal ceremony.

At the main entrance vestibule, a new welcome desk provides orientation to the church,  classrooms and preschool, which occur elsewhere in the facility.  Otherwise, the openness of the plan and the design expressions on the walls and ceiling invite you to meander in towards the new Gathering space.

At Epiphany United Methodist Church, the new Multi-purpose Center was created by enlarging a narthex space that was already directly connected to the sanctuary and main entrance (below).  Space in this critical location was opened up by moving existing office space into a new wing.  Smaller in scale than Hope Church’s Commons but just as centrally connected, the Family Life Center also flows into the classroom wing that Childress and Cunningham developed earlier.

Programming for the addition at Hopeful Lutheran Church included a new worship space and additional classrooms on the lower level that needed to be close to existing classrooms. With integrated storage and toilet rooms, these new preschool classrooms are easily converted to Sunday school use each week. Upstairs the sanctuary space is designed as a multi-purpose space that adapts to other uses in the future.  Master planning found the optimum siting for this addition at the end of the existing narthex, allowing for social events to be linked to the interim sanctuary, and for this master-planned social hub to be positioned adjacent to the narthex and future expansion of a new larger sanctuary.

At Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church and School (below) the most effective location for a Multi-purpose Center was found to be where some cramped offices and classrooms were previously located.  By creating a new comfortable classroom addition, offices and other support spaces were able to be relocated within the building.  The Master Plan called for opening up this space to create an expanded lobby, well situated at the center of the complex. This multi-purpose hub allows much freer circulation and is accented with a tall clerestory ceiling cutout letting natural light into the center of the building.

The growth and development of church facilities are vital to supporting the mission and outreach efforts of faith-based communities. By carefully planning and implementing both renovations and a new addition, churches can create versatile and functional spaces that meet the evolving spiritual development, social and outreach needs of their congregations. Whether it is hosting a wedding reception, a charity event, or an adult education class, a well-designed Multi-purpose Center can serve as a headquarters for a faith-based life, fostering community, spiritual growth, and social engagement.