Church buildings and meeting spaces communicate long before anyone hears the sermon. A confusing entrance, poor signage, or awkward gathering areas create unnecessary barriers, while thoughtful spaces can help people feel more relaxed, welcomed, and ready to connect.
In this episode:
- Why physical space matters for ministry and hospitality
- Common mistakes churches make with arrival, signage, and flow
- How spaces can reduce friction and help newcomers feel at ease
- Improving connection before and after the service
- Quick wins churches can make without major renovations
Toolbox:
How to Fund Your Church Building ChurchStarter Booklet
Credits:
This episode was brought to you by Safe Ministry Check
The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia
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Transcript:
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
00;00;08;17 – 00;00;29;04
Scott Sanders
Yet I am Scott Sanders. Welcome to the one thing a podcast is to give you one solid practical tip for gospel centered ministry every week. Today, we’re going to be talking about something that shapes every Sunday, but we rarely stop to think about it. Place. What do I mean by place? I mean the physical spaces that your church gathers in and how these spaces either help or hinder.
00;00;29;06 – 00;00;57;27
Scott Sanders
Welcome, connection and ministry. Because long before someone. Here is a sermon, they’ve already experienced your church. Today we’re going to be talking with Andrew Robson. Andrew, has a great experience and knowledge, from across the network into, into thinking about importance of place for now, you, first of all, on another episode of the one thing our your church space shapes welcome and connection.
00;00;57;29 – 00;01;22;25
Speaker 2
Today’s podcast is brought to you by Safe Ministry check at Safe Ministry. Check. We’re passionate about partnering with Australian ministries like yours to simplify safeguarding our all in one tool provides accessible, cost effective training, automated screening and a streamlined system to manage your compliance requirements with ease. Is it safe? Ministry check accommodate you. And now back to the podcast.
00;01;22;28 – 00;01;32;19
Scott Sanders
Yeah. Robert, what’s, what’s kind of the worst, you know, sort of experience of church that you’ve had in, you know, in a space.
00;01;32;22 – 00;01;58;20
Andrew Robson
Honestly, I think one of the nice, powerful senses you have of church is your sense of smell. And I did go into one church in a in a very wealthy part of one of our biggest cities, and it stank. The carpet had something. I think it got water in it at some point. It was a festering mess of mold and it smelt and the whole thing just smell as though it.
00;01;58;22 – 00;02;12;02
Andrew Robson
This is possibly one of the worst built environments in this suburb. And this is the church. They were they were running and, and I just needed to fix that leak. Fix that carpet. A smell is terrible.
00;02;12;04 – 00;02;26;27
Scott Sanders
Okay. Smell is super strong for me. Super strong. Very, I’m feeling I’m feeling the experience now. So, Robert, what are we talking about? Tonight, when you say place making, what do you actually mean by this?
00;02;26;29 – 00;02;59;23
Andrew Robson
Well, I think, if you think about coming to church, you’re coming into a built environment. You’re coming into a space. And the way the space is set up communicates a whole lot of information. It communicates what is valued. It communicates, what we think about things around here is all kinds of subtle pieces of communication, like, for example, a church that I was in, which was an older church, and we, we knew we needed to, alter it.
00;02;59;26 – 00;03;27;21
Andrew Robson
I remember, the first week that I took my kids to youth group, I went to church and went off to youth group, and afterwards I picked them up. I said, how was it? And one of my kids said, well, walking into the building was like walking up the tongue of a monster and into it down its throat, like it was like it had this long staircase into a dark doorway in the side of the building, and it was a bit scary for them to go in.
00;03;27;25 – 00;03;37;05
Andrew Robson
So there’s a sense of the way the building was designed and lit and you approached it. It not affected how you felt. So they walked in feeling a little bit scared.
00;03;37;12 – 00;03;40;29
Scott Sanders
So you’re saying the building is actually emotion? You know, we have an emotional response.
00;03;40;29 – 00;04;00;07
Andrew Robson
We have emotional responses. We can have responses of disgust, like I say, with the smell or, you know, somebody else in the room here with us, today was just describing a carpet experience where it was just so stained, and every week it was feeling a little bit gross. And it just it didn’t smell, but it just looked terrible.
00;04;00;10 – 00;04;36;08
Andrew Robson
So, so things like that can, can really affect, how you go. So in terms of, thinking theologically, we are embodied people. Our bodies matter. And so you can’t ignore the body. I mean, Paul advises us to not neglect the body. We are in bodies. And so if you’re in church and you’re feeling sick because something smells so terrible or you can’t quite see your Bible because the lights are so dim, or you really struggle to find a seat and you’re feeling anxious now, or the seats are so uncomfortable that your back is sore and it’s hard to.
00;04;36;10 – 00;04;57;13
Andrew Robson
You’re spending energy towards the end of the sermon just holding your body upright. They’re all examples of how your body is affecting how you’re interacting with the experience of church in that space. And that’s what we talk about. We talked about how do you create a space? And I’ve spoken quite negatively there. Obviously you need to remove the negatives, but there’s also positives.
00;04;57;13 – 00;05;24;08
Andrew Robson
There’s a sense of welcome that’s, expressed in the way the building is arranged. Another positive example, of how your experience of church is affected physically in many churches going back centuries in history of work. This out if you have some curve to your seats. What it means is the people that are sitting on one edge of church, instead of sort of sitting shoulder to shoulder with people and just being able to see the back of the head in front.
00;05;24;08 – 00;05;51;15
Andrew Robson
If you’ve got curve, I can see faces on the other side of the building, actually can and can see lots of other people. And so there’s a sense of connection that is simply enabled by putting some curve in your seats. And you don’t even need actual curves. So, in church recently, a relatively small church in the economically struggling part of Sydney, they worked out that they could achieve this simply by they had two rows of pews simply by creating an angle.
00;05;51;20 – 00;05;56;22
Andrew Robson
So just angling the pews so that they both at sort of only 15 degrees off of straight.
00;05;56;22 – 00;05;58;09
Scott Sanders
So not a massive angle, not a massive.
00;05;58;10 – 00;06;14;24
Andrew Robson
No, no, no, no, we’re not talking about in a choir stalls where they’re facing a tiny just a bit of angle. And you know, I understand that that, some in the church were quite thank you that this had happened. And they said no, no, no, just try it. And after everybody had a go one week, they went, this is great.
00;06;14;27 – 00;06;23;04
Andrew Robson
All of a sudden they could say, oh, we can see each other. We can it. When we sing, we can see each other singing. We can it really, really improve things. And these funny little things.
00;06;23;04 – 00;06;45;17
Scott Sanders
You know, so churches and embodied, you know, physical relational peace. We need to pay attention to that, that we experience it as well, collectively. Not just individually. We’re not talking now about the perfect building. We’re not talking about, you know, just it’s going to always, always be right, because there’s a reality that we’ve got, different sizes and budget and style, and we just inherit properties and spaces.
00;06;45;19 – 00;07;07;05
Scott Sanders
But we are talking about actually, making it easy for people to connect and belong, and actually thinking about how we, how people move through the space and how people interact with the space. Someone’s probably listening. Listening? We should be listening to a registrar episode. He also, or registrar was all about making mature disciples, in increasing numbers.
00;07;07;05 – 00;07;15;09
Scott Sanders
And we’re talking about buildings and space. This is not an episode of Grand Designs. Space. Space isn’t the mission. But how does it serve the mission?
00;07;15;11 – 00;07;39;20
Andrew Robson
We’re certainly encouraged. You know, one Corinthians 14 gives us the sense that, we’re to expect outsiders to come into our meeting, and that’s that’s that is our reality. We know that. We know that we rang in, in the West, in, in Australia, certainly we run public meetings and we want visitors to come in. You know, you’ll often hear that old chestnut about, oh, we could meet under a tree.
00;07;39;25 – 00;07;42;06
Andrew Robson
Yeah. That’s true. You could.
00;07;42;09 – 00;07;44;05
Scott Sanders
Not in the middle of Australia, I don’t.
00;07;44;05 – 00;08;08;05
Andrew Robson
Know. I mean, I’ve done it once or twice. I remember meeting in the middle of summer in a tent because we got kicked out of the school, and, and and it was, like, 45 degrees. Me, one of the other pastors had to run down to the highway store and buy water. Squirters. And while the sermon was happening, we were walking up and down squirting people with water, just misting people to try and keep them from passing out.
00;08;08;07 – 00;08;39;16
Andrew Robson
It’s pretty hot. But my point is, while yes, our people, our baked on I call Christian Brothers and sisters, yes, if we had to, we’d meet under a tree. If you’re trying to get the non-Christian to turn up and listen long enough to come to faith, you’ve got to kind of, to some degree, reach them where they’re at and say, how is this going to appear to an outsider who’s coming in if it’s stinky, for example, to pick on our previous example, that’s pretty hard for somebody to come back to something that made them feel disgusted.
00;08;39;19 – 00;08;53;02
Scott Sanders
Well, I want us to think about some key, key moments that we all experience in the, you know, in the Sunday gathering when we gather together. So those first impressions, the arrival moment, what’s happening in those first few minutes, when people turn up the church.
00;08;53;04 – 00;09;08;07
Andrew Robson
Yeah. So they’re anxious, right? When when people turn up to church for the first time, they’re anxious. They’re not quite sure what to expect. And also, it’s just like any of us turning up to somewhere for the for you get a new dentist. Where’s the car parking? Where am I going to put my. Is there going to be enough car parking?
00;09;08;09 – 00;09;24;14
Andrew Robson
Do I need to get there 20 minutes early to find a car park and tracking? How’s it going to work? Once I get in there? Am I going to be able to find a seat? Can I see into the building, and see what’s going to happen in there? Or like my kids experiences, are they walking into the mouth of of a monster?
00;09;24;17 – 00;09;29;11
Andrew Robson
And I don’t know what’s going to happen to them inside there. How is it lit is a dark is it light? Is it.
00;09;29;11 – 00;09;33;10
Scott Sanders
So? Is there an obvious kind of entrance point and a place to go?
00;09;33;11 – 00;09;34;26
Andrew Robson
Yeah. Where can I get in?
00;09;34;29 – 00;09;37;00
Scott Sanders
So what are churches often getting wrong?
00;09;37;03 – 00;09;59;01
Andrew Robson
So I mean, there’s all kinds of little things. And sometimes it connects to the, the Ministry of Welcoming. So yeah. Is it clear where I go in often churches are multipurpose spaces and they’re often a multiple or at least it looks like there’s multiple delays. Have you marked out where people come in. Is are these signs. Are they are they people welcoming people?
00;09;59;03 – 00;10;18;25
Andrew Robson
Is there some signal that says this is where you come in. And because that relieves that anxiety that they feeling is they, they walking up, is there signage on the site at all? And is it present? Is it broken? Is it old and faded? They can’t read it. And sometimes it’s sometimes it’s about signs and people and sometimes it’s about the language of the building itself, like does.
00;10;18;28 – 00;10;27;27
Andrew Robson
Is there an obvious entry way? Does it? And if there is, sometimes you might want to think about using the obvious entry way rather than using a side door or something. And then that’s something.
00;10;27;27 – 00;10;48;12
Scott Sanders
And there’s a sense in some of these things you actually can’t, you know, you actually can’t change the physical space. But actually by putting people and putting signs in place, like, remember turning up at a church, and they and they literally needed have three groups of workers to kind of go for you of a sort lawn and then to another site lawn and into another site long before we actually got into the church.
00;10;48;12 – 00;10;57;24
Scott Sanders
Yep. And so what should be just a simple sort of two person job. They’re only a small, you know, church plant native, actually. Six people. Yeah. So that you didn’t get lost from the.
00;10;57;25 – 00;11;11;16
Andrew Robson
And some of them, that’s just what you’re working with. You might be renting a space or, you know, it might be a church building that you own, but your choice is $1.3 million or put an extra person on the work. But it might be better just to put the extra personally working time.
00;11;11;19 – 00;11;19;05
Scott Sanders
Okay, I want to think about something about flow so that that movement from arrival, to gathering. So what breaks a flow.
00;11;19;08 – 00;11;36;25
Andrew Robson
When you come in the church and there’s barriers there. So. So is there. I, is there a physical barrier that you have to walk around? Is it a door, a sound desk, a desk full of pamphlets or something that that just gets between them and moving into where they want to go? Churches can be confusing spaces sometimes.
00;11;36;25 – 00;11;42;29
Andrew Robson
So is it just clear this is where you go to go? Make sure there’s visual cues, that kind of thing.
00;11;43;02 – 00;11;47;06
Scott Sanders
So what kind of paint a picture of when it works? What does it look like?
00;11;47;13 – 00;11;53;26
Andrew Robson
People can move into the space without thinking. It kind of just happens. People are programed to do that, you know. You know, when it was.
00;11;53;27 – 00;11;55;27
Scott Sanders
Follow, follow that. Follow the movement of people.
00;11;55;27 – 00;12;12;00
Andrew Robson
Yeah. But if it’s when it’s not working is when you think about it and you go, oh, where do I go? If people are thinking that you’ve already kind of lost that one, you want them not not to be doing that. You want them to just start moving to where they’ve got to go is there’s a people factor as well.
00;12;12;00 – 00;12;25;26
Andrew Robson
It’s not just the building, it’s how people inhabit the building. So having people who are smiling at them, it’s well lit. You can see people’s faces. You elect you to be light. I think it’s important for the white people work at that point of the service when they lighting the building.
00;12;25;26 – 00;12;41;23
Scott Sanders
Well, what about connection spaces? A big part of church life is what happens before and after the service. We’ve just met with flooding. It’s been easy to find. But now the service is ended and we’re encouraged to connect. Had a space play important in connecting?
00;12;41;23 – 00;13;03;04
Andrew Robson
So immediately after church, there’s a really important, important moment, which is a moment of decision. And so it’s important that in that time people get spoken to, it’s also important that they can kind of see that there’s a lingering place, there’s a place to go, there’s a place, whether it’s a a bookstore, a coffee, offerings and food somewhere for them to go to linger and get around that.
00;13;03;04 – 00;13;13;00
Scott Sanders
Although it’s almost the opposite of we’re trying to actually previously we’ve been trying to get people to flow in, but now we’re actually wanting people to stop, pause and be, you know, be constrained in some ways.
00;13;13;00 – 00;13;22;08
Andrew Robson
Yeah, be constrained in a positive way. We want them to want to stay and feel like there’s an obvious place where I can maybe meet people, maybe chat to people.
00;13;22;11 – 00;13;25;19
Scott Sanders
So what are the common issues of connection spaces.
00;13;25;25 – 00;13;42;23
Andrew Robson
If there’s no space for it? If there’s no effort being put into it to create that space, you know, does the church want people to stay? Is the place where you want them to stay too small? If that has to be, then you have to put some special work in to ensure that you get.
00;13;42;23 – 00;13;43;03
Scott Sanders
People to.
00;13;43;03 – 00;13;44;27
Andrew Robson
Actually. Did they actually get there? Yeah.
00;13;44;27 – 00;13;49;18
Scott Sanders
And otherwise I’ll just stay in the gathering together space. Yeah. And do everything.
00;13;49;18 – 00;13;53;23
Andrew Robson
There. And if you have to walk through the car park to get to that space, you’ll just lose people.
00;13;53;26 – 00;13;55;05
Scott Sanders
So what helps in.
00;13;55;07 – 00;14;17;09
Andrew Robson
Just a clear space. Something that’s obvious. Some offering. I was saying, like a coffee, food, something there that you can kind of walk through that’s neutral and people understand and and signal some sense of welcome. A mixture of, if possible, a mixture of seating and standing, an environment that says conversations. Good. That’s what we want to do.
00;14;17;10 – 00;14;19;03
Andrew Robson
We want to meet you. We want to get to know you.
00;14;19;10 – 00;14;36;10
Scott Sanders
Yeah. One of the hard things is we just become so used to spaces and, and so a lot of the things you talk about, I’m like, well, you’ve described, described my church, but I’m like, oh, I love it. How the churches see it like a newcomer. Say, the stink.
00;14;36;13 – 00;14;52;01
Andrew Robson
So one thing you can do is just do it yourself. Just set your brain to go. I’m going to try and turn up at church today and try and think like a newcomer. Yeah, you could do that. Do that experiment. That’s something you just do have a think about what’s clear, what’s confusing. Find a friend gets get somebody to come and visit your church.
00;14;52;01 – 00;15;11;04
Andrew Robson
And if you’ve got relatives or friends who visit your church or tell them, hey, how did you find it? What did you find weird? What was offputting about the space we were in? Tell me about your experience of getting from the car to the church and then the coffee and what even in you come up if you struck up a good relationship with a newcomer, you could say, how did you find it today?
00;15;11;07 – 00;15;24;04
Andrew Robson
Was it easy coming in? And no, I don’t appreciate that. You’ve asked. So so I think that kind of thing, and pay attention when people, give us some sense of maybe that want to tell us the truth. Listen to that.
00;15;24;06 – 00;15;45;25
Scott Sanders
One of the things I love about doing a consult with you, Robbo, is you have thought lots about this. But you think very practical and very pragmatic, pragmatically, and so you have lots of simple, quick wins that don’t cost a lot of money, because I think one of the blockages is we go, oh, we’ve got a terrible building, and there’s always someone who’s just done a building project or, you know, has an amazing space.
00;15;46;02 – 00;15;52;00
Scott Sanders
And so we kind of think we’ve got to get to there. There’s often lots of quick wins that you can do. Give us just a few.
00;15;52;02 – 00;16;11;17
Andrew Robson
Key quick wins. Signage, better signage, clarity. Think about where your sign is positioned. Is there a tree going in front of you? Sign is it is are the colors wrong? I saw one recently that I had a nice sign, but behind it was a petrol station and you couldn’t see the sign because there was a giant lit up petrol station right behind it.
00;16;11;23 – 00;16;18;14
Andrew Robson
I had to do something different there and they were doing and moving furniture to improve flow is, is equipment.
00;16;18;16 – 00;16;20;01
Scott Sanders
Or getting rid of furniture, getting.
00;16;20;01 – 00;16;44;19
Andrew Robson
Rid of furniture. Your church is not a memorial to how we did church up until 1978. You don’t need to keep some of that stuff. I know sometimes there’s processes and procedures and all of that, but but think about be a bit ruthless with some of that stuff. Sometimes we let the disinclination to change the rule there. Just just moving clutter out of the way, thinking about the arrangement of your chairs and getting some angle on the chairs.
00;16;44;19 – 00;17;04;02
Andrew Robson
I think that’s a really easy thing that will add enormously. And you could do it now. You can you can press pause. Now go out and do it. And then somebody complains, you say, oh, we’re just trying it this way and just say, and I guarantee you people love it. So, thinking about, underused spaces, you might have spaces you use for storage.
00;17;04;02 – 00;17;24;19
Andrew Robson
Could you change that all around you? Take those off something. Could you put a glass door on something? Could you, you know, to increase, visibility? Visibility, the sense of welcome this is that open and definitely create a clear pathway for after church. You can do that visually. You can do it by telling people. You can do it by custom.
00;17;24;19 – 00;17;26;16
Andrew Robson
Everybody starts doing it now.
00;17;26;16 – 00;17;34;19
Scott Sanders
We all love a building project. We love the sort of longer term thing, the hard hat. What what are some more costly alternatives?
00;17;34;25 – 00;17;39;01
Andrew Robson
We’ve done? You know, we’ve got our little booklet on this.
00;17;39;03 – 00;17;41;07
Scott Sanders
We started our last year conference.
00;17;41;07 – 00;17;57;15
Andrew Robson
We, And one of the things we we say big picture there is you want to have a ministry plan and then build to your ministry plan. Don’t even think about your building until you know what you’re trying to achieve, and get your building to help you to achieve it. That’s one of the biggest mistakes the ministry plan, then the building plan.
00;17;57;15 – 00;18;18;05
Andrew Robson
Get that all the right thinking about entry and connection spaces intentionally so thinking about how do people move in, how do they move through? So for some churches, it’s not expanding their meeting room. It’s expanding the connections between their buildings, designing spaces for people, not just for function. So think about the humans that are moving through the space.
00;18;18;08 – 00;18;29;04
Andrew Robson
And be very careful with money, because architects will often spend your money, on a grand design. But sometimes it’s a small thing that you actually need to be ruthless, be a bit ruthless.
00;18;29;07 – 00;18;40;01
Scott Sanders
Ready the leader for the congregation member or the parish council eldership. This kind of push back on a lot of these ideas and say they’re just too expensive and they’re not really that important. Yeah.
00;18;40;03 – 00;19;00;21
Andrew Robson
Hardly. They’re right. Like there is a truth to that. The gospel matters most, and there is a truth, and you want it. You want to kind of acknowledge that these are secondary matters, but because they connect to how we apprehend the gospel, how the newcomer apprehends what you are and who you are and all that kind of thing.
00;19;00;23 – 00;19;26;16
Andrew Robson
It’s not about looking good, but it is about not being disgusting. It is about having language building, telling them what to do and where to go, and that being kind to them, it it is about helping people to along, and have a sense of community and that that’s easy rather than hard. We want to reduce anxiety. The anxiety piece is very real for a new person coming in.
00;19;26;19 – 00;19;46;01
Andrew Robson
The worst possible thing is the human thing, where at five seconds after the service ends and they’ve got nobody to talk to, you ought to avoid that. But humanly, the also just the way the building is arranged is really important for them. And, we want to be supporting the mission, not distract from it. That’s, that’s that’d be some of the stuff I talk about.
00;19;46;03 – 00;19;53;01
Scott Sanders
So, Rabbi, what’s the one thing you want to say about how your church space shapes welcome and connection at.
00;19;53;01 – 00;20;12;29
Andrew Robson
The end of this, I think what you want to do is say, okay, I’ve got a $0 budget. What can I do to, design this spatial real winner, this space to help people to belong and to connect? What do I need to move? What do I need to clean up? What do I need to reorganize to make this space work better?
00;20;12;29 – 00;20;23;24
Andrew Robson
Do I need to upgrade the light bulbs? I’ll give you I’ll give you an extra 20 bucks. A light bulb budget. Do you need to brighten the light? Do you need to change a lot from one shade to another? Is it cold lining to warm it up?
00;20;23;24 – 00;20;29;20
Scott Sanders
Now let’s keep let’s keep the thought experiment on even on $0 moving. What if I had $6 million?
00;20;29;22 – 00;20;52;26
Andrew Robson
Yeah. And give you some 100 bucks. $100 budget? You might maybe be right, but. But yeah. Lighting, arrangement of furniture, clutter. Those would be the things thinking about how your particular, your welcoming team thinks about their role. It goes from the car park to the seat and then afterwards as well. Not just a welcoming board in a door.
00;20;52;28 – 00;21;13;05
Scott Sanders
Or some rubber, as always. Very practical, very theologically driven. Some really helpful stuff there. This might be a really good conversation to be having, with your eldership, with your parish council, with your leadership team. Maybe, maybe you won’t want to send it if if this is a blockage in your church. In terms of the toolbox, just a few things.
00;21;13;07 – 00;21;32;06
Scott Sanders
Rob, I mentioned the Built to last booklet, really helpful booklet that helps you actually think about, you’re building space for that that bigger, longer term, project. Helpful steps in helping you align it with your ministry plan. If you’re coming to this thing thinking, okay, we’ve done all those quick steps, and actually we need to do the bigger thing.
00;21;32;08 – 00;21;57;18
Scott Sanders
We want to. We’ve got a book, on helping fundraise for your church. So the big capital campaigns, money ought not to be a problem. So this is a book that can help you, think about that. So about this one. We do staff time again. Always be thinking about these spaces as well. So can I just encouraging you, one of the things you can do is just make this a, a patio regular sort of annual review of, of church.
00;21;57;18 – 00;22;05;09
Scott Sanders
Don’t just think risk and insurance, but actually think about how people move through your spaces as well. I’m Scott Sanders Chatter.
