Location Check List

Posted on 08. Aug, 2009 by Steve Swisher in Set Up

When looking for a new location for your church plant there are a ton of details to consider. The following isn’t a complete list, but rather just some questions to get you thinking about what you need to look for when considering a location.

Set Up

Cutting down on set up time and effort will help you in the long run. Bad locations can lead to set-up fatigue. The quicker and easier it is to get set up, the easier it will be to get people to stay on your set up team. Also it allows you to stay in rented facilities longer. Buying or leasing a building 24/7 is much more expensive. The longer you can meet in weekend only places, the more money you’ll have for other ministry opportunities. So as you read these questions and think of locations, think about time and effort:

Where will you unload your trailer/truck full of equipment?
How hard/easy is it to get the truck/trailer in and out of there?
How wide are the doors you’ll be pushing carts through? (Double doors are the best. If it’s a single door, it will slow you down some because you’ll have to have two people moving carts through the door. Otherwise you’ll bang up the door and door-frame.)
Do the door jams have a big lip on them that will tear your wheels up? (You can make a ramp to go over it, but that’s just one more thing you gotta buy and do.)
If you have steps or curbs outside, where is the nearest ramp?
How long of a trip is it from the trailer to the stage? (This can be a a huge time saver/waster. Being closer also reduces wear and tear on the building and your equipment. The more halls and doors you go though, the more opportunities you have to break and bang stuff up.)

Layout & Flow

How will people flow through your place on Sunday mornings? We used to meet in a school that didn’t have a main lobby area. We entered through a hall way door. It was cramped and traffic bottle-necked there. Further, the kids rooms were a long walk for parents to drop off their kids. These two issues made people late to church cause they’d spend 5-10 minutes navigating our hallways. The four main areas to think about are entry, children, worship center, and bathrooms.

Is the entry way bright and open?
Is there room for a coffee bar, welcome table, and whatever else you want to put in that area?
Is there enough room for all of that stuff and still room for people to hang out and talk?
What kind of first impression will the entry way make to first time visitors?
How far of a walk is to to drop the kids off?
Can you make the kids area secure? (Ideally you want only one way in and out of the kids area. That way you can put a check-in table at the entry point. Only let approved children’s workers beyond that point. It keeps the kids safe and lets parents know you are concerned about safety.)
If you are meeting in a school or theater, can you make some of the hallways into kids rooms? (I’ll need to do another post about how to do this later, but it is done by a lot of platers. This saves money because you don’t have to pay for more rooms. Also it minimizes the number of people at the school that are impacted by you meeting there on Sundays. The majority of complaints that are made about the church meeting at the school are from teachers. They complain about stuff being moved or assume that everything they can’t find is because the church stole it.)
How close is the kids area to the worship center? Can you hear the music or screaming from one in the other?
How will the worship center be configured? Can we change it over time as we grow? (Being able to make the room look and feel somewhat full is a nice thing to be able to control. If you can section off part of the room until you reach 75 or 100, that is a huge plus.)
How close are the bathrooms?
How many bathrooms are there?
If you are meeting in an elementary school, where are there adult bathrooms? (It’s not good to ask your guests to sit on the floor to use the bathroom. I was in a school once where the closest bathrooms were on the preschool/kindergarten hall. The toilets were about a foot high.)
Where are the handicap accessible bathrooms?
Are the bathrooms already labeled with directions or will we need to put directional signs to them?

Equipment Needs

What will it take for you to transform this location into a house of worship on the weekend? The more stuff they have at the location, the more time and money you’ll save.

Do they have chairs?
Who will set the chairs up and put them away? (I talked with a planter who worked out a deal with the school custodians. The custodians set up the chairs for them and the church then put them away and set up the cafeteria tables when they were done. It saved them a ton of time in the morning before church not having to set up chairs.)
Will we need portable staging?
Do they have a sound system we can plug into? (Most schools have a sound system. The better your relationship is with the school the more likely they are to let you use it. Keep in mind that most schools aren’t set up for optimal sound quality from a band. Their primary use is for PTA meetings and class musicals where they put four mics up in front of risers so the kids can sing one or two songs to a background track.)
Do they have a video projection screen or projector we can use? (I have talked with some planters that worked out a deal where they could perminately mount their projectors and screens at a school in exchange for letting the school use them for special events. This is a win-win for the church and school)
How much control over the lighting will you have?(lighting effects the mood of a room, the more control you have of the lighting, the more control you have over the worship enviroment/experience)
Where are the light switches? (often over looked, but this is a big deal when trying to smoothly coordinate transitions like showing a video where you want the lights off for just that segment)
Can you dim the lights, turn off sections of lights, and keep light off of your projection screen? (If you can keep ambiant room lighting off your projction screen, you can get by with a less expensive projector.)
How many curtains will we need to put up? (Most locations have stuff you will want to cover up. Hiding the big school mascot mural of a cobra ready to strike might help people feel a little more comfortable. I have seen planters use curtains so well that you forget you are meeting in a school. We use them in our school lobby area to cover up all the junk they plaster all over the walls. It really makes the entrance have a nice look and feel to it and gives a great first impression to guests.)
Do they have stage lights we can use?(Many jr. and sr. high school auditoriums have stage lights mounted on the ceiling.)
What will we need to make the nursery and kid’s church area safe, inviting, and fun?

Well this is just a starting point. What are some other things planters need to consider? Please share it with the community by leaving a comment below.

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Tags: Location, Set Up

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