We Are Getting A Great New Building and It's Scary
by Keith Watson
We are moving, New City that is. And as exciting as the move is, there is also some fear.
The building is huge for us, 94,000 square feet in 3 buildings on an advertised 19 acres of land. The children’s floor will be around 19,000 square feet, I believe. That is 6,000 square feet more than our entire current facility. The building will likely more than double our sanctuary space as well as lobby spaces. The offices in the new building will give each of our full time staffers their own space and then some. We’ll increase our spaces for meetings and education and there is more than enough space for a student ministry area in the near future. After all of that, we will still be left with 40,000 +/- square feet of space unfinished. All of this sits on an incredibly beautiful campus with woods and a lake as well as entrances on two major roads - Northside Drive and Riverside Drive, not to mention that the visibility from Riverside Drive and I-75 is pretty stunning. It is really amazing and mind blowing that this is happening.
It is exciting beyond words.
But it is also scary.
There are a number of concerns that have been expressed by our elders and by our New City families. Will this move change us; will we just become another church or will we retain the qualities that make us New City Church (no offense is intended to any other churches, we are a little quirky)? Will this change our desire to plant churches and send out leaders? Will this take our eyes off of mission and turn us inward to ourselves? Will become another “attractional church?” (side note for another blog - all churches are attractional!) One of our elders wrote this in one of our discussions about the move:
I believe it will be easy to get into the building and have an underlying mindset of "we've arrived." I think there will be a danger of leaving the missional and taking a merely attractional mindset. As leaders, we will have to be more purposeful than ever to be on mission outside the walls, setting an example for the flock. And we will have to help our people do the same. And much like when we were praying the other night together, I think the building can become an idol for us and our people. In Deut. 6:10-12 the temptation was there for the people of Israel moving into the promised land. And in Deut. 8:17 the Lord graciously warned them:
17 Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’
Instead, God must do it, and our hope is in Christ's salvation and His ability to bring us through whatever trials may lie ahead (1 Peter 1:3-9)
They are all right. These are very real dangers. It will be easy to think that we have somehow “arrived” because we have a great building and campus. It will be easy to let the excitement of the move and the new location and facilities be the attraction, and it will be an attraction to many. People will likely come to check out the new space. Maybe some will come because now the building is closer to where they live. It will be easy to think that the new building can do what God has called us to do - make disciples and teach them what it means to love and follow Jesus.
No building or beautiful piece of land can do that! Only we can, you and I.
Jesus calls us, as his disciples, to make other disciples. That isn’t the job of the pastor, staff, elders, or a building; it is the call of every believer. As you go, Jesus said, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you (Matthew 28:18-20).
Buildings cannot make disciples. They are tools to be used by disciples for making disciples. They are places for us to gather, sing, worship, share the gospel, invite others to believe the gospel, and teach one another life as disciples of Jesus.
In 2015 as we were preparing to move into our current location, we had the same concerns. The words that I shared then ring just as true today:
Before you object, let me explain. Buildings, in and of themselves cannot be anything more than the items that they are made of - wood, brick, concrete, glass... It is our use of them that makes them what they are. Take any building out there, add the right lighting, hang art on its walls and call it a gallery, and it is. Take that same building, add dentist's chairs and equipment, call it a dentist's office, and it is. Almost.
The art gallery isn't really an art gallery without artists and the dentist's office isn't really a dentist's office without a dentist. Without people using the buildings as they are intended to be used, the buildings are just buildings with stuff inside. It is people using the buildings for their intended purpose that make the buildings what they are. A dentist could start seeing patients in the Gallery of The 567 today and it would be a dentist's office. Having an artist hang paintings on the wall of the dentist's office and opening the door for viewing transforms the dentist's office into a gallery. The building is just a building without people using it for its intended purpose.
Church buildings are, in that sense, just like art galleries and dentist's offices - it isn't the building that fulfills the church's purpose (mission), it is the people. Buildings can be built in locations that are a strategic part of the church's mission. They can be designed for the mission and equipped with items necessary for the mission. But without people, carrying out the mission, they cannot, on their own fulfill the mission. Buildings are, at best, only tools for the mission.
Your church is only as missional as you are. Your church will only reach people when its people reach people. Your church can only have influence in its location when the people of the church are active and involved as Christians in that location... a city within the city, a counter-culture to and within a culture.
More specifically, our church, New City Church can only see our city transformed, can only see our families transformed and friends transformed when we engage the people around us with the beautiful news of who Jesus is and what He has done for us. A building can't do that.