Mark had as usual arrived early Sunday morning, even before the first sign of dawn’s light. And as usual, Mark went right to work clearing the light snowfall from the sidewalks, steps, and courtyards before the worship team members arrived for their pre-service rehearsal at the crack of dawn. With the walkways cleared and lightly salted, Mark turned his attention to the coffee shop indoors, where he started brewing the first round of carafes before the volunteers arrived to set up for the first service. Coffee brewing, Mark turned his attention to straightening the chairs and moving the communion tables into place in the sanctuary, while the worship team rehearsed. Then it was off to his custodial office hidden away in the back of the facility, to work quietly on scheduling the electronic door locking system for the week’s events. Sunday morning before the first service was the only quiet time Mark would have to get the facility programmed for the coming week.
Management
Facility acquisition, addressed in the prior chapter, is one subject. Facility use, maintenance, and repair is another subject entirely. Church facilities don’t run on their own. They don’t care for themselves. Just as a home, office, or retail outlet takes constant management and upkeep, so does a church facility. Indeed, as both a private workplace during the week and a public gathering place throughout the week including on weekday evenings and on weekends, a church facility can take much more management and maintenance than a home, office, or business. Facilities for churches of significant size can require round-the-clock management not only of use, scheduling, custodial services, and repair but also of member-and-guest services, safety, security, and emergencies. The church that drops the ball on facility management can not only disappoint and frustrate users but outright endanger them and jeopardize the functionality and value of the facility itself. Help your church manage its facility soundly, wisely, proactively, and efficiently.
Maintenance
Maintenance of a good-sized church facility can alone require substantial time and concentrated attention from a skilled facilities director. The church that can recruit and afford to employ a devoted facilities director who possesses current maintenance, repair, administrative, and technology skills, and is available weekends, weekdays, and weekday evenings, indeed 24/7/365, has a true gift. That’s the kind of skill and devotion church facility maintenance can take. The systems to maintain include heating, cooling, and ventilation systems with all their filters, controls, and timed settings. The systems also include electronic door-entry systems for both the inside and outside doorways with all their key fobs and authorized users for different levels and areas of access. The systems also include video and alarm security systems, monitored from a cell phone with frequent alerts. The systems also include fire alarm and suppression, electric, water, gas, and sewer utilities, electrical panels and circuit breakers, restroom plumbing, kitchen appliances, emergency generators, building custodial equipment, and grounds watering systems and maintenance schedules and equipment. Don’t underestimate the resources, skills, staffing, and volunteer hours that maintaining a church facility can take. Ensure that your church budgets adequately for facility maintenance. Help your church meet facility maintenance needs.
Repair
Facility maintenance is one thing, while facility repair is another thing. Things wear out, and things break. With all of the above systems to maintain, some of those systems are going to fail. A church must have a facilities director capable of promptly fixing broken systems or promptly securing competent repair services. When the heat or air conditioning quits on a Saturday, the facilities director had better have it repaired overnight. When the city has a sewer or water-line break or power outage in the church’s neighborhood, affecting water, sewer, and power services to the church, the facilities director had better have notices and alternative plans available or be able to help the pastor, operations director, and other ministry leaders make those plans and give those notices. When the roof leaks, a toilet gets plugged, a circuit breaker pops, or a kitchen appliance or coffee maker quits, the facilities directors better be on hand with the necessary prompt action, whether a quick fix or replacement, or soon repair. Ensure that your church budgets adequately for facility repair. Budget for incidental repairs, while building capital accounts to pay for extensive repairs and system replacements.
Custodial
Reliable custodial services are also important to a church’s orderly operation. Someone must empty the trash cans, take the garbage to the curb, clean the toilets and sinks, and mop or vacuum the floors. Someone must also wash the windows, dust the shelves, straighten the stacks of Bibles, and wipe down the tables. And someone must mop the coffee spills up and pick up the empty cups and stray bulletins from the sanctuary floor. Furnishings, too, need attention, whether to straighten tables and chairs, periodically clean fabric on couches, and clean entryway rugs. Lax custodial services show up almost instantly in a church, with the facility’s heavy use from visitors who lack the time to pick up and straighten up, and the tools to clean up. Members will surely point out custodial shortcomings Sunday morning if the facilities director isn’t on top of things. A dirty and disheveled church makes a poor impression. Help your church maintain a sound custodial program. Hire a reliable custodial service, employ a reliable custodian, or recruit reliable volunteer teams. Consider coordinating additional donated or low-cost custodial help from local law enforcement’s community service program or job-training program. Custodial work can be a ministry.
Insurance
Insuring your church against liability and loss is another function of facilities management. Just like a homeowner or business owner, a church should have an insurance policy that reimburses for fire, water, storm, theft, vandalism, or other damage, destruction, and loss. Just like a homeowner or business owner, a church should also have liability insurance to compensate members, guests, or others who suffer recoverable injury or loss from church facilities or operations. A commercial general liability policy will cover these and other risks. Help your church work with a skilled and trustworthy independent insurance agent for the best policy based on coverage and price. Use your church’s finance team, led by your church’s operation’s director, to evaluate and choose insurance coverages.
Inventories
Churches can accumulate a great deal of valuable furnishings, technology, and personal property over the years. Storage spaces may become stuffed with seldom-used, seasonal items or even never-used donated items. In the event of fire, water, storm, theft, or other catastrophic loss, a church can have a hard time proving to an insurer the existence, condition, and value of damaged, destroyed, or stolen property. Taking periodic inventory of a church’s property can address that proof concern. Encourage your church’s operations director or facilities director to record and securely store cellphone video of the whole church facility and all items it stores. It may only take a short time to record the whole facility and all its stored items, by walking around with a cellphone recording items, while entering every room and opening every closet door and storage drawer to video record and inventory all church property.
Use
Churches also need to properly control the use of their facilities. Churches may welcome member uses for things like family reunions, community uses for things like job fairs and book fairs, and nonprofit uses for things like annual meetings and social-service events. Yet some family, community, or nonprofit uses may be inconsistent with the church’s faith commitments. Hosting a family reunion that serves copious alcohol and ends up in disruptive or disputatious activities would not, for instance, be in a church’s interest. Commercial uses of a church facility may likewise unwisely implicate competitive business interests and tax exemption issues. A church is generally wise, for instance, not to rent its facility to professional or commercial service providers, even for ostensibly healthy activities like dance lessons and wills seminars offered by a professional provider for fees, because of the same competitive and commercial interests. Churches should also closely patrol uses for security, safety, and morals issues. Unsupervised youths or young adults imbibing alcohol, abusing drugs, or smoking tobacco on church premises in the course of a non-church event would be an example. Help your church properly patrol facility uses.
Scheduling
Scheduling church facility uses is another important function of a facilities director. A church of significant size with multiple ministries must often coordinate ministry events so that they do not interfere with one another in their facility use. A skilled operations director or facilities director can develop an equitable and transparent system of reserving facility use sufficiently in advance to allow ministry leaders time for event and activity announcement and planning. A strictly first-scheduled (first-come, first-served) system may not be appropriate. Some church events and activities need priority at certain times. But all ministry leaders should be able to see a facility schedule, make their ministry’s facility needs known, and have equitable treatment of those needs. Sensitive, transparent, and equitable facility scheduling can keep peace among ministry leaders and maintain order in church activities and events.
Security
Security is a big church issue. Your church should have a skilled, wise, and reliable staff member responsible for church security, whether the operations director, facilities director, or another staff member. The church’s security official should remain informed about current church security issues, tools, and measures. The church’s security official should work with local law enforcement for church security review and access. Local police may, for instance, happily inspect your church for security concerns. They may also station officers at or near the facility during service times. They may also conduct active-shooter or other security training at the church for staff members and church security-team volunteers. Your church’s security official should also consider recruiting, training, and empowering a volunteer security team to assist the security official in monitoring the premises, and especially the entrances, during church services and other gatherings. Make security the priority that it is due. Help your church protect your church community.
Safety
Safety should also be a priority concern for your church’s facilities director. Safety issues can include things like trip-and-fall hazards from entryway mats, worn and frayed rugs, loose or improperly designed stair treads, and items strewn about the floors of the church. Safety issues can also include slips and falls from snow and ice outside the church, water tracked into the church, liquids spilled onto the floors, or floors improperly waxed. The facilities director and other staff members should be constantly on the lookout for these and other safety risks, just as custodial services should be skilled in treating indoor floor surfaces to minimize slip risks. Fire suppression and alarms are another priority safety concern. The facilities director should work with local fire safety officials to ensure that extinguishers are properly filled, placed, and up to date, and alarms are working. Your church’s facilities director may also provide special facility access to firefighters, according to their preferred means. Help your church’s facilities director address these and all other safety concerns.
Emergencies
Churches can suffer special emergencies, the possibility of which warrant having policies and procedures in place. Help your church’s facilities director and operations director develop, maintain, and distribute emergency procedures. Make the emergency procedures available to staff members and key volunteers, online in a shared file instantly accessible from cellphones. Also place printed emergency procedures at key locations around the church such as at an information desk near the church entrance and the reception desk in the church office. Include procedures regarding an active-shooter event, medical emergency on the premises, incident of violence or threat of violence from a mentally or emotionally unstable member or guest, power failure, tornado or storm warning, and any other emergency that may arise in your church’s area. Have a first-aid box, stretcher, wheelchair, and defibrillator available just outside the sanctuary in a coat room, at an information desk, or in another appropriately visible and accessible location. Help your church prepare for emergencies.
Reflection
How well does your church manage its facility? In what areas could facility management improve? What resources or staffing would improving facility management require? Does your church promptly repair systems that fail and equipment that breaks? Does your church budget adequately for facility maintenance and repairs? Does it have a capital fund for major repairs and system replacements? Is your church clean and tidy at all times, with skilled and dedicated custodial services? Does your church maintain adequate liability and loss insurance? Does your church adequately control permissible uses of the church facility? Do your church’s ministry leaders feel that they have equitable use of the facility at their preferred times, through a transparent system for scheduling? Are safety and security priorities at your church? What staff member is primarily responsible for each? Does your church have a designated security official who works with local public safety and health officials on church security and emergency preparedness? Does your church have emergency procedures, distributed appropriately to staff members and key volunteers? Does your church have an adequately equipped first-aid station in an accessible and visible location?
Key Points
Church facilities can require substantial round-the-clock management.
A church facility’s several systems require regular skilled maintenance.
Church systems can also require frequent prompt and skilled repair.
Churches also need constant reliable and skilled custodial services.
The church should maintain commercial general liability insurance.
Taking periodic video inventory of church property can prove loss.
Manage church facilities to exclude commercial and improper uses.
Schedule ministry uses of facilities equitably and well in advance.
Make security a priority with a designated security leader and team.
Continually inspect the facility to address and correct safety issues.
Adopt and publish emergency procedures to responsible individuals.