Reflections on Embracing Portability as a Church

Guest Blogger – Rich Birch, Connexus Community Church

Last week I had the privilege of interacting with dozens of "church planting types" at the Next Church Conference in Ocala, Florida. It was great to meet up with leaders at various stages of their planting path. I could talk with church planters all day long - they are heroes in my books!

As we chatted about many of the practical issues facing leaders in today's climate, the issue of how to "do church well" on a portable environment came up. In reality, many, many churches today end up in portable situations where they are moving in and out of a rented facility every week. I see portability as great strategic advantage. Portability, as I see it, is not a "phase to be grown out of" or a "burden to be avoided".

Here are some thoughts on the advantages that portable churches have over the old school "bricks and mortar" churches.

Move into the "Up & Coming Places"
One of the hallmarks of an area considered “good” for church planting is a community that is growing quickly and is attracting a lot of new residents. Often, when people are in the midst of the life change that comes with moving, they are open to new things like trying out a church.

Portable Churches can capitalize on that growth by renting a pre-existing building (as opposed to building one). Being portable gives you an incredible opportunity to jump into those new & fast growing communities both quickly, economically and effectively.

Be in Two Places at Once!
Have you ever wished you could be at two places at once? Churches experiencing rapid growth can go portable and host services in multiple locations on a single weekend. For instance – you could host Saturday evening services in one community and then Sunday morning in a different location. This flexibility allows you to reach more people in more locations than when you are restricted by a building (and I haven’t even mentioned the new opportunities that the multi-site approach opens up!).

Grow Your Environments as Your Community Grows
There is something about going to an event when the room is packed out. You know that feeling of "we're not going to be able to fit many more people in here?" This “feeling” is a great irony of human nature – it is a part of what makes us want to come back and to invite our friends. When you are portable, you are able to start your ministry environments in small rooms and then grow to larger rooms as your community grows.

I've seen this dynamic work first hand as we've been meeting in movie theaters for years. When we launched a new location, we started in a room that makes the community feel "full" from the beginning and then slowly moved into larger theaters as needed.

"Go and Be" rather than "Come and See"
There is just something great about "invading" space every week that is used for another purpose for the rest of the week. We can see Paul doing this in Acts 19 as he rented the lecture hall at Tyrannus. By renting a space that is "out there" you are going to where the people are rather than convincing them to "come here" into a foreign space that the vast majority of the people you are attempting to reach have never been.

Churches spend huge dollars on making their facilities look like "public spaces" - why not just rent a public space and convert it for your use? When considering where to plant a church, don't restrict yourself just to schools and movie theaters - what about bars, casinos, bowling alleys or strip clubs (Don't laugh I know I church that converted a strip club!)? The weekly reminder about "what's it's all about" is powerful when you meet in a portable environment!

Return on Investment
Let's face it . . . we all are caught in between the vision of what we believe God wants to do in our church and what our resources on hand will allow us to do. We are always looking for ways to maximize the donor investments that have been made in our churches.

Simply put . . . you are able to serve more people in portable venues than you are in traditional physical environments. I have seen this first hand in the churches that I've been a part of. We built a great facility that was both a home for our congregation and a video production facility for our multisite vision - it cost us $2,300+ per person to build. This fall we launched a portable location for $450 per person to totally outfit that location including video production for our multisite approach! (You can do portable for a lot less than that per person as well!).

The savings are huge when you do a "cost per person" analysis of getting starting in a portable church rather than a "buy and build" approach.

I've been leading in growing churches that have chosen a portable strategy for over 350 weekends now (But who's counting!). I know, first hand, that there is a lot of hard work involved in this approach to "doing church" but I think the investment that is made is a wise one.
What do you think? I'd be interested in hearing your reflections on being portable.



Rich Birch
rich.birch@connexuscommunity.com
Executive Director of Operations
Connexus Community Church

featured on newchurches.com