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    Added March 31, 2010

As published in Worship Facilities, Mar/Apr 2010

Casting vision essentially boils down to “This is who we are,” and, “This is where we’re going.” That’s a vast oversimplification, though. The level of detail can be staggering, and pastors and churches’ senior leadership must successfully convey that vision to and through the congregation or the vision may be lost.

In the business and secular world, vision casting states an organization’s overall vision and how it plans to achieve it. Vision casting also establishes and attempts to answer why we’re here and what we’re doing, serving as more of an incorporating idea than a mission statement. Given its strategic importance, vision casting plays an essential role in any church building program as well as the development of signage, logos and other branding materials.

“It’s easier said than done,” says Dale Reiser, president of Professional Building Services, a design/build firm based in Crete, Ill. “It takes a huge effort, but it’s absolutely necessary. God’s in this. Let’s see where he takes us.”

Vision casting starts with the pastor and church leadership’s view of where the church should be in five, 10, 20 or 30 years with consideration paid to cost and available funds and a realistic look at measurables/deliverables and timeframe—what we want to achieve and when can we achieve it? Begin with the end in mind, says John Tagle, principal of John Tagle Associates Inc. in Troy, Mich.

To sell it and motivate the congregation to embrace the vision, you have to “talk it to death,” Tagle says, from face-to-face meetings with influential church members to small groups and the entire congregation. You also have to consider potential church members and the unchurched and how they will interpret and embrace the vision and join in the church’s growth. Tagle warns that it’s a team effort, though, as vision casting and the ensuing project development may overwhelm a pastor who wants to serve as a single point of contact.

“It really falls on leadership,” Tagle says. “Leadership has to show the congregation how it supports the vision. It’s so important to get one-on-one with influencers in the church.”

From the outset, the church building committee really has to think about the church’s identity and what they want to achieve, says Kenn Sanders, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based church architectural designer and master planner who’s worked with approximately 1,000 churches over the past 50 years.

Do you have the financial wherewithal for a Cadillac plan or a Chevy, an especially important consideration in current economic conditions? Do you want to look like other churches in your community? That’s not necessarily a bad thing, Sanders says, but it’s just a matter of who you are and what you want to convey. What works for one church may not work for another. While money issues can wreck a church’s vision, Sanders also points out that God is big and churches shouldn’t limit themselves.

“The campus must mirror the vision of the church and the congregation must be locked in with it,” Sanders says. “In my life work I have been at the building table with hundreds of churches. I noticed one important greatness that was at some of these tables but not others, and as I now look back to see what has taken place in each church over the years, those that have great growth were the ones with this important greatness at their building table.

“The greatness was their preparedness as a building team,” Sanders says. “They were servant leaders.”

Tools of the Trade

With church facilities, three-dimensional animation and virtual tours have taken a prominent role in conveying vision to the congregation and other interested parties in the community. Another more recent tool used by architects and planners in their work with churches, Building Information Modeling (BIM) and its 3D modeling of a building, plays an increasingly important role in devising architectural and master plans, practically in real time, all the while improving collaboration. While BIM is merely a tool, its use oftentimes accompanies a design and building process methodology called Integrated Project Delivery, or IPD, where all the professional and church collaborators involved in a building project sit down together and come up with a design for a building in real-time, using BIM.

In addition to an IPD approach using BIM, three-dimensional, animated tours combined with members’ testimony can create a compelling presentation and example of a church vision, transporting the audience to and through a new facility, whether during a Sunday-morning service or online. The 3D animation allows viewers to see the space and understand its possibilities and how it supports the church’s mission.

“Painting that picture is a vital part of the whole process,” Reiser says.

Animation firms such as Tulsa, Okla.-based Creative Animation Studios work with churches to create the 3D images and environments with various levels of photo reality at different price points. The images are combined with members’ stories of life change to create a movie, with the church’s collaboration and approval at each stage of the process. The end result compels and motivates members to get involved and not just be a spectator, says Seth Andrews, president of Creative Animation Studios.

“We’ve found that in this day and age, you have to engage all senses,” Andrews says. “It’s a generation where media is king and you have to take them through your vision. It’s about generating momentum so that people will still give through the overall mission.”

While creating 3D animated movies isn’t necessarily cheap—they’ll cost at least a few thousand dollars—Andrews has seen churches spend $50,000 on plastic models that lack the detail and ability to fuel members’ and potential members’ imaginations like the combination of 3D animation and personal testimony.

“What is the cost of not communicating vision?” Andrews asks. “A lot of churches are under the assumption that using 3D and virtual tours is too expensive for them to do effectively. There are great resources out there that are worth the investment and make it more effective.”

While 3D animated tours in their earliest form originated approximately 20 years ago, BIM has gained increasing stature in architectural and planning communities over the past five years. BIM involves three-dimensional, real-time dynamic building modeling software to create architectural plans and images, displaying the structure’s geometry, spatial relationships, geographic information, quantities and properties. The software also creates an efficient way to generate and manage building data over its life cycle.

Using BIM, clients and architects and planners can sit in the same room and over the course of a few hours or a few days, collaborate and generate a building’s design. It often leads to an exponential generation of ideas as well as suggestions that weren’t even considered in the beginning stages, says Aubrey Garrison III, principal at Birmingham, Ala.-based Garrison Barrett Group architectural and design firm.

“Once we got it and I saw its ability to design with graphics on screen, I saw it as an incredible way to relate to clients,” Garrison says. “It’s an incredible communications tool.”

Using Revit’s BIM software, Garrison Barrett Group has worked with churches such as Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Fla.; Church of the King in Mandeville, La.; First Baptist Mandeville; and Church of the Highlands in Birmingham to bring projects to fruition.

For First Baptist Mandeville’s new youth building, which was designed with 10 classrooms and room to accommodate 200 youth in a large-group setting, Garrison Barrett spent an evening with the church’s youth, parents and ministers, starting at 6 p.m. Garrison Barrett had already created the church’s master plan but otherwise started with a blank slate. Using BIM software, the firm’s architects manipulated what started out as a 7,000-square-foot rectangle into a detailed, three-dimensional drawing for the new youth center.

“Once we got the objects into place, we put the details and design to it and by 9 p.m., within three hours, we basically had it fully designed,” Garrison says. “With the client in the room at the beginning of design, they have much better buy-in with the end product.”

With Celebration, the church’s facilities and acoustics pros and other leadership travelled to Birmingham to work through the design of an $11.3 million development, creating a nearly finished product in four days of collaboration.

“We’ve just eliminated all the back and forth,” says Craig Krawczyk, a principal at Garrison Barrett. “It gives the clients a lot more ownership in the design. They have a lot of confidence because they can see it on the screen.”

Signs o’ the Times

Not to sound too secular or corporate, but vision casting is a big part of your church’s branding, and signage, logos and other materials play an important role in casting that vision. Effective branding motivates the congregation and keeps you in the forefront of your community, conveying the message and a welcoming, dynamic presence. Getting it right is deceptively difficult, though.

Good exterior signage should, of course, fit your community and its zoning and create a comfort level and element of familiarity. You have to consider the congregation’s perspective, but you have to consider the unsaved and those you want to reach, as well. You also have to consider the visual clutter and messages that bombard people every day and attempt to surmount those challenges. Good signage may not necessarily get them in the door, but bad signage, both internally and externally, muddies the vision and message and may turn people off from the start. With internal signage, you may want to ask someone who’s not a member of your church to find his/her way around to make sure you’re both welcoming to visitors and effective in conveying identity.

Logos and slogans—brief and action-oriented, expressing core values and mission—serve as your church’s signature and must be understandable, timeless and memorable, Sanders says. If you’re in a small-town, logos should reflect that, just as they should reflect the immense power of God if you’re in a metropolis, he says. Your church’s embrace of the contemporary or traditional also plays a role.

Ultimately, though, creating logos, slogans and signage to further cast vision requires a collaborative, dedicated approach—and people who know what they’re doing—to achieve that vision of your church’s future.

“That has to be done pointedly with a group of people for whom that’s their charge,” Reiser says.