Intern Engages Online, Crosses Borders, Helps Church Connect With Worshippers

A few months ago, Meindert Kramer was searching for sermons online from his home in the Netherlands. Included on his playlist were some of America’s most prominent preachers: John Piper, Tim Keller ... and a Florida pastor with a penchant for telling stories, at Northland, A Church Distributed in Longwood, Fla.

An intern from the Netherlands, Wilbert Kramer, began worshipping online with Longwood, Fla.’s Northland, a Church Distributed, and has now joined its crew as an intern on the media design team. Photo from www.northlandchurch.net.

Looking over Meindert’s shoulder was his 21-year-old son, Wilbert. “It was eight or nine months ago that my dad came across our website,” Wilbert remembers (saying “our” website, even though he lives more than 4,500 miles away). “I had never experienced anything like Northland’s online worship environment. I was touched by the sermons and felt connected with the people here—always greeting you and willing to chat.”

As Wilbert continued to worship with Northland, he built relationships with the online ministers and others in the church’s web community, which recently hosted more than 5,000 worshippers during Easter weekend.

So what is it like being a part of a church without a building?

“There is always some sense of disconnection—you don't exactly meet people in the hallway,” Wilbert admits. “On the other hand, I always have a connected feeling when worshipping and hearing the message, because it's the universal message touching hearts. God's work isn't bound to country or language borders.”

Wilbert recently accepted an invitation to come to Longwood for an internship with the church’s media design team. He spent several weeks helping the church launch a revamped website.

Nathan Clark, Northland’s lead online minister and director of digital innovation, notes that as a distributed church, “we’ve gone out to others time and again. Now, others are coming here to have an impact on us.” And he adds, “Wilbert provides a critical perspective of someone who has only ever known Northland through online worship and the web. This is crucial as we continue to build tools not just to help our congregation in Central Florida, but our congregation everywhere.”

www.northlandchurch.net

SceneStudio Messaging System Helps Church Raise Communication, Participation

Staff at Trinity Lutheran Church in Villa Park, Ill., credits a SceneStudio digital signage system with helping improve congregational communications and awareness of events. Photo courtesy of Trinity Lutheran.

The reported vision of Trinity Lutheran Church in Villa Park, Ill., is to be a growing, caring congregation, especially nurturing and supporting its church family by providing worship, education, fellowship and outreach opportunities for every demographic of its congregation. To fulfill the goal of offering numerous outreach activities, the church reports that building up participation levels is crucial.

The core communication pieces church staff used to communicate its many activities were originally weekly church bulletins handed out before services and a monthly email newsletter. Yet, some of the church’s lay leaders reported seeing digital signage in retail environments that they felt had the power to improve the church’s communication reach and get parishioners to act on the digital messages. So a small committee was formed to research digital signage, and they quickly learned that the technology both fit their budget and was consistent with the type of messages they wanted to communicate. One concern of the committee, however, was how to keep the digital display messages fresh from week to week.

With this in mind, Trinity Lutheran selected Buffalo, N.Y.-based RidgeLogic’s SceneStudio Pro content development application, which is optimized for use in a single location and provides a user interface that makes design and maintenance of the message on the system a simple proposition. One of the features that made selection of SceneStudio Pro obvious, according to the church committee members, was the ability to edit text messages from a Microsoft Word document—a job that could be done quickly by anyone on the staff.

Next, attention-getting placement of the digital display was important as well, so the committee selected a location in the visitor and member information center where people gather before and after a service, and they outfitted it with a 40-inch LCD display from NEC Display Solutions. The display is run by a media player that is on the church’s local network, allowing the multimedia messages to be developed using SceneStudio Pro on a PC in the business office.

The end result? Trinity Lutheran says it’s pleased with the SceneStudio digital signage system. Parishioners notice the messages on the display and, because they are in the church, they are able to act on many of them immediately—signing up for a group activity, making a donation, or remembering to stop by and visit a sick friend. Committee members now report that their digital signage system is a key component of the church’s communication strategy. As Pastor Rob Rogers puts it, “Getting parishioners actively involved in the church is critical to our vision, and our digital messaging system is helping us drive increased participation.”

www.ridgelogic.com; www.trinitylutheranvp.com

Overly Door Opens Discount Surplus Website for Facility-Wide Supplies

Church staff on a budget and looking to buy acoustic doors for their facility have a new website resource, http://www.overlysurplus.com. The website is a new offering from Greensburg, Pa.-based Overly Door Co., a custom specialty door and window manufacturer that focuses on the church market.

Overly’s new website will sell surplus materials—including doors frames, office equipment and supplies, sheet steel and other used equipment for both facilities and facilities managers.

www.overly.com; www.overlysurplus.com

Wisconsin Monastery Achieves Platinum Certification from U.S. Green Building Council

The Sisters of Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison, Wis., were instrumental in the design of a new facility that earned a Platinum LEED certification, with 63 of a possible 69 points, the highest rating of any LEED-NC (New Construction) building in the country to date. The Sisters chose local architect Hoffman LLC to help realize their vision. Image supplied by Steve Freeman.

The Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Green Building Council has awarded the Benedictine Women of Madison’s Holy Wisdom Monastery a Platinum rating—the highest level of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification available. The monastery earned 63 out of a possible 69 points under LEED-NC (New Construction) version 2.2, the most of any LEED-NC building in the United States to date. The monastery is a 30,000-square-foot, two-story structure with a detached, 4,000-square-foot remodeled maintenance building on 130 acres overlooking Lake Mendota in Madison, Wis. Partnering with Hoffman LLC, a Wisconsin-based planning, design and construction management firm, the Sisters reportedly spent two years exploring and defining their vision for the monastery.

Holy Wisdom Monastery offered an opportunity to explore what a 21st century Benedictine monastery could be. With no prototype to follow, the project team was guided by the Sisters’ mission of weaving prayer, hospitality, justice, and care for the earth into a shared way of life as an ecumenical Benedictine community. While it was reportedly not their original intent to set a LEED record, they were determined to build as sustainably as possible and to encourage others to do so by demonstrating that it could be done affordably.

“For us, sustainability is not a trend,” says Sister Joanne Kollasch, “but a commitment to the earth—a 21st century expression of 1,500 years of Benedictine tradition.” Adds Sister Mary David Walgenbach, the monastery’s prioress, “It’s not the thing to do; it’s the right thing to do.”

The Sisters’ goal is to expand their photovoltaic system to ultimately provide 100% of the monastery’s net energy requirement from an on-site renewable source. While the Sisters had no previous experience with a building project, they have made bold moves before this. Examples include their ecumenical stance, the restoration of 95 acres of farmland to prairie, and the dredging of a glacial lake that had been filled with silt from previous farming practices.

The monastery continues to accept donations toward the remaining $1 million of their $2 million campaign goal. For more information, visit http://www.benedictinewomen.org.

www.benedictinewomen.org; www.hoffman.net; www.usgbc.org

Successful Planning and Building in Difficult Economic Times

By Steve Newton
LifeWay Research, an arm of LifeWay Christian Resources based in Nashville, Tenn., reports in a recent survey of 1,009 North American churches that 14% reported having delayed building projects or capital expenditures because of economic concerns in the past year. By contrast, 20% of churches reported none of the belt-tightening measures identified in the survey. What does the current economy mean to you and your church as you consider addressing current and future facilities needs?

It most certainly does not mean doom and gloom. While fiscal circumstances will always be a concern in any church building project, let’s look at your situation from an objective point of view, considering the following questions:

• Does the church need additional space to accomplish its mission and vision?
• Are the congregation and leadership highly committed to achieving the mission and vision?
• Where is the church’s giving in comparison to previous years?
• What is the construction environment in the local economy?

Steve Newton, AIA, architect and lead consultant, LifeWay Architecture, Nashville, TN

The first issue to consider is need, particularly in relationship to the church’s clearly defined and established mission and vision. If the church truly needs additional or refurbished space to accommodate growth and ministry objectives, this need presumably will not change based on occurrences on Wall Street. In difficult economies it is more important than ever for the church to clearly and honestly prioritize its needs, its wants, and its preferences, in that order.

Any successful building and planning requires effective leadership, and this is amplified in the down economy. The leader and the congregation must be highly committed to staying the course with confidence despite a barrage of doubt sowing from naysayers and newscasters. This confidence must be gained through wise planning, necessary adjustments in the scope of a project, consensus building among key leaders, and by communicating the achievement of milestones on the journey, including navigating around the obstacles that present themselves along the way. Progress, even slower progress than originally desired, is almost always preferable to standing still or, worse, moving backwards.

Many churches have seen some reduction in giving and have taken measures to address this through reduction in expenses. While stock prices on Wall Street plummeted by 50% or more, most churches saw income reductions of 10% or less, with many remaining stable and a small percentage continuing to increase.

Any building project financial plan should be based upon actual undesignated church income, not a future projection. At the same time, with consumer spending on the decline and with [a number of] banks in a hyper-cautious mode after being overly aggressive in lending practices, expectations of capital fundraising and borrowing capacity should be adjusted. Analysis of actual income, fundraising and borrowing potential may require a reduction in project scope from that previously anticipated, but not as drastic as one might think watching the evening news. For discussion purposes, a quick rule of thumb would suggest a project scope ranging between 2.5 and 3.5 times church undesignated income will produce a fundable project.

The construction environment actually gives some good news and opportunity for effectively led, mission-driven churches. For a number of years, construction prices were inflating much faster than church incomes were increasing. LifeWay Architecture has recently seen church clients benefit from the economy through greatly reduced costs for construction. One particularly bold client has even increased its project scope to take advantage of the economy. While construction costs bottomed nationally last summer, increases in cost have been slow, and many areas still present opportunity for those churches willing to plan wisely and move forward in a steady, deliberate, perhaps even cautious manner.

For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgment (2 Tim 1:7 HCSB). Let us hope that churches that delayed did so to better prepare to move forward, rather than to abandon a project essential to their mission/vision. To wait until construction prices have moved back into inflationary mode could be a costly mistake.

Steve Newton, AIA, is an architect and lead consultant for LifeWay Architecture working directly with churches across the United States in long-range planning, master planning, and building design. Newton was a featured speaker at LifeWay’s April 2010 Mid-South Church Building Conference in Nashville, Tenn. He may be contacted at (615) 251-2466. More information is available at http://www.lifeway.com/arch. www.lifeway.com/arch