Podcast Episode #464
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Tim Cool joins us to discuss facility management and why a free building could be the most expensive building your church has.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- Total annual operational costs of your church building should run between $5.50-$7.00 per square foot.
- Does your church facility speak the same language that your church culture speaks?
- Never accept a free facility without a facility assessment to determine how much it’s really going to cost you.
- Does your church truly have a grasp on how much your facility costs to run?
About Tim Cool:
Tim Cool is founder of Cool Solutions Group, and has assisted nearly 400 churches (equating to over 4 million sq. ft.) throughout the United States with their facility needs. He has collaborated with churches in the areas of facility needs analysis, design coordination, pre-construction, and construction management as well as life cycle planning/facility management. Cool Solutions Group is also the developer of eSPACE Facility Management software products including Event Scheduler, Event Registration, Work Order Management, Life Cycle Calculator, and HVAC integration. Tim is also the author of three books, Why Church Buildings Matter: The Story of Your Space, Church Locality (co-authored with Jim Tomberlin) and Plan 4 It: The 4 Essential Master Plans For Every Church as well as a church Facility Management manual, Intentional Church Series: Facility Stewardship. Tim lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife of 32 years, Lisa, and supports his triplet college students at Appalachian State University.
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Feedback
If you have a question you would like answered on the show, fill out the form on the podcast page here at ThomRainer.com. If we use your question, you’ll receive a free copy of Becoming a Welcoming Church.
Our church is a textbook case for this process! We were meeting in a 60 year old facility which we owned. We merged with a congregation that was growing but needed a regular meeting place. I know our budget is unrealistic regarding long term cost of ownership. Thank you for increasing our awareness of the problems we will be facing if we don’t get on top of this. The congregants must be made aware of the real cost of meeting in a building like this.
Thank you, James. My prayers for your church!
We did this. I gave the leadership copies of the “Autopsy…: book and they took it to heart, for the most part. One year later we gave the campus over to a church plant.
Our biggest problem is that those of us who were members for years and years were completely disregarded and now we have all moved away. I was hoping that a gradual (six month) incorporation to totally new would happen. We were just marginalized almost instantly as “old people” and ignored. I personally had been so excited, now, devastated as the new pastor asked me to leave.
We are a church given a facility in an older community. One specific thing which I think may not have been directly addressed is whether or not the “facility” will match the church vision. The facility we were given is in a neighborhood, and it became imperative that we address that in our vision. Over the past 6 years, many who came with us to this urban location (plenty of parking though) have chosen to go elsewhere because of driving distance, urban issues, not contemporary enough, etc. One of our major changes though was to become what our neighborhood needed. The cost factors are also there, but then it’s critically important to be able to network and get services at reduced or even free! I’ve found several retired people in the trades who are more than willing to donate time, product, etc. Receiving a free facility has many advantages, provided the issue of the surrounding community. We believe God brought us to this location. I could share more, but appreciate the podcast but would caution anyone looking to just reduplicate themselves to be realistic. If the church can’t serve it’s immediate neighborhood in the donated facility, then perhaps a solid rethink is in order.