Podcast Episode #582
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In this episode, Thom and Sam discuss a key barrier to church growth, parking. If you are leading a healthy and growing church parking will be an issue. Listen in as the discussion focuses on six ways churches are dealing with parking shortages.
The six questions from today’s podcast:
- Ask key church leaders to park in remote places.
- Some churches use shuttle parking, at least for a season.
- More churches are starting a non-Sunday morning service to deal with space constraints like parking shortages.
- When a church becomes multi-site, parking shortages are often relieved.
- Nearby businesses are often happy to allow church members to park on their property.
- Some churches reconfigure their parking for more effective use.
Other highlights:
- Church leaders often arrive early and leave late and do not notice parking issues.
- As culture has changed, we have fewer people coming to church per car.
Resources mentioned in today’s podcast
- I Am a Church Member
- The Biggest Demographic Churches Are Missing
- Sandals Church
- Cosco & Associates
- Revitalize and Replant
Episode Sponsors
Vanderbloemen has been serving churches for nine years, but did you know that Vanderbloemen also serves Christian schools, nonprofits, and Christian businesses? So if you’re listening, and you know a Christian school, nonprofit, or values-based business that is hiring, contact our friends at Vanderbloemen for your staffing needs.
For more information, visit Vanderbloemen.com.
The mission at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ by equipping students to serve the church and fulfill the Great Commission. The school offers more than 40 different degree programs, including the new Master of Arts in Church Revitalization in partnership with Church Answers and the Revitalization Network. This 37-hour degree is designed to help students move established churches from flatlining to flourishing.
Learn about this program and more by visiting sebts.edu. Where are you going? Southeastern will help you get there.
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 Scrappy Church.
Capitol Hill Baptist Church in downtown Washington D.C. has a severely acute parking problem yet they pack their service every Sunday morning.
If the preaching/worship is good they will walk for it!
Presuming the church is within reasonable walking distance of where they live. In the United States taking a good part of the day to walk or ride on horseback or in a buggy to attend a church is a thing of the past. While people may have done that in the nineteenth century and earlier, they are not going to do it today. When we planted the Journey more than 10 years ago, we conducted our worship gatherings within a short walking distance of the residence halls of the university whose student body we were targeting. We offered great preaching, great music, and free breakfast. But most students were not willing to forego sleeping late to come to our worship gatherings which I must point out were immensely popular to many people, young and old, who lived off campus and came by automobile. What did attract students to our worship gatherings was not the preaching or the music but the opportunities for service and relationships with existing attendees.
Inadequate parking can be a very serious problem, not only for existing churches but also for new church plants. I have been involved in a number of church plants since the 1980s. One church plant in which I was involved was forced to move to a new location due to complaints from local residents about attendees of our worship gatherings parking their cars on the street in front of their residences. The building we were using did not have a large enough parking lot to accommodate our growing congregation. We solved our parking problem in our third building–a storefront–by leasing parking space at a nearby garage. Regular attendees and ministry team members were encouraged to park in that lot and leave the parking space in front of the building for first time visitors. When we purchased property and built a multipurpose building, we underestimated the number of parking spaces, we needed. The church’s parking problem eventually resulted in a church split when the members of the congregation became divided over whether the church should construct a larger sanctuary or add more services. The church split solved the parking problem. We lost a third of the households that regularly attended our services. However, the church did not recover from the split.