Ideas | The Church Office

Hey, everyone that is a part of a church plant or for one reason or another is setting up a Sunday worship experience out of a trailer knows what its like to wish for a building. Impact Church is no exception, although we are still quite young and its not something we think of often. We have had an occasion to look at a couple of buildings and we have kind of dreamed as much as we could in the 20 minutes or so we would spend there. One thing that I can’t abide by in a church building is conventional church offices for pastors and staff. Now I have worked in my share of offices as an engineer and I know what I am talking about! Offices are WEIRD places. I am glad to say I am not alone in this thinking in the Impact staff. So, after reading Alex’s post about Life Church’s new building myths I thought I would share my vision for what a church office should look like.

First, I think that its appropriate to forget about the senior pastor’s office, the associate pastors’ offices and on and on. I think that as pastors and leaders we need to be going to where our people are, not them to us. That is the way it is now without our own offices and I think it should remain that way. I think there should be a place for quiet study, counseling, prayer or whatever else needs to be done in a private and secluded place. I will call these study rooms (or counseling rooms). In a church that falls between 300-600 in attendance there should probably be 3 or 4 of these types of rooms set up with couches or big coffee shop chairs and coffee tables for 6-10 people each. Great place to study or have a meeting. This church office should also include a lab. This area would be equipped with computers, printers, copiers, etc. Basically think Jr. college computer lab for purposes of web design, media creation and the like. I also think that if a church is blessed with talented and artistic people that a recording studio is in order. I don’t know anything about these things other than they are acoustically neutral and filled with cool tech for recording stuff. So thats it, other than a reception area for walk-in visitors I think that this is what would make a good office for a church in our community. What do you think? What would you change?