Life Fellowship Church Outdoor Lawn and Baptism. | Architect: GFF | Photographer: Chad Davis
In colonial times, people built churches in the center of a community. And then they built towns around them.
“By design, the church was central to the community,” confirms Dave Milam, vice president of strategic design at the Dallas office of Visioneering Studios, a design-build firm whose work includes churches.
Dave Milam, vice president of strategic design at the Dallas office of Visioneering Studios,
“Somewhere along the line, this went away as a model,” he states. “We can put the church back at the center.”
Does this mean that church leadership, developers and architects are helping scoot church back into the thick of the action?
Jacquelyn Block, principal, faith-based market sector leader at GFF in Dallas.
Principal Jacquelyn Block, faith-based market sector leader at GFF, also in Dallas, contends yes.
“There has been a trend toward churches wanting to be physically located where people are naturally going during the week,” she says.
This church-centric development is promising for both leadership and local community—so promising it’s worth looking into more deeply.
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Legacy Park at Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tennessee. © 2023 Jordan Powers Photography used by permission of Visioneering Studios.
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Church.Design: How do you see church use shifting going into 2024, and what models or forms might the sector lean toward?
Block: More churches are evolving to become community hubs. Churches are encouraging people to come to their campus every day by providing spaces for children, co-working spaces, coffee bars/cafes, sports activities, recreation, health clinics, community centers, retail spaces and multi-family housing.
Milam: No development in the world would build a space for one day a week. So churches are leveraging their land and their square footage so they can use it all throughout the week.
Instead of the 1990’s auditorium sizes of 3 -5 thousand people, they’re capping out at 1,200 today. So if they have 40 acres, they don’t need it all, and they’re leveraging that in other ways. And we can put the church at the center.
Life Fellowship Church Outdoor Sports Pavilion. | Architect: GFF | Photographer: Chad Davis
Church.Design: Fitness centers were popular components that designers started adding to churches quite some time ago. But it seems like there’s a renewed emphasis on fitness and sports at church. What are you seeing in this area?
Milam: When you look at psychographics on neighborhoods – not just demographics – there’s an interesting thread. Health and wellness are in the top three felt needs in a community.
So for churches wanting to meet their communities at that need, there will be a focus on how to help the community with this.
This looks like more than little league. It’s giving parking lot time to F3 (a fitness program with fitness, fellowship and faith at its core) and Gladiator cross fit.
On top of that, there’s a trend toward pickleball courts everywhere. There’s a lot of downtime in the sport, while players are waiting for their turn, and that becomes an incredible evangelism tool for churches.
Block: Chase Oaks Church in Texas, a long-term client of ours, recently started the Local Good Center, which is a community center with four main programs: wellness, job readiness, education and advocacy.
We’re also working on the main church campus to help activate it by converting an underutilized area in a building into a community coffee bar/café and co-working spaces. And we are designing an event lawn with pickleball courts that will be open to the public.
Chase Oaks Church's Local Good Center in Plano, Texas. Photo courtesy of GFF.
The project will be completed in spring 2024, and we are looking forward to seeing how these spaces and the public outdoor spaces help to activate their campus seven days a week.
Church.Design: Both where and how we work have changed so much over time, even since the pandemic. What affect is that having on community-centric church design leading into 2024?
Block: The abundance of vacant office buildings and big box retail spaces could mean lower long-term lease or purchase costs, and [they] are a fantastic way to reduce waste and demonstrate environmental stewardship.
Milam: Churches have some hybrid workers today. For instance, accounting might need an office, but contractors don’t need them when they come in.
So now we have to create office districts that maybe have private offices and more open places for [hybrid workers and contractors] to land. It’s ‘both/and’ now. We must have a lot of zones in church office spaces.
Wondering what interior design trends are hottest and most efficient for the churches of 2024? Keep an eye on Church.Design for our next report.
