Bill Couchenour

I was interested to find out that they utilize bamboo scaffolding for construction in Hong Kong. It struck me as odd that they even use it for skyscrapers. As it turns out, bamboo is incredibly strong. In Oxford studies from the 1920’s they proved bamboo to be similar in strength to steel. Add to that the fact that bamboo plentiful, cheap, renewable and lightweight and it’s no wonder it’s used throughout Asia.

A new friend, Chris Weinand, used the metaphor bamboo scaffolding recently in a way that captured my attention: We need to use bamboo scaffolding to build our church structures.

Think about the life cycle of a church. A church typically begins with a vibrant, compelling story. The atmosphere is electric. There is excitement and sacrifice. People seek God’s wisdom and guidance through prayer and the scriptures. As the church grows there’s a need for the scaffolding of procedures, practices and processes. Unfortunately, somewhere down the road it starts to become about the procedures, practices and processes and not the ministry. If the story is not redeemed and retold, the scaffolding strangles the structure. The challenge for most churches is that their scaffolding is made of steel and becomes undistinguishable once it’s intertwined with the structure. That makes it very painful for churches when they realize they need to change the scaffolding to be true to the story. More often than not they don’t change, they slowly pass away.

But what if we built our procedures, practices and processes out of bamboo? What if we saw them as temporary from the beginning? Means to an end.

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4th of July Surprises from the NACBA in DC

Last week I (along with my brother, Jim) had the privilege of speaking at the 55th National Conference for the National Association of Church Business Administrators (NACBA). The title of our session was (not so surprisingly) “Developing Compelling Ministry Facilities.” The conference was being held over the 4th of July weekend to take advantage of being in Washington DC for Independence Day. The NACBA always does a wonderful job administrating their conferences at fantastic places so we were excited to be included.

We had a good feel for our session but there were a few surprises:

- Given our time slot of 2:45 to 4:30 on the afternoon on the 4th of July, Jim and I wondered if we’d be the only two in the room. Yet nearly 60 showed up on Independence Day – in the Nation’s Capitol! It just goes to show that church business administrators are committed to learning for certification, needed information for an impending expansion project, or both.

- During the course of our seminar I asked how many people were suffering with facilities that weren’t well designed for their ministry needs. I thought there would be a few, maybe even 25%. However, I did not expect that nearly everyone would respond, some with emotion, and I didn’t notice anyone that didn’t raise their hand. We tend to quantify the cost of buildings in dollars and cents but there can be an even greater cost when the facilities do not match the ministry.

- After spending the entire 1 hour and 45 minutes together, I was surprised by how many people wanted to spend more time together discussing the subject. We spent another half hour together with some of the attendees. These people were engaged!

- The final surprise was more of a reminder since I had known it before. I knew as business administrators the nuts and bolts of an expansion project would resonate with them. You would expect subjects like project delivery methods, committee structures, financial guidelines, timelines, etc to be a natural for them – it’s what they deal with every day. What you might not expect is that the ministry perspective resonates with them even more. They want facilities that are energy efficient and easy to manage but they get the fact that’s worthless if the facility isn’t impacting ministry.

If you are a business administrator and aren’t a NACBA member, we highly recommend them. If you are a facilities manager, here’s another great organization: National Association of Church Facilities Managers (NACFM).

Always remember: It’s never about the buildings – it’s about the ministry!

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