Heritage Buildings and Community Development - Making the church building fit for purpose for the 21st Century
HBCDO - Church Buildings for the 21st century - pdf
Most people in the 21st Century want various improvements to their church buildings. These can be categorised into four groups:
- Comfort and facilities
- Adaptable and Versatile Spaces
- Sustainability
- Contemporary, Relevance, Openness
The starting point is for the Church members to provide a warm, non threatening welcome to everyone.
When it comes to the church buildings, experience shows that many people want some or all of the following. Given the constraints of 'Heritage Buildings' not all of these will be possible, sometimes it will be necessary to compromise or accept that what we want for the church building will be an unacceptable intervention into the historic fabric. However this is not an excuse not to try!
Comfort and Facilities
- To be welcoming, warm and comfortable, with some more intimate space for private prayer
- To have legally compliant and decent lavatories, well equipped kitchens and sufficient storage space
- To have facilities for people of all ages, specifically babies, children and young people.
Adaptable and Versatile
- To have sufficient space for people to meet throughout the week (not just before and after services), with the possibility of serving refreshments
- To have a worship space that is fit for purpose and meets the requirements of different worship styles and contemporary liturgies e.g. space for drama, bands and worshipping in the round?
- To be adaptable for a wide range of uses and activities - not just worship
Sustainable
- To utilise modern technology
- To be energy efficient and environmentally sensitive
- To meet the statutory requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act
- To be straightforward to look after with minimum costs for maintenance and repairs
Contemporary, Relevance, Openness
- To be up to date, relevant and accessible to hearts and minds as well as bodies
- To be understandable to people who do not know very much about Christianity or the Church
- To be open seven days a week
- To have a building that is connected to the wider community and does not appear to be just for the 'members'
- To be welcoming from the outside through to the inside
- To be less threatening, foreboding and hierarchical
- To speak of today and tomorrow, not so much of 'yesterday'
Some of these improvements are sensible if our church buildings and their environments are to successfully contribute to the Church community's focus on the three Diocesan Priorities:
- The deepening of our prayer
- The renewal of our public worship
- The equipping of people to share their faith
