Making Room to Make Disciples - Bradley D. Oaster

Making Room to Make Disciples (eBook)

A Pastor's Guide to Land Acquisition and Facility Development

Bradley D. Oaster (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
252 Seiten
Yorkshire Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-947825-99-4 (ISBN)

Everything you ever wanted to know about land acquisition, building design, fi nance, fund raising, and working with builders - but didn't know who to ask.

Making Room to Make Disciples provides answers to help you lead your people and your church to success. After designing and building churches for more than a decade, Brad Oaster began studying secular business plans in 1990 when his friend and mentor, Steve Wozniak (co founder of Apple Computer) taught Brad the philosophy and principles behind the development of Apple and its insanely great products. Brad spent several years traveling with "e;Woz"e; to Mac Academy, Apple Expo's and other Apple events with the goal of transferring the creative spirit at Apple to Christian ministries though out the world. Brad used that information to build his own "e;insanely great"e; company into the largest church design and development firm on the west coast. And he did that in just four years! Brad then shared Apple's strategies with Christian ministries, first in California and later throughout the nation, and helped those ministries go on to become some of the fastest growing churches in America. Today, OASTER works with bible based, Christian ministries in the development of fi ve-year ministry plans and facility designs that when combined, create a road map that connects todays reality with tomorrows potential. Every church that works with OASTER in the development of a ministry plan and new or updated facilities, and implements the plan, can expect to triple in size within the five-year period.

What Seminary Doesn’t Teach You

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a book that could fill in the gap between what you learned in seminary and what you need to know in order to succeed in ministry? Perhaps someday, someone will write that book. Until then, this book will fill in many of the missing pieces of what is no doubt a very complicated puzzle.

When I started building churches as a young man in 1980, I never questioned the church leaders as to what they wanted to build or why they were building it. Frankly, being married before I was twenty and with kids coming along at regular intervals, I was glad to have a job. If a church was willing to hire me and pay me to build a new facility for them, then I was thankful for the opportunity and eager to get started. Whether or not this was the right facility at the right time for the church’s growing ministry never crossed my mind.

I noticed early on that when meeting with the architects during the design phase, most meetings were with church committee members and I really didn’t see the senior pastor very often. Now and then, a pastor would show up when it came time to discuss the worship center layout, but even then, the pastor didn’t have a lot to say. I would say that 90 percent or more of the new facility design was left up to the architect and a few committee members, but there were exceptions.

During the mid 1980s, I had the opportunity to work with two dynamic churches, both located in San Jose, California. The leadership that managed these churches did not seem to “play by the rulebook” that defines the title and job description for all the committees you will need when looking to expand facilities. In fact, they had no committees. Not one! The staff knew exactly what type of tool (facility) they needed to reach the lost and develop Christ-like disciples. While most churches delegated the design and construction process to volunteers, these two churches ran the entire process the way a master chef would layout his kitchen. They knew exactly what they wanted, how to lay it out, what to budget for furniture, fixtures, and equipment (FF&E), what ministries and programs the space would be designed to facilitate, and how many times each week the space could be transformed for other purposes. This made my job of managing the design process much easier because there was never any question as to who made the decisions and what they expected from the design team and the end product.

My job, when working with committees of lay members who have no experience whatsoever in designing church facilities, often took on the role of counselor and peacemaker. I have been in more than one design meeting when tempers flared as one committee member argued with another over different ideas of how a space should be designed. In those cases, the person that was most out of control usually won.

Back in the eighties, it really did not matter much to me if the church turned everything over to committees or if the church staff ran the program. While I got no joy out of all night sessions with the stained glass, color selection committee, that was my job, and as long as they paid their bills, everything was good. It wasn’t until much later that the difference between the two approaches became apparent to me. In 1990, I entered into my second decade of church development and I noticed that I really had two different types of churches I worked with. Now you might think traditional and contemporary, charismatic and not so charismatic, those that pay their bills and those that don’t, but that really was not it. The difference seemed to be that some of the pastors treat their position simply as a job. They were seminary trained professionals, part of a large denomination that had been around for hundreds of years, got a nice pay check with additional benefits, answered to some denominational authority, and, for the most part, played it safe. If the denominations rulebook says that this is how you expand facilities, then it is as much a part of the gospel as the Bible itself. Many of these pastors had the goal of putting in their thirty or so years, retire, and move off to “Shady Acres” or some denominational retirement home in Florida and play checkers until they die.

The grand champion of such examples would have to be Ygnacio Valley Presbyterian Church that I designed and built in Walnut Creek, California, in 1985. During the design process, I asked the pastor how many seats he would like to have in the new auditorium. He answered without hesitation, one hundred and seventy five. This is certainly not a church that is going to light the world on fire, but perhaps a nice little neighborhood church. Then I asked the pastor how many adults were in the service last Sunday? His answer, one hundred and seventy five! So I asked him about multiple services and he said he had no intention of going to more than one service. He went on to explain that being the pastor of that church required him to devote all his effort and energy on keeping the sheep that are already in the pen from killing each other, and that adding new sheep was not in his job description! When I asked him what would happen if one lost soul happened to wander into the Sunday service, he answered by saying he would deal with that problem if and when it happens. Wow, a lost soul wanders into your church looking for God and you see that as a problem! Now there is a church that doesn’t need one hundred and seventy-six seats.

The two dynamic churches in San Jose, California, were South Hills Community Church, pastored by Peter Wilkes, and Jubilee Christian Center, pastored by Dick Bernal. While the pastor in Walnut Creek saw his career as just a job to deal with, these pastors saw their position as an awesome responsibility and opportunity to partner with almighty God and play a key role in what God wants to do in San Jose and the Bay Area. Both Peter and Dick took on the role of pastor as a second career, having both worked in the secular world for many years. Peter had been a university professor while Dick was previously an ironworker. When they came into ministry, they brought secular business knowledge and practical experience with them.

What stood out to me was seeing how quickly these two churches were growing. I built a 1,200-seat worship facility for South Hills in 1986 and watched the church quickly go to two services, then three, and eventually added a fourth on Saturday night. I got a front row seat as Kim and I joined the church in 1984. Peter’s focus was on reaching the lost and training people to be Christ-like. I had more than one conversation about the need to maintain minimum city landscape requirements, as Peter wanted to tear out landscaping in order to add more parking for visitors (which was greatly needed). I built another facility for them in the early nineties for the children and youth ministries and watched as South Hills completely outgrew their campus. Peter was very intentional about nurturing and training talented young pastors from within the church and many of these pastors went on to start daughter churches in the communities around San Jose.

South Hills was the first church I developed where the daycare center made enough money to cover the mortgage on the entire campus! This established a model that I have duplicated all across the country. It is amazing what you can build when someone else is willing to pay for it!

Like South Hills, Jubilee Christian Center was a disciple-making factory. It seemed as though I could never keep up with the attendance figures as they changed dramatically from one month to the next. I worked with George, Jubilee’s business administrator, for months on a particular size worship facility only to see the church outgrow the design before we finished it. Jubilee was leasing buildings in an industrial park on the northern most part of San Jose. Eventually, the decision was made to buy land and build a mega church facility that might contain Jubilee’s growth for at least a while.

South Hills Community Church and Jubilee Christian Center were the most successful churches in the San Francisco Bay Area during that time period. Both churches had put in the time and effort to develop long range plans in order to fulfill the calling God had placed on the ministries. God had blessed both ministries with talented and driven pastors who had substantial, previous experience in the secular business world and who were not afraid to incorporate business strategies into ministry applications. Seminaries fail to teach business strategies, and yet, they are so vital to the future success of your Christian ministries.

In 1987, I did not know what a strategic plan was; much less, know how to lead a church through the process of developing such a plan. I was very impressed with the success and growth I saw at Jubilee and South Hills and knew that other churches would benefit from having a plan like theirs. Fortunately, God had placed me in a neighborhood where most of the people were smarter than me. With the birth of Silicon Valley and the population of successful entrepreneurs exploding, many of my neighbors were adding tennis courts or helicopter pads to their homes. I knew most of them relied on venture capital to start their companies, and to get venture capital you need a business plan. One neighbor, Bill Elder, had started Genus Semi Conductor with only nine dollars and grew it quickly into a multimillion-dollar operation. When the company went public, Bill became a very wealthy guy. I remember he got a Boxer puppy and named the little guy IPO, as in Initial Public Offering, when Genus went public. I...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	10.11.2017
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften
ISBN-10	1-947825-99-2 / 1947825992
ISBN-13	978-1-947825-99-4 / 9781947825994

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