Church Building Guidelines
Provides Tips for Church Construction
Any
church building project needs some general guidelines,
or rules of thumb, to give a church a beginning point for
planning. A church building consultant can help your
church refine it's needs from these general tips. The
following church building guidelines will help you get
started and provide both a framework and check and balance
for work done by architects or builders.
Church Building Tips Guide...
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In
general you should estimate approximately 1 acre per hundred
people to allow for a church building, parking, green space and waste
water management. Metro locations with offsite parking
options will be much higher.
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Typically, churches can afford to build for 2.5-3 times
their current average attendance. A church of a 100,
might reasonably expect to build for 250-300.
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Estimate parking to be approximately 110 cars to the acre if
you have to park everyone on your church building site.
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Your church building budget will tell you what you can
afford to build (how big of project), your needs analysis
will tell you how that project is laid out.
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Plan on an average of 1 parking space for every 2.5 people
on campus at one time. This will probably be less than the
the city or county require in parking for your church
building project, but it will more accurately
reflects actual need.
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Sanctuary seating ranges from 10 -15 square feet per person,
depending on layout, seating pattern, and total size of the
sanctuary.
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Vestibule/Lobby/Narthex in the main church building should optimally be about 2 square
feet per person seated in the worship center. Note: if you
are running multiple services, you may want to increase this
to facilitate the "shift change".
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Classrooms range from 12 to 35 square feet per person in the
room, depending on the age group using the space.
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Almost no church is built with too much storage space.
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A
high school size basketball court is 50x84 feet. Add some
minimal space around the edge of the court, restrooms, etc
and you are looking at a minimum building of 7,500-8,000
square feet.
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Individual church offices should be a minimum of 120 square feet.
Pastors offices should be a minimum of 150 square feet and a
recommended size of 300 square feet.
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Round tables in the fellowship hall reduce seating capacity
by 20% or more. 12 square feet per person for square tables
and 15 for round.
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Overall, a church building with dedicated spaces for sanctuary,
fellowship, education, administration and multiuse space may
require from 30-55 square feet of space per person depending
on programs, ministries and other factors.
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For preliminary planning purposes, use $125/sf for the
estimated project cost for your church building
project. This assumes nominal site work and
landscaping, and an area with reasonable costs for
construction.
Please note that the above are just general guidelines, tips
if you will, to help get your planning into the "ballpark".
Considerable thought and research must be put into this to
determine what is the right solution for your church.
A church building consultant can
help your church properly apply these guidelines to its
church building program.
More Church
Building Guidelines
For even more church building
guidelines, get the eBook, "Before You Build". Chapter
10 of this book is entirely dedicated to providing more
church building guidelines.
View the Table of Contents or Download the eBook. |