FriSep112009
We would like a minimum of 10 acres and preferable around 15 acres.
That may seem like a lot to many people as churches have traditionally
built on about 2-4 acres. Even our own city hall can’t seem
to understand that churches need more land these days than they used
to.
The reasons are many. First of all we are a much more mobile culture
and it is nothing for families to drive two or even three cars to church
as people come at different times depending on what ministry they are
involved in or what is happening after church. With a young
church – which we have – more and more cars only have one occupant.
So parking lots need to be much, much bigger than they used to be.
Another reason is building code demands. Most buildings like we
are going to build require what is called a dry pond. Especially
with the amount of paved parking space we will have. The city
does not want all the rain run-off water coming from your building roof
and your parking lots to flow directly into their sewers. They
have significant problems caused by this in the city – overloading
sewer systems and backing up in terrible messes.
So we need to capture all our run off water and hold it and then disseminate
it at a certain pace over the following hours/days. So a dry pond
is needed which takes up acreage. Plus the codes demand more green
space around buildings and even parking lots – all requiring more
acreage.
And finally we want to plan for future growth. We don’t know
how big God will grow us so we want to allow for reasonable growth as
the worst thing would be to invest in buildings and then run out of
room on our property and have to sell all and move. That would
be poor stewardship so better to have a little extra up front than too
little.
Our thinking is that a final building for Harvest London
would have a 1,000-1,500 seat auditorium which with up to 3 services (we would really prefer only 2 services) could
house a church of 3,000 people. This would require at least a
50,000-60,000 square foot building.
With enough parking for multiple services with the corresponding overlap
of people coming and going we need minimum 8 acres and more likely about 10 acres just for building and
parking and green space. But should God ever grow us more than
we can even think (remember our theme verse for this campaign?
Ephesians 3:20, ‘Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly
than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within
us) we could need more.