By: John Scott (Scott-Long)
I must say my building committee at my church is the dream team. Check this out: We have been blessed with three architects, two commercial real estate brokers, two developers, two
lawyers, a landscape architect, two folks who run real estate portfolios, a property management guru, a residential real estate expert, a banker, three other business/political folks, and a builder.
Our church believes that our work is worship and our committee uses our career work talent for the church. This committee is super dedicated – so much so that significant parts of members workdays are spent putting our project together.
It is no surprise that over half our group is either a business owner or retired so we have flexibility in our schedule. We are also willing and able to put the time in during work hours and treat the church project just like any other deal we have. So we don’t get as much golf in these days …..oh well.
Our committee members are used to putting together major real estate deals with complex issues for their paying jobs. As a result, we have leveraged each of their core competencies and been able to take on much more than a typical church project. Now these guys (and gals) have put their expertise to work planning a project that has awesome potential for Kingdom work.
Oh, and guess what? We are on our third year and haven’t had a night meeting yet!
Can this happen at every church? Why not? Real estate development is a major part of our economy. These folks go to church. Invite them to serve and put them to work! That is what they love to do! They are almost always entrepreneurial and have time to serve.
Lessons learned: one way to set up a high performing building committee is recruit experts that have time to work.
PS: With all this talent are we doing the work “in house”? No, we have hired an outside broker, architect, civil engineer, land use attorney, traffic engineer, fundraising and banking consultants, etc.
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