Appropriate Space: One Pastor’s Priority

Written by Tim Maynard

 When I was a new pastor, I heard two statements in a church growth conference—statements that have followed me for more than 20 years of ministry.

• The first was that you do not grow a church in 40 hours a week.
• The second, received by those in attendance with laughter, penetrated my thinking in a profound way. The leader paraphrased church growth consultant Lyle Schaller: “The most important rooms in the church are the ladies rest rooms and preschool classrooms.”

While the significance of that growth axiom did not immediately change my growth strategy (at the time our church was in the middle of building a new sanctuary), it has had immense effect in the intervening years. For during those years our family contributed two to the preschool roll, and the young families we were attracting tended to bring their babies and preschoolers with them!

A Preschool Dilemma
Soon our preschool department, staffed by two kindly ladies who rocked the babies in the basement while the church worshiped, was overrun with active two-, three- and four-year-olds. The children had no place to go and the ladies, no place to hide! It was obvious that some attention had to be given to our preschool dilemma.

In an effort to salvage the situation, my wife volunteered to give leadership to our Preschool Sunday School ministry. She had attended numerous conferences by the Kentucky Baptist Convention and came back with fresh ideas and a concept called learning centers.

I quickly learned three things:

• Preschoolers are not to be treated as miniature adults.
• Preschoolers are not to be seated around tables with their hands folded while they listen to their teacher tell Bible stories.
• People who have taught preschool the same way for a long time do not take kindly to change.

Our preschoolers needed space to roam, to crawl, to play, to roll balls, and to explore with their hands and feet as well as with their eyes and ears.

• Our preschool teachers needed to get out of the rocking chairs and onto the floor to meet the preschoolers on their level.
• Posters needed to be placed not at adult eye level but where the children could see them.
• Tables and chairs, which took up too much space, were banished to the Children’s Sunday School Department. Revolution had begun!

The difference these changes made was phenomenal, primarily in two areas.

• Some people began to realize for the first time that preschoolers could and should be taught spiritual concepts in Sunday School.
• And the appreciation expressed by the people who brought their children to a preschool ministry where they loved to stay was tremendous.

Schaller’s observation about preschool rooms was correct. When you pay attention to the preschool area, other areas reap the benefit as well. Our church began to grow. Visiting parents came back after their first visit, and they left their children in the preschool department. Soon it was necessary to double and finally triple the space allocated to Preschool Sunday School.

A New Place to Grow
And then we moved to a church in Florida. This move placed us in a church with a wonderfully designed educational building that provided plenty of Sunday School space for every age, including a well-equipped preschool area. No more problems there! Until we began to grow, that is.

For us, being part of a rapidly growing community meant being in the midst of a rapidly growing young adult population. A study of our demographics indicated that 57 percent of our community was comprised of 35-year-old couples with 2.4 children per couple. Many of those 2.4 children were preschoolers.

And so they came. And with the flood of preschoolers, two problems emerged.

• Growth was so rapid that we found ourselves in desperate need of competent, visionary leaders to bring structure and direction to the ministry. God answered our cry for help by sending Ginna Ashby to serve as our preschool minister.
• Ginna’s leadership was strong and masterful, but she called our attention to an area we really didn’t want to see…we needed more space. We could not continue to crowd preschoolers into areas that were much too small.

The lessons I had learned years before in a small rural congregation in Kentucky had to be relearned in Florida. We began to see the early stages of decline in our preschool attendance because of lack of space. Parents refused to place their children in rooms that were already overrun by preschoolers.

The Ultimate Sacrifice
Schaller’s words returned to haunt me once again: We had to pay attention to the space given to preschoolers, or we would not be able to maintain the momentum of growth.

A study committee suggested that the entire bottom floor of our educational building he devoted to preschool use. That would be a serviceable solution, at least until a new facility could be planned and built. Doing this would require some changes on the part of the Children’s Sunday School and some Adult Sunday School classes. Now every hurdle was handled except one.

Nestled in the corner of the bottom floor of the educational building were the offices of four staff members and three secretaries. Among the offices that needed to be surrendered to make the plan work was my office! The plan was to relocate the offices into portable buildings for an indefinite period of time. Earlier in my life I had worked in a portable office, and I never cared to go back!

The rest of our staff seemed excited about the move and were ready to go. But I had one thing they didn’t: a really nice office. Plush carpet, an idyllic view over a wooded area and a private rest room combined with the luxury of space made it the office to be coveted.

As senior pastor, I had the final say about the transition. As I write this article, looking out the small trailer window of my new office, I can say without reservation that making preschool space a priority was the right thing to do. If we value ministry to young families, we must care for the youngest members of those households, and that care often translates into making space available.

In one of his letters, the apostle John says we are to love, not just in words, but in deeds and in truth (I John 3:18). Our staff demonstrated love for our preschoolers by their willingness to be personally inconvenienced. Our church has given priority to preschoolers and their families by voting to build a multipurpose facility that includes an 18,000-square-foot preschool area.

Lyle Schaller was right: the sanctuary is not the most important space in the church…learning that truth has been my most important lesson in growing a church.

Tim Maynard is senior pastor, Fruit Cove Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Florida. 

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