Rick Warren, Senior Pastor of the Saddleback Church, points to six physical factors about church buildings that affect a worship gathering. I found Rick's factors interesting... but I'd also like to hear your thoughts, pro or con, regarding these six factors.Here's a summary of the six physical factors that Rick believes affect any worship gathering:
1. Lighting
Lighting has a profound effect on people’s moods. Inadequate lighting dampens the spirit of a worship gathering. Shadows across a speaker’s face reduce the impact of any message.
2. Sound It doesn’t matter how persuasive the message is if people can’t hear it in a pleasing manner. A tinny, fuzzy sound system can undermine the most gifted musician and incapacitate the most profound preacher. And nothing can destroy a holy moment faster than a loud blast of feedback!
3. Seating Both the comfort and the arrangement of your seating dramatically affect the mood of any worship gathering. The mind can only absorb what the seat can endure! Uncomfortable seating is a distraction that the Devil loves to use.
4. Temperature The temperature can destroy the best planned worship gathering in a matter of minutes! When people are too hot or too cold they simply stop participating in an assembly. They mentally check-out and start hoping for everything to end quickly.
5. Clean, Safe Nurseries If you want to reach young families, you’ve got to have sanitized and safe nurseries. There should be no mop-buckets in the corners and the toys should be cleaned each week.
6. Clean Restrooms Visitors may forget the sermon, but the memory of a foul smelling restroom lingers on… and on … and on! You can tell a lot about a church's desire for excellence by checking out the quality of the restrooms.
Without question environment and atmospherics influence people’s behavior. But it is also worth noting that the quality of environment needed for a church to effectively reach someone is largely dependent on the average quality of life to which that person is accustomed.
In Third World countries, people rarely are bothered by the quality of a sound system, and just having one is impressive enough. In Africa, hot temperatures are expected. In Peru, strange restroom smells were considered normal. In these circumstances, less than ideal environments did not affect the impact of ministry because they were expected.
It comes down to the expectations of the people you want to reach. Although the United States has its share of poor areas, most U.S. churches are trying to reach people with high expectations compared to the rest of the world. And if your church is trying to reach people who are accustomed to clean restrooms, there is a good chance that anything less than clean will turn them off.
The bottom line is: know who you are trying to reach and create an environment one step above their expectations.
