Emerging Ministries within a New Church Building
Having been working or thinking in the Emergent movement for over 4 years now, I keep coming back to a new idea to get groups into facilities and to keep struggling mainlines alive.
That idea is an ecumenical center.
An ecumenical center can exist in a big building or a small office space. The key thing is that the physical space provide several dedicated worship spaces that are technologically updated and separate space for each group to plan within. A really good space would also provide breakout rooms for meetings.
So what would it look like strategically? It would include 10-20 groups that call the space home. The community could leverage the space to seek out newcomers by offering a "mall" approach to worship.
Although each community is distinct, there is opportunity to leverage resources. For example the group could use a common youth minister or share access to common admin. Another example is rotating executive minister to represent the community at meetings that separately the group could not attend.
From a cost perspective, creating a common space reduces the need for fulltime pastors thus reducing the cost to 'plant' new ministries.
Finally, think of the dialogue or cooperation opportunities!! Link