Don’t Let Your Building Become a Lid on Your Growth with Aaron Stanski

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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Aaron Stanski, founder and CEO of Risepointe. For more than 15 years, Aaron and his team have partnered with growing churches and Christian schools across North America, helping them design facilities that remove barriers to growth and create environments where more people can encounter Jesus. In this conversation, Aaron shares some of the most common (and costly!) mistakes churches make during construction projects, along with practical strategies to avoid them.

• Don’t build today’s problem into tomorrow’s building. // One of the most common mistakes Aaron sees is phasing projects incorrectly. Churches may be tempted to build a larger auditorium while postponing essential components like increased parking, children’s space, or student ministry areas, assuming they’ll complete them in a future phase. Unfortunately, that second phase often gets delayed for years, leaving the church with a building that limits growth from day one. Instead of designing around what leaders hope they’ll afford later, Aaron encourages churches to build a complete project that fully supports their next season of ministry, even if that means reducing the overall size of the expansion.
• Create a long-term plan first. // Before drawing floor plans or establishing budgets, churches should develop a long-range vision for their campus. A master plan doesn’t mean building everything immediately. It simply provides clarity about where the church is heading. Once that long-term vision is established, leaders can determine the next right step that fits their current budget and ministry needs. Without that roadmap, churches can solve one immediate problem only to create another one a few years later.
• Short-term savings can become long-term expenses. // Budget pressure may lead churches to remove features or simplify systems in order to reduce construction costs. Aaron cautions that these decisions frequently create much larger operational expenses over the life of the building. Whether it’s HVAC controls, building systems, or maintenance-related decisions, saving a small amount during construction can result in years of higher operating costs. Churches need to evaluate every cost-saving measure through the lens of long-term stewardship rather than immediate affordability.
• Your facility should serve your mission—not become your mission. // Buildings are simply tools for ministry. The goal isn’t completing a construction project; it’s creating environments that help people take steps toward Jesus. Once the ribbon-cutting ceremony is over, the real work begins. Healthy churches continually evaluate guest experience, signage, gathering spaces, children’s environments, and overall functionality. Facilities should continue evolving alongside ministry rather than remaining frozen in time.
• Plan for growth before it arrives. // One surprising reality Aaron sees is that solving a facility constraint often produces immediate attendance growth. Sometimes this comes from new guests, but often it’s because existing attenders begin attending more consistently once parking, seating, or children’s capacity improves. Churches that don’t anticipate this surge can quickly find themselves facing another capacity challenge. Planning for success means considering what happens if the project works exactly as intended.
• Know when to start the conversation. // Aaron recommends churches begin facility planning long before they’re completely full. His general guideline is simple: when your largest service consistently reaches about 80 percent capacity, it’s time to begin exploring your options. That doesn’t mean starting construction immediately, but it does mean beginning strategic conversations, gathering data, and creating a long-term plan before your building becomes a lid on ministry growth.
• Courage is part of every construction project. // Building projects can feel intimidating because they involve significant financial commitments and countless unknowns. Aaron encourages leaders not to let fear drive their decisions. Throughout his career, he’s watched God repeatedly provide for churches that prayerfully stepped forward in faith while remaining focused on the mission rather than the building itself. The goal isn’t constructing impressive facilities—it’s creating spaces that help more people hear the gospel and experience life change.

To learn more about Risepointe and download their free guide, Top 10 Mistakes Churches Make in Construction Projects, visit risepointe.com/unseminary. You can also schedule a free “Ask the Architect” conversation to discuss your church’s facility needs and long-term strategy.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in Listen, I know that today’s episode is going to be particularly helpful to a lot of churches. I am consistently interacting with churches, asking questions about the things that we’re talking about today. It’s a real pain point that I know many of you are leaning in on. You’re going to want to stay tuned right to the the end.

Rich Birch — Excited to have my friend and really an incredible leader and expert in this whole area of developing our facilities and using them to ultimately see people take steps closer to you, really leveraging architecture, interior design, graphic design, branding, all of that stuff.

Rich Birch — Aaron Stanski is the founder and CEO of Risepointe. With 15 plus years of church design, leadership, and project management experience. He works not not only with churches, but also schools and nonprofits in a wide variety of contexts. Excited to have you on the show, Aaron. Welcome back.

Aaron Stanski — Thank you, Rich. Excited to be back, man. This is fun.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good to see you again. And I wanted to get you back on because I feel like, man, this is a conversation that we’ve got to keep in front of people and keep thinking about these things. But for folks that don’t know, give us a picture of Risepointe and maybe particularly the types of churches that you help when you’re like, hey, here’s the kind of churches.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — How do you think about that?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, Risepointe, I mean, we’re we’re an architecture and design firm. So we have architects, interior designers, graphic designers that work directly for us. And we work with churches and Christian schools um all across the U.S. and Canada. And for us, I mean, the typical churches or schools that we work with, are ones that are about growth and are about um what we call like the you know personal ownership of evangelism.

Aaron Stanski — They are churches that are like, hey, it’s not about us. It’s about it’s about people who aren’t at our church yet. It’s not even necessarily about our students and raising up those students, but it’s about families that are considering what would it look like to you know grow up their their child in Christian education. And so yeah, for us, it’s about churches and schools that are growing and wanting to have an impact on the kingdom. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. And I know, you know, our facilities are such a key part of what we do. You know, it’s a critical piece of the puzzle. And, you know, it’s it’s not, it can be an accelerant. It can be, or or it can hold us back. It can be the kind of thing that can help us reach more people, connect more guests, or the kind of thing that hinder us from that.

Rich Birch — And you’ve been doing this for 15 plus years. When a church first comes to you, let’s say they’re wrestling with these issues. What do most leaders think, not realize that they’re walking into?

Aaron Stanski — Oooh.

Rich Birch — Like they’re they’re like, hey, I think we got to like do something here to fix this. What what do they what do they stumble on that’s like, hey, maybe they they’re not aware of?

Aaron Stanski — Oh, interesting. That’s a great question, Rich. I mean, I think most churches, like when they call Risepointe, I mean, they understand they’re talking to an architect. They understand that construction is going to be difficult or pricing and budgeting.

Aaron Stanski — And we’re going to get into a lot of that here in the podcast. I think one of the things that they might not realize when they’re first starting is, you know, just the mental load that it’s going to take to carry a project through to completion.

Rich Birch — that’s good.

Aaron Stanski — I mean, it’s easy to think about, oh, yeah, we’re going to have some extra meetings or, oh, yeah, Risepointe is going to be running some things. But there’s just going to be an extra load when it comes to decisions that have to be made, conversations that have to be made with your congregation, your leaders, your staff.

Aaron Stanski — And that that mental load over time can take a toll and it can certainly add to the stress if you’re not careful. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I don’t know what the stat is, but I remember hearing that there’s some just a giant number of percentage of lead pastors, particularly or senior leaders who transition after…

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …you know, within 18 months of opening a new building because of that mental load.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know, how does that kind of show up in maybe how you interact with them?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Or how do you lead them in a way to try to reduce that mental load?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve heard that I’ve heard that statistic referenced. I haven’t been able to find it actually myself.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Me too.

Aaron Stanski — Fortunately, most the vast majority of executive pastors and senior pastors that work with us, like they don’t quit once it’s over.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — So…but I don’t know if that’s us doing something right or if like just as a culture and as a as churches, we’ve figured out like, hey, we’re going to support them. We’re going to make sure they have the right administrative support.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — We’re going to make sure we you know bring some other people around them. um So I have no, maybe we should add that to like the XP ah survey or something next year, figure that out.

Rich Birch — Survey. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. Yeah. It was funny in that survey you referenced, we, we did, we do survey every year and there was, I was thinking about this morning as we were prepping for that. There’s an interesting dichotomy found in this year’s study where executive pastors had higher confidence that they were going to start a project this year. And I think it was like 80, it’s a high percentage, 80 some odd percentage versus finished projects.

Rich Birch — So there was this like tension of like…

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …yeah, yeah, we got stuff rolling.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Are we going to be able to finish it though?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Is it going to be a problem? Who knows, you know, whether we’ll be able to do that.

Aaron Stanski — Oh, yeah. That’s good. I mean, they’re the prag you know they’re the pragmatists.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — They’re like, we we’re the ones that are going to have to get this done. And, you know, like we got vision stuff flying around here, but we also have like Sunday coming.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — So, yeah, I love that. That’s great.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. So you’ve put together a new resource that I want to make sure people pick up at. You can just get it at Risepointe.com/unseminary. We’ll link to that. That’s Risepointe with an E, but it’s called “Top 10 Mistakes Churches Make in Construction Projects”.

Rich Birch — Now, I don’t want to give it all away but let’s talk about maybe a couple let’s talk about a couple of them.

Aaron Stanski — Sure.

Rich Birch — What a couple top mistakes that you see churches make when they’re thinking about construction projects?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, at some point I should probably write a book on this topic, Rich.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Aaron Stanski — Not because, not because I know the right things to do, but probably cause I’ve, I’ve done most of these things myself.

Rich Birch — Love it

Aaron Stanski — So if you’ve done some of these things, don’t feel bad, just join the club. I think I should have like a punch card or something like people can like punch out if they’ve made some of these mistakes, but…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — One of the things that we discovered is, you know, rarely, you know, when we make one of these mistakes, rarely is it like the first time that it’s ever happened in the history of church construction projects.

Aaron Stanski — Right.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — Like, and rarely is it like some like random, unique one off thing. Most of the time we can look back and say like, oh, yeah. I kind of saw that thing coming. And so hopefully like some of these things will just like help, you know, some churches hedge off like what some of those things are.

Aaron Stanski — But yeah, I mean, I’ll I’ll jump right into the first one. And the first one that we see a lot is churches that try to phase the project. And that’s a, you know, that ends up being, you know, can be a big construction mistake. And one of the biggest that they make. primarily because we think phase two is coming. So we’re just going to phase the project.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — We’re going to get this done and completed. And then three years later, we’re going to go into another campaign or we will have paid off the debt and we’re going to fix the, you know, finish the project. You know, we’ve worked with dozens of churches that spent decades in misaligned buildings because they had this approach, you know?

Rich Birch — Yes. Let’s start with, I think this is great. In fact, I’ve heard you talk about this one and I have parroted this to other people when they’ve talked about their buildings. So first explain, what do you mean by phased?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Clearly pull that apart when you’re, you know, what what is the mistake that we could step into?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, so, ah because there’s two different ways that you can look at phased. Sometimes you can look at the project and go, hey, we’re going to do this first and then this second, and the construction team is going to do phase one, phase two, and then we’re done.

Aaron Stanski — The construction error that I’m talking about is when we say, Hey, um, we’re going to go ahead and build the thousand seat auditorium in phase one, knowing that we don’t have enough room for the kids or parking or students and think, well, we’ll just come back in phase two and add in the parking that we need or the kids space. Um, that’s the, that’s the part that I’m talking about.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And in fact, actually, I know a church that’s in this exact spot. They did not build any kind of youth space. They’ve got a great, you know, the rest of the building, but now they’re like, oh my goodness, we’ve got to go back now and redo this.

Rich Birch — So why is this such a problem? Why not? Isn’t this a great way to playing the devil’s advocate? Isn’t this just a great way to save resources? We can’t do it all now. So isn’t this an a logical thing to do?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, you’re we either spend money building something that we can’t fully occupy, which is poor financial stewardship, or we end up like stuck and it hurts that first time guest experience, right?

Aaron Stanski — Like I tell churches, I mean, look at the drawings that you have on paper and say, yes. Like we can do a decade or more of ministry in that space as it’s designed. Or like you got to fix it. Either fix it, or don’t spend the millions of dollars. I mean, that would be my, that would be my encouragement just to make sure we’re spending the resources the way we, the way we should, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And so how do I know, you know, like, because like I think this is one of those things that, you know, it’s like a, it’s a bit of a counterintuitive idea because I think lots of people actually think this is the way you do it.

Rich Birch — How, what’s the better alternative then? How do we kind of pull that apart.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Double click on that, expand that a bit more to help us think more clearly on that?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I think, you know, what we do want to have is a long term plan, right? Skipping the long term plan, that’s going to be another one of these construction fails if you don’t do it.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — So if we have a long term plan and say, okay, here’s what it’s going to look like on our campus if we continue to grow and we continue to trust God and here’s what, yeah, maybe here’s what phase two and phase three looks like and we’re planning for expansion. That’s great. But when it comes down to like the construction and the budget, if we just like lop something off so that we can move forward with the project, we could be we could be introducing a lid that that we don’t know about yet. Right?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Aaron Stanski — And so I think what we want to do is establish that long term plan and really dial that in first and then scale it back to something and say, OK, this is a great project. It’s going to set us up for the next run. It’s the step of faith God’s calling us to do. And this thing is going to last us 10 years if we if we you know if we get it done correctly.

Rich Birch — Is this, again, I’m not the expert friends at all. So I may not be so thinking about this correctly. So correct my thinking on this. Is a better way… So let’s say we’re thinking about exactly what you’re talking about. We’ve got like a 300 seat auditorium and you know we need we’re thinking we need to triple the whole thing.

Rich Birch — And so we, like you say, go to a thousand seats. And so we know that then in rough terms, we would have to triple the kids ministry space, triple the you know, the parking, triple, the, you know, the crush space, the lobby space, that sort of thing.

Aaron Stanski — Correct.

Rich Birch — You start doing this work and then you’re on the design and you’re like, okay, but we can’t afford all all that. What I’ve seen is churches get all the way through and then they’re like, okay, they literally, they do all the design and then they’re like, okay, well, we can’t afford this.

Rich Birch — They try to scope it and they just cut off the student wing or they cut off whatever.

Aaron Stanski — Right.

Rich Birch — Are we better to think about, okay, We eventually we want to get to triple, but let’s, let’s go from 300 to 600 and scale all those parts up that way and design a plan that then we could come back 10 years from now and maybe add the third. Is that more, is that a better idea?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, it’s a better idea because you’ll build less square footage in the first phase.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — It’ll be more it’ll be more achievable. I think understanding what we can afford and can’t afford at the beginning…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …designing something to the budget, I mean, that’s really critical, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — And so, yeah, I mean, I think if we just get into like, hey, what’s the vision and what would we love to have someday?

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — We’d love to have a thousand seats and stuff. Well, that’s great. um But what can we afford and what’s what’s that right next step? um Because, yeah, we have to scale the kids, the students, the parking, the guests, like all of that stuff with those number of seats.

Rich Birch — Isn’t it interesting? Like we would never approach the building of our own personal house. This is the way that we sometimes do with the church. It’s me speaking with, this is not Aaron, but I, you you know, I do think we forget the, like what’s actually affordable step.

Rich Birch — And we would never do that with our own home. It’s like, sure. I would love a five car garage and like, you know, this amazing, whatever insert, you know, whatever the play space and all this stuff. I, I just kind of, so like, I’m going to renovate the kitchen and I’m going to, you know, make these few changes with what I can actually afford.

Rich Birch — It’s interesting that we do that. Well, you talked about the ah skipping the long-term plan is maybe one of these or something around that.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Let’s talk about that. How do we think that about the long-term plan?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes it’s tempting to just kind of try to solve some immediate space needs as quickly as possible. We’re running hard. Some of us are launching campuses or we’re trying to plant a church down the road and we’re out of seats. And it’s tempting to say like, hey, can we just blow this wall out and add 200 seats? Like it it feels like that’s just the next thing to do.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — you know I’ve talked, you know a lot of pastors, they just want the problem to go away.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — And I get it. And like the thought of, like let’s spend some time like planning out the future, like this feels like a waste of time to them a little bit. And I mean we’ve rushed few you know we’ve rushed through some projects at Risepointe’s only to be ready to start construction and realize, like oh shoot, like the problem shifted, or we’re just going to introduce this other problem. And so, I mean, I think, you know, sitting down, taking the time and it doesn’t have to take a long time.

Aaron Stanski — I mean, ah you know, we’ll come in and do a needs analysis for church in like 30 days.

Aaron Stanski — So like we’re not talking about like, let’s spend a year like blue sky dreaming about all the possibilities. But I am saying let’s spend let’s spend a good amount of time like thinking about it, planning it so that we know we’re not you know causing more problems than we’re fixing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. What’s the tension there on, and you know I picked this up from you in a previous conversation and it it has stuck with me, is that you know all of our buildings are built in kind of a particular kind of cultural moment and a philosophy of ministry moment.

Rich Birch — They’re an expression of that. And but then ministries change, right? And our ministry looks different. How do we balance that reality of like, we’re kind of want to make it work for today, but then we also want to design, have some sort of conception long-term that’s like, Hey, we could imagine a future where things might change a little bit. How do we, how do we work? How do we make that happen?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, you know, some of some of it’s prescribed pretty clearly in the Bible and it hasn’t changed for thousands of years.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — And so like the gathering together of the saints and the singing and taking care of the widows and orphans and the opening up of the word and you know inviting the Holy Spirit to participate. And so some of those things um are just going to stand the test of time.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — I think a little bit what you’re talking about in the expression of it is you know some of the design choices and some of the things that feel relevant or good. I think we have to be careful not to chase trends you know too often in doing some of that. But I would say there’s like a wrong there’s a strong resurgence right now in you know getting back to churches that feel like churches, in walking into spaces that feel holy and not just black boxes and some of those.

Aaron Stanski — And so we want to pay attention to some of those things. And we also, ah yeah, we just don’t want to be too trendy, you know. We don’t want to chase trends, especially with architecture and steel and concrete because those things are expensive to to change.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, that’s interesting. Okay, so what maybe what’s another one in these top 10 mistakes? Again, friends, we want you to drop by and pick it up. But what’s another one of these we could unpack for folks?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. As I was thinking through, you know, some of the mistakes that I’ve even I’ve made, I think sometimes when we’re in construction and budgets are tight and we’re tired, we get to a point where we want to ignore, you know, maybe the long term costs for some of the decisions that we make and we want to sell it out short.

Aaron Stanski — I was talking to a church last week. Right. I mean, they you know, they made a decision that saved them 20 grand on the construction project, but it cost them like 10 times that every five years in ongoing maintenance.

Rich Birch — Wow. Right.

Aaron Stanski — And so you look back and you’re like, well, shoot, why did we do that?

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — You know, why did we try to save, you know, $1,500 per kids, you know, room in trying to like, we’ll just put one thermostat in and make all the rooms hot or all the rooms cold and we’ll just run the air conditioning or run the, run the heater. Like long-term, like you’re spending way more money in those scenarios. So that’s one of the things is like, man, what are, what’s the ongoing operational and maintenance costs of these decisions going to be?

Aaron Stanski — And I mean, sometimes it’s like, oh, this thing looks really cool, or we really want to have that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — And that’d be an awesome feature. And you just have no idea like, oh, man, every week someone’s going to have to go out there like with a machine and like a chemical or something to keep that thing ah functioning or looking the way ah we want it to look.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — So.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Well, and that that I can see, mean I feel like I’ve been in that conversation around even the, you know, the system controls and stuff where we’re like, man, every one of these thermostats we put in is going to cost X amount of dollars. But the long-term, you know, ah flexibility and just, you know, ability to actually reduce the cost, you know, can be amazing if we get more sensors and more stuff in there. But it seems like we’re just pinched.

Rich Birch — Why why does that happen? Is it rush at the, you know, we’re just not slowing down enough when we make all those decisions. We’re not asking the questions. We don’t have the right partner at the table. Help me understand why, why do we end up making these short-term, long-term, you know, trade-offs or maybe we’re saving a dollar today, costing us 10 tomorrow. Where does that actually come from?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I think it comes a little bit from, you know, some decision fatigue definitely happens. And then, you know, maybe not counting all the costs and, you know, potentially like we’ve missed some things or, oh, yeah, we got to get the furniture in here. And the like, and so we’re right up against like what we feel like is the top lid for what we want to spend.

Aaron Stanski — And then you get into some of these things, you’re like, man, we just need to value engineer, you know, some stuff out of this project. And at that point, you know, you’re saving, you know, you’re trying to save pennies. But you’re you’re sacrificing a lot of functionality.

Aaron Stanski — I mean, I think in those situations, we would say we would typically take a longer term approach and say hey before we make that decision, let’s talk about those consequences, and let’s figure out if there’s another area that we might that we that we might want to save some money on. Or another decision that we could make that would still get you to where you want to be financially but isn’t going to cost you you know the the pain every year kind of moving forward.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, that’s, man, I feel like that one, I feel like I can feel that one a little too close to home. I feel like i’ve been in that conversation in the past. Maybe one more. What’s one more top 10 mistake?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And then again, we want people to pick up the whole thing.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Oh, man. There’s a few different ones on here that I could certainly do. You know, one of the one of the mistakes I see and I’ll kind of end with this one. It’s it’s number 10 on the list. But, you know, I called it treating the building as as the mission.

Aaron Stanski — I’ll state the obvious, like yeah and most of the you know all the churches that listen to your podcast would not say like the building is the mission, right? The goal is never simply to complete the building project.

Aaron Stanski — The goal is to create spaces that support discipleship and outreach and worship and community impact, right, when it’s all done. But I think we also subconsciously potentially treat the building as the mission when we get to grand opening and say, man, I’m so glad I’m done. Like that’s it, like mission accomplished.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — Like you’re building your spaces, how you’re inviting guests in. I mean, it’s never done, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — I think, you know, I mean, I think McDonald’s has renovated every restaurant in America at least five times since the last time Burger King has ever done a remodel.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Aaron Stanski — And so they one of those environments is nice and I want to take my seventh grade boys over there after we play laser tag after church or whatever.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — And one of those I don’t.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — And so I mean I think you know trying to figure out how are we going to constantly improve, move signage, change where the guest services spot is, like experiment with kids, check in and move them around and update the carpet and use some accent paint and buy some awesome lobby furniture and um kind of see it as sort of a repetitive thing.

Aaron Stanski — And then i would also say that a lot of churches, like they hit that finish line and, you know, because of the financial stress of it and stuff, they’re like, and we made it. Unfortunately, like if you continue to grow, you’re going to have to do another project at some point…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — …or you’re going to want to launch a multi-site. And if you’re still carrying the debt of that first project, you’re not going to have the finances to do it. And so I think it’s also like saying, hey, you know, this building wasn’t the end, and we’re going to aggressively pay down the debt.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — We’re going to aggressively um open the doors to our community and let as many people use it as we can. And so, ah so yeah, that’d be one of the, one of the end ones.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, I can see that. and And I think it’s great. This part of why I love you is like, I feel like there’s a lot of folks that are in your seat that do what you do for a living, who do see the building as the mission. Even the way they talk about it, they’re like, hey, this is the most important thing. But actually, it’s just a tool to serve, which is part of why I love Risepointe, love your team, love love what you’re doing.

Rich Birch — Talk to us about, I think the idea there, I’ve also experienced this, I’ve seen churches with this where they build the building and then I literally, close to a church where they built a new campus and then that campus grew by 50% in the first 10 weeks after they launched and then they were scrambling. They were like, oh my goodness, now we’ve got to like do the next thing.

Rich Birch — How do we how do we plan for this one? Assuming like it might actually work like people will show up.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know how do we how do we plan on the front end thinking about, you know, beyond okay so that we get the thing open and then a bunch of new people show up.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, and and not just thinking that if you build it, they’ll somehow magically come, right?

Rich Birch — Right, that’s the tension of those two. Yes, for sure.

Aaron Stanski — Because that’s the tension of those two things.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Aaron Stanski — So I mean, I think having the right, you know, strategic design partner or like a partner to walk alongside you in some of that, whether that’s like someone, you know, on the church growth ah side of the equation…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — …that can speak into some of that strategy or the multisite strategy side of the equation, I mean, those are going to be very important voices.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — you know Like you mentioned, we want your facility to serve your mission, not ah be a lid. ah Sometimes when we take the lid off, we open, we solve a problem, right? Uh, and that’s kind of stating the obvious.

Aaron Stanski — But we’ve worked with churches where, you know, they’re running three or four services, you know, they’re maxed out. And so, yeah, we go and we double the number of seats. We open a bunch of things. And instead of coming once every six weeks, everyone starts coming once every three weeks because there’s more parking spots and more seats.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — And so that’s when you get that immediate 50%, you know, bump. And it’s not from, you know, reaching more people necessarily. It’s it’s literally just your attendance pattern changing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — So when you’re sitting down and having these conversations, I think it’s really important that you look at some of those trends. You’re looking at your attendance data, and you’re, you know, you’re sort of measuring, you know, what do we think this thing’s going to do?

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. That’s fantastic. I love I love this. So we’ve got, you know, there’s a multiple, there’s other ones that we want people to check out. Again, we’ll put a link in the show notes, but it’s just Risepointe.com/unseminary. You can pick that up. There are “Top 10 Mistakes Churches Make in Construction Projects” from the mouth of someone who sees a lot of these, we don’t want people to make these mistakes.

Rich Birch — How early in the process should a church reach out to you? So my my sense is that we have churches reaching out too late in the process. But how early, like if we start thinking, hmm, you know, we’re filling, you know, things are filling up. We’re thinking about, we got to fix the kids ministry space. How when in that process should they say, hey, I got to talk to Aaron and the team at Risepointe?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think like if you talk to any salesperson in the, you know, on the planet, they’ll tell you like, well, you got to talk to me right away.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — The sooner, the better, like the sooner you’re planning to buy a car or the sooner you should call me.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Aaron Stanski — I mean, I think ah having the conversation and the right strategic triggers to know when you need to start like the design process and the construction process, that’s the key.

Aaron Stanski — So, you know, if you call Risepointe, you’re not, you know, we’re not starting architecture. We’re not selling you services or anything like that. So I think bringing bringing either us in or another trusted expert, you know we say when you reach 80% capacity at your largest service, you need to have the conversation started.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — You know, you can be at 80% capacity at your largest service and be launching your first, second service, right? And that’s very different than adding your fourth or fifth on a Saturday or something like that. But in general, we we say that that’s usually that tipping point…

Rich Birch — That’s good trigger.

Aaron Stanski — …where we want to at least say, what is the strategy? What is the plan? What are the triggers so that the facility itself doesn’t become a lid to our growth?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s I like that’s a really good I like a good tripwire like that. I think there’s a lot of churches that are at that spot. And actually, you can go on the Risepointe website and actually schedule like an initial call, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You can drop by there. Why don’t you to tell us a little bit about that? What am I committing to? If I click the schedule to call button, what what does that mean?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, we’ve got a little “Ask the Architect” series and stuff that’s that’s rolling as well. But it basically just means you get to talk to someone who’s a church guy or gal first, but who’s an architect or a design professional. And they just want to meet you and hear a little bit about like your church and your story and where are you at and what are some of the questions that you have? What are some of the things that you’re wrestling with?

Aaron Stanski — A lot of times we’re pulling up examples from other churches and kind of like walking you through some ideas or pointing you in a direction that might be helpful. But yeah, on that call, we really want to get into what’s what’s going on at your church specifically. What are some of the concerns? What are some of the things that you’re seeing or not seeing? And sometimes there’s some a homework assignment coming out of it.

Aaron Stanski — Like, right. Hey, let’s go get your attendance data. Let’s take a look at some of these things. Let’s try to figure out what’s going on. Let’s have someone take a picture in the parking lot because you’re never in the parking lot on a Sunday morning.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — You’re backstage or whatever. And ah but, yeah, it’s a great first step in you know trying to figure out you know what you need to do with your facility.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. I’ve had, you know, multiple friends who have done that. I just be so thankful for your team’s interaction with them and just some helpful guidance in that, even that initial call to be like, hey, here’s a couple of things. Here’s a couple questions that they would ask that have you think about that, Yeah, it’s not like ah we’re committing to anything today. It’s necessarily a conversation to get the ball rolling. I think that could be super helpful.

Rich Birch — Well, friends, again, we want to send you to Risepointe.com/unseminary to pick up a copy of this 10 Mistakes. I think it’s a super helpful resource that you could even just kick around with your leadership team. Hey, let’s talk about these ones. Could be great. Any kind of final words, just as we wrap up today’s episode, we want to make sure that people hear about when we’re thinking about construction projects.

Aaron Stanski — You know, I would, you know, I’d say construction is ah scary and it can be expensive and it’s not what most of us went to school to do. So I would just say, like, take courage.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — Like man, the number of times that we’ve seen the Lord like just show up in unbelievable ways ah when His churches stepped out in faith and said, hey, like we’re going to you know we’re going to go take something on. And so I would just say like have courage. Do not be afraid. And you know, like, yeah, make it, you know, it’s not about the building, right? It’s about it’s about lost people and and sharing the gospel.

Aaron Stanski — And so, um yeah, if my mistakes can help you out in any way, I would love to love to share those with you.

Rich Birch — I love it. So good. Well, Aaron, this is a great, great conversation today. Appreciate you coming back on and and helping us think through some of these issues. Again, we want to send people to Risepointewithane.com to schedule that call or, you know, pick up the mistakes. Anywhere else we want to send them online to track with you or with your firm?

Aaron Stanski — Nah, man, that’s fine. I mean, they can find us on socials and stuff like that if they want to see like nerdy pictures of like church construction being built and like…

Rich Birch — Mid build guys walking around…

Aaron Stanski — …mid-build stuff, concrete getting poured or whatever.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — But but no, it’d be great.

Rich Birch — Guys in hard hats, people in hard hats walking around…

Aaron Stanski — Yes. Yes.

Rich Birch — …you know, half built buildings. That’s good. Thanks so much, Aaron. Appreciate you, that sir. Thanks for coming on today.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, thanks, Rich. Bye.