Heimsath Architect’s team members are now in week 4 of self-isolation. Like many of you, our communications with the outside are mostly through the various conferences call applications (Go to Meeting, Zoom, Skype). It has been working well, though I find that looking all the faces in boxes invariably gets the Brady Bunch theme song stuck in my head. For the past 20 years, we have done our ... Read More
As a leader, the last thing you want is to find yourself in the middle of a complex task you aren’t sure you can do well. This fear is compounded if you’ve been a part of a failed project (of any kind) in the past. How do you get past the past, and put down any old baggage from past failures? Better yet, how do you learn from the past so that you can be calm during change and resolve all types of ... Read More
Leaders are always ahead of the game in the process of change. They have to be. They came up with the idea, or quickly embraced it. Everyone else is at least one step behind. That’s just the way it works. However, growing building program support for church transitions requires everyone, or at least a large number of the congregation to also get on board. Inevitably, there will be people who miss ... Read More
Crafting Mission and Vision Statements can be excruciating. Most people know that their congregation should have them, but they aren’t sure why. It feels a bit foreign, as though “business-speak” has crept into the vocabulary of faith. And connecting building projects to mission statements and vision statements may seem to be totally irrelevant. But in reality these connections are important in ... Read More
Every change, no matter how welcome, causes stress because making a change means letting go of something familiar. That is a loss, and when there is loss there is mourning. Anyone handling church conflict and change should also anticipate the importance of mourning for individuals and for groups. All of us deal with low levels of change/loss/mourning on a daily basis and manage to find our way ... Read More
Leaders need support during times of change, so do congregations. It’s tough to get through any kind of change, even a good one like a building project, with absolute trust in the process. New parents, kids off to college, brides and grooms all have moments of doubt, if not outright fear. Your congregation members will have doubts too, beginning the second you say the words, “building project” ... Read More
We’re excited to welcome guest blogger Laura Lincoln, an expert in managing church change. Laura will be contributing a series of guest blogs over the next several weeks dealing with early issues of conflict in planning for a major building program. You know your congregation needs to make changes. Your worship space is too small or inflexible. There’s no place for staff or volunteers to work. A ... Read More
When a congregation or non-profit group is considering a building program of any size, it’s easy to overlook a range of issues that aren’t directly part of construction, but will likely occur before, during, and even after. These frustrating details have to do with all the disruptions caused by construction activity. Where will groups meet? Will they need help to move out or move in? Who will ... Read More
How did an unrealized design concept for an urban cathedral eventually give rise to a desert chapel? Some architectural ideas take a long time to develop, but this one really took some interesting twists and turns. This fall, I visited the Never Built: Los Angeles show at the A+D Architecture & Design museum in Los Angeles. I was surprised to discover an early, though vastly different, ... Read More
The national journal, Faith & Form, published Ben Heimsath's article "A Shared Process of Creation." He wrote about the architectural design process as a collaborative venture. A design created in a truly shared process has the potential to express a unique sense of spirituality. The journal does not post on-line, so the editor has given us permission to copy the published article for ... Read More
