I went to a bunch of churches when I was younger, and I think the types of locations you listed are actually in a fairly typical order for starting a new church:
The founding members meet in someone’s house. One nice thing regarding space is that the more of your founders have kids, the more likely it is that one or more has a house big enough to host this. I think at this stage it’s common to rotate though a small set of locations though.
Once you’re too big to meet at a house, rent a cheap event space. The church I went to for most of my life rented the same room in a senior citizen center every Sunday, except around once a year we couldn’t get it and would go to the park.
At some point if you have enough money, you buy a whole building because this gives you more options (ability to customize and use it whenever you want).
For renting, I wonder if part of it is just calling places up to see what combo deals they can give you. When renting the space at the senior citizen center, my church had access to one big room with a stage, plus two small classrooms. I’m not sure if we got lucky and this was the only place like that, or if it’s actually a reasonably common set of needs.
This also makes me wonder if combination daycare/coworking spaces exist (and if they don’t can someone get me Masayoshi Son’s phone number because I have a tech company idea?).
I remember hearing shade against congregations that meet in someone’s house (“that’s not a church that’s a cult”), but that was in religious circles. I guess seculars will be more understanding as to why the congregation has not been around long enough to own land.
I don’t think I ever ran into that when I was younger. Meeting in houses is the original way Christians met, so I think it would be weird to complain about it. I found it pretty common for people to make fun of the opposite. If you’re spending your church money on a big fancy building, does that really show your dedication to church teachings like charity*?
Also, people might accuse a really small church group of being culty, but a small church group with a big fancy building feels much cultier than the same group meeting in a house.
I was only really exposed to Evangelical Christianity so it’s possible this is very different among other groups like Catholics.
* Churches typically justify this in terms of practicality (more spaces to work with) and marketing evangelism.
I went to a bunch of churches when I was younger, and I think the types of locations you listed are actually in a fairly typical order for starting a new church:
The founding members meet in someone’s house. One nice thing regarding space is that the more of your founders have kids, the more likely it is that one or more has a house big enough to host this. I think at this stage it’s common to rotate though a small set of locations though.
Once you’re too big to meet at a house, rent a cheap event space. The church I went to for most of my life rented the same room in a senior citizen center every Sunday, except around once a year we couldn’t get it and would go to the park.
At some point if you have enough money, you buy a whole building because this gives you more options (ability to customize and use it whenever you want).
For renting, I wonder if part of it is just calling places up to see what combo deals they can give you. When renting the space at the senior citizen center, my church had access to one big room with a stage, plus two small classrooms. I’m not sure if we got lucky and this was the only place like that, or if it’s actually a reasonably common set of needs.
This also makes me wonder if combination daycare/coworking spaces exist (and if they don’t can someone get me Masayoshi Son’s phone number because I have a tech company idea?).
I remember hearing shade against congregations that meet in someone’s house (“that’s not a church that’s a cult”), but that was in religious circles. I guess seculars will be more understanding as to why the congregation has not been around long enough to own land.
I don’t think I ever ran into that when I was younger. Meeting in houses is the original way Christians met, so I think it would be weird to complain about it. I found it pretty common for people to make fun of the opposite. If you’re spending your church money on a big fancy building, does that really show your dedication to church teachings like charity*?
Also, people might accuse a really small church group of being culty, but a small church group with a big fancy building feels much cultier than the same group meeting in a house.
I was only really exposed to Evangelical Christianity so it’s possible this is very different among other groups like Catholics.
* Churches typically justify this in terms of practicality (more spaces to work with) and
marketingevangelism.