alternative uses for church building.

[ionesmum]

I'm on the p.c.c. for a parish with two listed churches. It's costing a fortune to install heating, toilets and kitchen facilities, and I think it's wrong. However, I know I'll be shouted down, so I think the next best thing is to open up the churches for use by the community as a whole. The only problem is, I can't think for what, apart from coffee mornings and concerts. The parish only has about 800 people so there isn't much call for soup kitchens and the like. Does anyone have any ideas? They can be religious or non-religious. Many thanks!

We run a mother and toddlers group from our church hall.

Hello. What needs does your community have? Perhaps some sort of research into what is needed. Have you ever doen a parish audit? It's a lot of work but would give you some insight into the needs of your non church going parishonners.
If its a listed building I suppose you would have to be careful. We had a request to have our church open for one day a week so that people could pop in for prayer and quiet contemplation, but we can't do it because of the threat of vandals. I do know what you mean about the amounts needed to maintain an old building. I'm afraid I would tear them down or sell them to the National Trust and put the money to some good use and find us all somewhere to worship that can be used for other purposes and doesn't cost a fortune to run. But I know you will know what sort of reaction that gets!!! Do you have pews? We have just had some of ours taken out and we now have a Christian bookstall at the back that sells books, gifts, cards etc? It can only be open after services tho'. Do you know the joke about the Bishop who is visiting an old country church, he meets the church warden who has been in post for over 40 years, The Bish says to the Church Warden ' I bet you have seen some changes in your tine?', 'Yes' says the Warden ' and I've resisited every one!'

Our church has been opened up for general use by the community. It is used for community meetings such as planning appeals or council information exhibitions. We also have visiting theatre groups, brass bands, singers. The small community rooms are hired for private parties, our own toddler group meet there and a local arts group use it for a creche whilst the artists are working. The church doesn't have pews but interlocking chairs which can be arranged as necessary and the altar section has some very large curtains so separate the large main area from the more sacred part. I don't have a problem with churches being used for other purposes as long as the people who come in respect the building for what it is. In these days every penny counts and recent work to repair the roof and replace the heating in our church have left big bills which have to be paid somehow.

Lol, lilibet! That's so true. What makes it even worse here is that we are two parishes together and so there's a lot of competition between the two factions, it's so frustrating. You know, if St. X's gets an expensive loo the St. Y's must have the same...I'd be happy to sell the buildings too, or only use them for special occasions, we have a lovely warm village hall with toilets, baby changing facilities, and a great kitchen where we've had services during the winter, I'd much rather we used that each week.

One of the churches is open all day, the other is too remote. We already have a toddler group at the Baptist church (much more user-friendly), but the idea of asking the parish to come up with ideas is a good one. But don't start on pews! Someone has offered to pay for chairs for the whole of the bigger church but the old school are dead against it. Someone even said that 'the pews are the heart of the church' and our rector has had so much grief over it he's put the whole idea on hold. They'd rather treat the rotten manky pews taht we've got with toxic chemicals (we've got woodworm) than get chairs.

Pam, we don't have the scope for meeting rooms, all there is are the churches, one of which has a large vestry.

What about a film society? Or is that too unsecular? (prob no such word!) Or yoga sessions or symposiums or flower arranging classes or painting lessons??? downloaded straight from brian to fingers with no thought so maybe won't be any good

ionesmum - all the large public events are held in the church (where the congregation sit on a Sunday) but the altar is curtained off.

We had an aerobics class once a week in the church hall to raise funds for its upkeep - unfortunately we now meet in a local school as the church building (a tin hut, wooden floorboards, built to be just a temporary building in 1900!) is falling down around our ears and uninsurable - we are trying to raise funds to rebuild.

A film society would be a good idea, as would craft classes, in fact I think that's abrilliant idea, www. I love the idea of yoga, our priest is very open-minded but another local one banned yoga from being held in the church hall for being 'un-Christian' (some people make Christianity look so ignorant) and I can just see there being pickets outside the church!!! The village hall is used by the scool during the day and the Baptist hall by the pre-school, so I'm sure that if we made it known that the church was available more people would come forward with ideas.

Like www, downloaded from brian:

Evening classes or lectures (perhaps contact local uni). Ballet classes. Theatre groups. Local (or school) choir. Local artist society. Life drawing classes . Local photography society meetings. Local heritage society meetings. School holiday clubs. Tea room once a week for senior citizens. NCT sales.

if you want it to be a community building then thinking like a community group might help. there are courses for community groups learning to manage ccommunity buildings andd making community buildings sustainable, these courses might give you an idea, there are a couple of training providers to look up... look up the tenant participation advisory service or TPAS as it is more commonly known, also PEP and look up trafford hall cheshire, sorry dont know the web sites by hand but a google search should do it. a great way community organisationa make money is by bingo - i swear you will laugh , but i know an association who used to make a fortune, they spent a hafty whack on prizes, nothing crappy and plastic, but went to a cash and carry and bought, toys at xmas time, big teddies, washing baskets, garden benches, gardening equipment in summer, giant eater eggs and smaller ones around easter time etc etc. they charged 20p per ticket, per game - most people played 6 tickets =£1.20 - per game ther were i think 5 tickets to a book = £6 and they had tea and coffee after the five games in the first break - which they charged for - then people went to buy more books another £6 - and a "flyer" where a special money prize was on offer! then another break where meals were cooked and charged for as well as drinks, then 3 more flyers - it lasted for about 3 hours all told. you couldnt even fart during bingo it was so serious - but it piled the money in and people came from miles away too.
advertise it as a meeting room, hire it out for birthday parties, publicise in the local employment agencies either as a meeting room or for party funcctions.
do you think weight watchers would come down, you need to guarentee 20 people come a week, if they dont weight watchers will pack up and not come back , but they pay for the room, what about an aerobicvs class? what about speaking to the local baby clinic see if they have a budget and they want to put on baby massage or something similar - smoking cessation clinic?
then the usual - childrens party for the area, leaflet everyone ccharge a £2.00 for a visit to santa and a cheapo prressie and have drinks and stuff available, remember tho - if your to serve hot food you need a health & hygeine cert. then what about a xmas party for the oldies? this ccan be repeated for kids at easster - an egg hunt - charge them - have drinks available to buy, at halloween - go trick or treating with children and adults - we used to make a paccket that way - dorr knocking from the residents association to help the funds, we painted the kids faces and made then potatoe pie when they got back - this was free - very ccheap - good for the kids they loved it and made a wad for our association. ccontact the local college see if they want to hire the room for IT classes or evening classes , say you will give it to them free for the first term to see if people are intersted and if it takes off you will ccharge them the going hourly rate - we used to charge £30ph up north - down south some charge £60 wow its a lot isnt it! a lot of work involved too, maybe a community organisation would be better taking this responsability - you could set one up and oncce properly constituted with a bank account there are lots of funding sources available to help you carry out acctivities, the national lottery awards for all scheme, shell better britain, bt community cconnections to name but a few, all give money or computers and stuff which you could use to build a better community and increase your income. ask your council if they fund resident organisations - most do - it may be a nominal sum of say £200 but its better than a kick in the nuts.

hope this helps

custy

Thank you Philipat and Custardo! Custie, some of your ideas are fab, I will look into them. Also, although some wouldn't be appropriate for the church itself, we could use them for fundraising in the village hall. Thank you

I know what you mean about some people being dubious about Yoga, we weren't allowed aromatherapy! They give Christians such a bad image. We only had the back 6 pews out and had to fight tooth and nail for that. Hope it all works out.

A church near to where I used to live used to operate as a Children's nursery during the week - available for private hire on a Saturday and was only a church on a Sunday, however, this was a modern church but it was always occupied.

I'm sure if the p.c.c. can involve the village as a whole in coming up with ideas teh building will be used as it should be.

Lilibet - didn't you point out the bit in the nativity story about myhrr and frankincense? Honestly, what do they think the monks were doing for all those years?? I don't understand why some Christians are so closed-minded.

A church near me, albeit a modern one, has mother & toddlers downstairs 3 days a week and Kumon maths class upstairs!

Oooh, I really want to say how fab I think it is that you're looking at opening up the churches to the community like this. There are so few proper community spaces around in villages - and yet so, so many churches that, when you visit them (I like looking round churches), seem to be cold, and vast, with pokey corners - underused and undervalued with sad little boxes tucked away in corners asking for 10p donations and this real sense of being a bit lost apart from on service days. (hope you don't think I'm being derogatory about churches here, btw - not my intention at all, and know there are loads out there that are nothing like this).

Anyway, wondering if your community would be too small to set up something like a cafe? Just thinking along the lines of All Saint's cafe in Hereford, which is imo brilliant to visit (wonderful for children, too) and a massive success story in lots of ways. I'd give you more info, but they're obviously working on their website, as it looks to be half-completed at the moment. Anyway, it's a church that runs a cafe with gorgeous fresh food, and has had fantastic write-ups in lots of national papers etc. It gets visited by tourists and the locals too, no mean feat, really!

I guess it might have to be a town church to work though - but I know that at All Saints they throw the church open for all sorts of other meetings and events, so might be worthwhile having a nose around it if you're ever in the area.

Thinking of suggestions, though - could you produce something like a church 'treasure' trail day for children? You know, things like 'what animal is carved on the font at the back of the church', and 'what is hanging from x, and what does it mean'. Maybe start with a treasure hunt day with prizes in association with a local primary school? Then, the idea could be recycled for visitors with children? You could do it on one photocopied sheet, charge a small amount, but the big thing would be getting people to look around, and letting children see a church as 'their' building, too.

For adults, how about a reading group? Or could you do something in association with a local library - there are loads of events/exhibitions that go around our local libraries, and a church would be a fab space for them in villages without a library building - same goes for bookreading/colouring to toddlers - does your local library organise any - and if they do, could they hold some in the church? Could you run second-hand book fairs, or something like that?

If you're going to involve the whole parish, how about asking them what evening classes they would like to attend. Dh teaches 'beginners spanish' and is massively oversubscribed - he teaches several people from our village, but they all have to travel out to a village hall elsewhere because there's nowhere to teach the class here (this is run by adult ed, but am sure you'd be able run a course like that independently). What about things like bookbinding/circus skills/creative writing courses? Poetry readings? Or historically themed things - I'm not a massive fan of these myself, but have seen 'tudor days' and so on held in churches where everyone dresses up, madrigals sung, local history societies giving shortish thingies about how the village has changed etc. But could you get the pcc to dress up in tights and ruffles.......

Anyway - Good Luck! Have never been a member of a pcc myself, but parents are, and keep seeing them come back from meetings looking gloomy about opposition to any change whatsoever. Our local church is very 'high', and not at all child friendly (not even a family service once a month) but if it did child-friendly things I'd actually be able to go once in a while, which would be nice, so am wishing you lots of luck on opening them up to the community

Oops, sorry, that was a long post.

Ah FrancesJ - are you a Hereford girl then ? I am - but now living in Berkshire - but great to see it get a mention ! All Saints is fab - I agree !

Hi, Frances! Thanks for the fab suggestions, I love the idea of a treasure trail. We are hoping to start holding regular coffee mornings, I've asked around and lots of mums like me would use it as well as the older people but there have been some negative comments from some who I thought would be positive. Our church building isn't very welcoming (although it's a beautiful building) and it needs to be used by everyone in the community. Otherwise I don't see how we can justify as Christians spending such absurd sums of money on a building used by so few. A readinggroup would be a good idea too.

I'm going to have so many good ideas when I go to the meeting on Monday, thank you all so much !