URC Buildings Forum

 The following comments and questions were either made at the conference or immediately following it.  They will help to set the agenda for future events. One of my set of questions is around the issue that to manage/use buildings effectively increasingly it is getting more and more complicated, and often one needs either to employ an administrator/project manager (what ways can be enabled to afford that), or it falls to the minister who by and large not equipped for that, or does not have the time for it? Do you have any experience of getting an outside agency to deal with or develop our buildings? We have a hall which we're considering might need replacing / rebuilding. Perhaps a new building with an outside agency building it in which we'd have a space??? It's v complex area and we'd be v grateful for any input. (Sale URC. Cheshire) Great vision - my church is engaged in doing this now, rebuilding an old hall into a community centre - it would b

This blog has been created following the very successful online conference held on April 19th 2021. As a result of it we hope that a fruitful networking of individuals and congregations can be developed to help the URC find ways to work creatively with the buildings that are a very large part of our visible resource. This first conference was a pilot to see how much of a response there might be and it exceeded our expectations with over 250 attendees.  The organising group will be working now to reflect on the comments that were made during the conference and since to plan future online gatherings as well as eventually, face to face events. We need your help! To be able to plan and organise effectively we need to diversify the planning group to reflect the much wider makeup of the URC than represented by the current group!  Anyone who feels they may be able to offer their time and talents in developing the work of the group, please do get in touch.  We can be emailed her

“Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”. (1 Peter 2: 4-5). The epistle writer uses the metaphor of a building for the church. The church, of course, is not a building. It is it’s people, bound together as more than the sum total of the individuals, the body of Christ, the People of God, the event of the act of the Holy Spirit. And, of course we’re very, very used to the mantra ‘the church is the people, not the building’. And it is true, and we lose sight of it at our peril. Some of our most exciting churches in the URC don’t have their own building. They meet in borrowed spaces to worship, witness and serve. I suspect we have many congregations within the URC who might well be better off without a building – but of course we get very attach