It first occurred to me in 2002 when we were in the beginning stages of raising the funds for land and a new building. In order to buy land and build a building you need to run a capital campaign to raise the funds. And, in order to run a capital campaign you need to “vision cast,” which means you need to have some idea of what you are going to build. But, how can you know what you are going to build if you don’t know what you can raise? It gets worse!

Developing land requires going through a very long, drawn out land development process with the local municipality. The land development process can take a year or more depending on the area. So, in order to put an awesome capital campaign together (brochures, videos, displays, etc.) that inspires the congregation to get behind it, you have to take a leap of faith! You have to “estimate” the amount of money you think the congregation can raise (using national averages and giving data from your church) and begin the building and site design with that figure in mind. In other words, you have to be faithful that God will meet the need and provide the funds in roughly the amount estimated. Not a problem, right? Lots of churches run capital campaigns, so there are lots of data available on which to base an estimate. Advice?  Hire a good capital campaign consultant and be conservative with your estimate.

On the land development side, though, the stakes are a bit higher. In order to submit something to the municipality a significant amount of money must be spent on engineering and design. The municipality requires that you know “exactly” what you are going to build right down to the finest detail. And, once you start the review and approval process you are pretty much locked in. Unless you’re willing to go through several months of redesign and re-submittal, you pretty much have to build what’s approved. This is the craziest part. The capital campaign is done, plans have been submitted to the municipality, but you don’t have a firm estimate on what it’s going to cost! Why? Much of the details on what you plan to build have to be on paper before a contractor will take your project through the bidding process. If, during the bidding process, you find that you’ve significantly underestimated the cost of something, you are already so far down the road that much “back-pedaling” is needed.

After reading this you are probably so discouraged that you no longer want to even try to build something. Well … don’t forget the “faith” part. God is in the process every step of the way from guiding your vision to gaining municipality approval to providing the resources. You can count on the fact that what ends up being built will be exactly what was supposed to be built at that time.

Doing a capital campaign and building a building is a matter of faith and timing. Here are some helpful things to remember:

Pray
You have to pray your butt off! Keeping God in the process is critical. You should be in constant prayer and constantly open to promptings from Him. The congregation should be prompted to pray for the project as well.

Plan Ahead
You have to start way ahead of time. If at all possible, you should begin as soon as you have the vision and a reasonable idea about what you will need. Starting serious work as much as 5 years ahead of time is not “too far” ahead!

Create a “Building Fund”
Start putting money in a building fund as soon as you possibly can. A few hundred a week might not seem like much, but it adds up. Having some money to work with early in the process (way ahead of beginning a capital campaign) will allow you to get some of the preliminary design/discovery done. This helps to firm things up before you have to get serious about raising the funds.

Check out Christ's Church of the Valley's current building project and capital campaign (Leave A Legacy) by clicking HERE.