Sacred Space Research - 3

The next questions started dealing with church design more specifically. We wanted to know how important building design would be if an unchurched person considered going to church. So we asked...

If you were considering visiting or attending a church, would the design of the church building impact how much you enjoyed that visit?

Over 50% said the building design would either strongly or somewhat impact their enjoyment of the visit. It becomes more interesting when you look at the difference across different categories. For example, building design is...

More important Less Important

Women - 58% Men - 50%

Large city - 60% Small city - 50%

Liberal - 58% Very conservative - 40%

18 - 24 yr olds - 62% 70+ yr olds - 44%

Living together - 61% Div/widowed/single - 43%

Not born again - 61% Born again - 42%

What does this mean in your context? When you look at the list above what kind of people are currently in your church. More importantly, what kind of people are you called to reach?

We all know buildings are a tool, but if design is more important to people we're trying to reach, maybe we need to give more focus to aesthetics, both inside and outside the building.

The next post will be the wrap up of the research and then I'll offer some thoughts about what all this means. In the meantime, any thoughts to share?

Sacred Space Research - 2

Here are the answers to a couple open-ended questions. Keep in mind these are free-form, top-of-mind answers aggregated from over 1,600 people who do not currently attend church.


Thinking of this same place you would likely meet a friend, what about the layout or fixtures of that space makes it enjoyable? In other words, when meeting a friend, what design features of the environment contribute to making it a good place to interact?


















In what places or settings do you feel close to God?

















On the question above (Where do you feel closest to God?) the largest percentage said nowhere/NA, which makes sense I guess because they don't go to church. However, the vast majority of those who did have an opinion feel close to God in nature or the outdoors. Hmmm... I wonder if we could bring some of the outdoors inside our church buildings; maybe an Embassy Suites kind of atrium with plants and trees and....

It's also interesting that 1 out of 10 unchurched people feel close to God inside a church, cathedral or synagogue. In the next post we'll look at how design plays into their perspective on church buildings.

Sacred Space Research

We had a great Cornerstone Conference last week in Indy. We talked about underlying currents affecting church ministries today and how we can responsd to them. Dave Ferguson encouraged us to keep an eye on our "RPMS" (Relationships / Physical health / Mental growth / Spiritual development.

Joe Myers and I gave a talk on creating "irresistible environments" and Joe helped us understand the inmportance of creaing soulful spaces, not just rooms. I presented the Sacred Space research we just completed and that will be the topic of the next few posts.

We began the study by asking some non-threatening questions about where people like to get together with friends and family. Keep in mind that the answers are from over 1,600 people who do not go to church.

Here are the first few questions and their responses: