What About Your College Ministry Facilities by Darrell Cook

There are countless college ministers out there doing amazing work without facilities or space to call their own.  For those of us who do have space that we are stewards of, summer is a great time to go beyond just maintaining those spaces and keep improving them.  As we teach students to live out Christ-centered hospitality, our ministry spaces can be great places to learn how to do that.  Here are a few questions that are worth asking annually as we make the most of these places that can be made into even better tools for ministry.

*  Anything around your facilities that would cause someone to ask, "I wonder why they don't fix that?"

*  Anything not working as it should that we have just "adapted" to?

*  Have we invited anyone in lately to look over layout, systems, and aesthetics with "fresh eyes"?

*  Any storage areas that have held unused items for a long time?  Perhaps, its time to purge?

*  Any furniture that needs to be replaced in the next year or so?  Or is there a gap in furniture needed for small groups or other ministry needs?

*  Any areas needing paint touch up, repainting, color scheme changes?

*  Any wall hangings, pictures, accessories that are getting dated?

*  This list is mostly about  smaller cosmetic and functional building needs - Do we have a "dream big" list of what we would do with larger structural changes/adaptations to make the facilities better fit ministry to students?  In other words, if we had the resources, what would we change about our facilities?

Darrell Cook is the Baptist Campus Minister at Virginia Tech University and is renowned for his "Alumni Work Weekend" that is part paint up/fix up, part reunion, and part alumni banquet.

Arliss Dickerson is a college ministry/leadership consultant and the author of five books on college ministry available in eBook and print at amazon.com (type in Arliss Dickerson).  "ALMOST Everything About College Ministry" will be available early summer.