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New England's Warehouse Churches
EastPointe Christian Church
Scarborough, Maine
Our fourth warehouse church is EastPointe Christian Church meeting at 70 US Route 1, Scarborough, Maine, led by Scott Taube. They launched public worship in March of 2004 at the old cinema building across from the Maine Mall. After six months, the church moved to a Marriott Hotel for a year and half before moving into the carpet warehouse where they have now been for two years. Their current average worship attendance is 350.
Scott, why would a new church meet in a warehouse?
Availability and affordability of the space were the main reasons we located here. We had been working through a realtor but actually found this space on our own when driving by it. We were able to renovate the space and furnish it for about $25,000. Our lease and related costs run right at $8,000 per month.
What have been the advantages and disadvantages of meeting in this warehouse?
Our warehouse location is perceived as inviting and non-threatening. First-time visitors are often a little shocked that a warehouse has been turned into a worship center but find the environment is inviting. We mailed postcards to 18,000 households in the immediate area around our new location, and our average attendance grew from 220 to 270 very quickly. We discovered that moving to our current location made us more attractive to our community. We were viewed as being more permanent than when meeting in a hotel, which gave the impression of being temporary or perhaps a cult. We found depending on hotel staff was a disadvantage, and they were usually understaffed on Sundays. We often found that rooms were not ready for our use when we arrived on Sunday mornings.
Another advantage to being in our own warehouse facility was that we found our own people took greater ownership and responsibility for ministry and reaching out to others, thus we were able to move to a higher level of ministry. Over our four years we have seen steady growth, even in the hotel. However, we have seen more rapid growth since being in the warehouse.
Parking is a disadvantage for us. Since Route 1 is a major traffic artery, parking is not allowed on either side of the street. We do have a parking lot available nearby, but it is up the hill from us. We are in the process of working on how to shuttle people to and from that spot. Some people are already using the lot and walking down to our building. Our location has provided high visibility, which we will miss when we have to relocate away from Route 1.
Several guests have indicated that our worship space is warmer than most traditional church buildings. Having used a warehouse for worship, my view of church architecture has been influenced towards simplicity. In Maine where people are very practical, there appears to be little need for extravagance or elegance in a church building. It would be nice to make a more permanent location nicer than what we have right now, but I would still favor simplicity and practicality over extravagance or elegance.
Another disadvantage with our present location is easy accessibility and adequate space for our children's ministry. We currently have to go outside and upstairs to get to this space. Maine Medical, the current owners of the building, lease the church 10,000 sq. ft. and allow us to use an additional 4,000 sq. ft. (at no additional cost to us) for our children's ministry. On average, about 30% of our worship attendance (or 105) is in the children's ministry area. We currently have two worship services with the capacity to seat a total of 350. However, we will not see a worship service grow to 350 because of the lack of adequate space for the children's ministry. Since Maine Medical has future plans for the building, they will not be renewing the lease in 2010. Therefore, renovations would not be cost effective for us.
One other negative with our current facility is a lack of a defined foyer space. Right now upon entering the building the foyer space flows right into the worship space. Thus we have scheduled adequate time between services to allow people to hang around between the two services, and some do hang out for quite a long time. This is telling us that we need to have a large foyer space (up to 25-50% the size of the worship space) in our future location. Having people hang out after worship is a healthy sign and allows time for interaction and fellowship.
What are your long-range goals and how will meeting in the carpet warehouse impact the church's move to her next facility by the end of 2009?
We may need to be out of this location by the end of this year (2008) if we grow by another 100 in average attendance or go to a third service due to parking issues. Our next space should be in the 18,000-20,000 sq. ft. range with 300+ parking spaces, which would allow us to grow to 500+ in average attendance. At that point we would have the base needed to move into a permanent location and/or possibly to a multi-sight type location. Demographic studies of our congregation indicate that they primarily come from right around where we are located now. Therefore, we would like to stay in this general area.
The goal for us is staffing for ministry before buildings and land. Thus we could see ourselves in a lease situation in the future if it proved to meet our ministry goals over owning our own building. We would be open to sharing space with one or more tenants. For example, perhaps we could purchase a retail strip mall and rent or lease out units we did not need. In our next location we would like to have AC--something we do not have now. If we can get into something similar to what we currently have, we would definitely be willing to use another warehouse setting as a stepping-stone for ministry to get to the next level.
For more information, go to EastPointe's website at www.eastpointecc.com.
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