General Guidelines for Church Construction

The following guidelines for church building are an excerpt from the authors’ book,”before building“. These church building guidelines have been compiled from a variety of sources including years of experience seeing what really works and what doesn’t. Use these guidelines as a starting point for planning, but keep in mind that These are general guidelines for building a church, and each of these have exceptions and modifiers based on your particular needs.

In general, you should estimate about 1 acre per hundred people. This allows your building, adequate parking, green space, recreation, and stormwater management. This space requirement would be greatly reduced in a metropolitan area where street or public parking is available.

Plan for 1 parking space for every 2.25 people on campus at one time. It will likely be less than the parking required by the city or county, but will more accurately reflect the actual need. Initially, you may be able to get away with less parking, however you should plan for adequate parking for the full capacity of the facility, even if you decide to grow over time.

To get a good idea of ​​parking requirements for a future construction program, have someone go to the parking lot and count the cars over a period of several weeks, as well as check on good attendance by everyone on campus. Divide the total average attendance (men, women, and children) by the average number of cars. The result will probably be 2-2.5 people per car. Multiply this number by the capacity of your new facility and this will tell you how many parking spaces you will eventually need to park everyone to fill your building to capacity.

Estimate parking on site to be approximately 100-110 cars per acre. Structured parking (carports/garages) is VERY expensive. While structured parking can dramatically increase parking per acre, use it only as a last resort due to the high cost of construction.

Sanctuary seating requirements typically range from 10 to 15 square feet per person, depending on the layout, seating type, seating pattern, and overall size of the sanctuary. The stage area must be calculated separately from the seating area, which can vary greatly between churches.

Using chairs instead of benches will generally allow you to seat more people in the same space, perhaps as much as 20% more. The chairs also allow you to reconfigure your sanctuary as needed to support various types of use (weddings, Sunday morning service, events, community use, fellowship, etc.)

The Foyer/Lobby/Narthex should be approximately 2 square feet per person in the worship center. Typically this will be about 15-20% of the seating space in the sanctuary. If you plan on running multiple services, you should consider increasing this to make it easier to “turn around”.

Classrooms range in size from 12 square feet per person (adults) to 35 square feet per person in the classroom (nursery and toddlers), depending on the age group using the space.

Hardly any church is built with enough storage, cleaning, and work space.

A basketball court the size of a high school measures 50 x 84 feet. Adding modest space around the edge of the court for out of bounds, as well as allowing for restrooms, storage rooms, multi-purpose rooms, etc., means you’re probably looking at a minimum of 7,500-8,000 square feet of construction.

Generally, it is recommended that individual offices be a minimum of 120 square feet and pastor’s offices a minimum of 150 square feet (with a recommended size of 300 square feet). Cubicles in open workspace areas range from approximately 48 to 105 square feet, although they can be as small as 4’x4″ (16 square feet).

Round tables in the fellowship hall will reduce seating capacity by 20% or more. When calculating space needs, plan for 12 square feet per person for square tables and 15 for round tables.

In general, a building with dedicated spaces for sanctuary, fellowship, education, administration, and multi-use space may require 35 to 55 square feet of space per person, depending on programs, ministries, and other factors.

A building with multipurpose rooms (some rooms are used for multiple purposes) may require as little as 23 square feet per person.

Plan for nearly twice the capacity of the women’s restrooms than the men’s.

Hallways must not be less than 6 feet wide. Strongly consider wider aisles if you run multiple services to make “shift changing” easier. This is especially important around Sunday school rooms, an area that always seems congested.

Handicap ramps have a slope of not more than 1 inch of drop per linear foot, unless handrails are provided.

Budget about 10% of the construction cost for new furniture.

Generally speaking, first floor space at grade is cheaper than basement or second floor space. If you have the room, it’s generally better to lay out horizontally rather than vertically to minimize cost.

One way to estimate the cost of furniture is to take the floor plan of your new facility and do a room-by-room inventory of what you would need to purchase for that room. The easiest way to do this is in a spreadsheet with columns for room, item description, quantity, item cost, and total cost (quantity x item cost formula). Open a church supply catalog and assign reasonable prices to each item and let the spreadsheet add up the results.

None of the above points should be construed as advice on what to build, but only as benchmarks to use in your planning and budgeting process.

With this information, you are now equipped with some general ideas about church building. As they say, a little knowledge can be dangerous, however, it is less dangerous than a lack of knowledge.

Usually, it is in the church’s best interest to find an outside consultant, either within the denomination or an independent church building consultant, to help shape these broad concepts into a definitive plan for their church building program. Outside advice is almost always a smart move, since the gap between knowing and not knowing about an issue is much smaller than the gap between knowing something and doing it well.

Mistakes are easy to make. To learn more about how to address critical church building issues, read “Before You Build: Practical Tips and Experienced Advice for Preparing Your Church for a Construction Program” available for immediate free download.