I think Ken Blanchard has it right when he says, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." And while we are having this "human experience" we require shelter that facilitates our activities. But just building more and more buildings has not been the answer.

From 1991 to 2001, the amount spent on religious construction in the United States increased by an incredible 138 percent, from $3.521 billion to $8.393 billion. Even when you remove the impact of inflation, the amount we are spending on religious-related construction in constant dollars is over 80 percent more than what we were spending just a decade ago.

Yet during the same timeframe, the percentage of people that attend church dropped from 49 percent to 42 percent.

This information would seem to indicate that many facilities appear to be underperforming and others may have not been necessary at all. But facilities of some kind are necessary for nearly every ministry. So how can they be built best?

Here are five tips to maximizing the success of a building program:

The first two can help you make the most of the planning and preparation phases so that you use your resources wisely.

Understanding who you are begins by looking to the past.

Abraham Lincoln said, "If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it."

It is important to understand the impact of your heritage and history on your current corporate culture. That information along with your current demographics form who you are – they are your DNA.

Then look to your surroundings to understand the nature and demographics of your ministry area. Understanding your DNA and your community will open your eyes to the ministry possibilities.

If understanding who you are is looking to the past and understanding the present, then determining the ministry direction is looking to the future. This is the event that gives feet to your vision and mission statement. It is what makes your mission statement intentional and practical. Through prayer God will direct you to the areas to focus your ministry. Then you can develop specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound (SMART) goals to accomplish the objectives of your mission. This is critical to understanding what facilities you need to accomplish these objectives.

In the very early stages, you can find a beginning budget range by taking three times your annual income and adding to that figure any cash that is available for the building program. From that number you would subtract any current debt. That will give you a preliminary project budget number to use early in your planning process.

Throughout the process, this number must be refined as you get input from applicable lending institutions and when you determine who will conduct your capital stewardship campaign, if one is needed.

A good financial plan isn’t one that just gets the building erected. The best financial plans are those that are comprehensive enough to take into account the "soft" costs such as staff and ministry that will be necessary to use the building as it was intended. Good plans also fit with the overall goals of the church.

We served with one church that could have stretched financially to complete the educational and worship facilities they needed at one time. But, when all the pertinent issues were considered, it made more sense to complete the educational facilities with short-term financing and then return to construct the worship center three years later.

The other side of making a project budget work is being realistic about the costs. It doesn’t do any good to know exactly what you can afford and then design something that is twice that amount. This is tough because it is rare for a growing ministry to have the financial resources to build all they would like to have, which makes it necessary to prioritize the ministry needs. But, that can make churches vulnerable to "sweet words" that sound too good to be true – and aren’t.

There are two main reasons for the majority of projects that have failed: either they overestimated what they thought they could afford or underestimated what the project would cost.

A master plan projects the highest and best use of the entire church property. Some churches see this as an unnecessary step since they’re just adding a few new facilities and think "we have plenty of property." But, a thorough master plan may adjust the location of those new facilities so that it makes future phases less expensive. It can identify expansion capabilities to be built into the facility for the future. A good master plan may even point out a whole new direction for the current building program.

Typically a ministry will celebrate the completion of a building program. However, the building is nothing more than a tool for accomplishing the ministry itself. It seems more appropriate to celebrate the beginning, than a completion.

Often, at the completion of a building program there can be a sense of sitting back and relaxing in, "what we have done." But, the whole reason for the building was to accommodate ministry. And the completion of the building is when the new ministry can begin. This perspective will also help during the building program to keep the focus on the ministry, not the building.

The building is just a tool for ministry while we have our "human experience." Use these not-so-common events to develop the best tools to maximize your ministry efforts – and celebrate what’s really important!