NBRS+Partners

Gregarious 2011, a seminar for church builders, broke new ground by encouraging Christian leaders to ready their church infrastructure to accommodate the explosive growth of a new generation of families.

Mark McCrindle, a leading social researcher, described a looming 21st Century population boom and offered five trends that underpinned communicating with, and defined the attitudes of, a connected generation. Scott Sanders from The Geneva Push was excited to report a new wave of church plants that appealed to these emerging GenY families.

Andrew Duffin, a Director of NBRS+PARTNERS architects, defined a new contextualism. His detailed paper, Church Design 101 described the need for open, warm and engaging worship centres that connect with the community and are free from the barriers presented by traditional structures. Michael Thomas was able to provide his firsthand experience with commissioning this type of integrated church.

"An awesome day. I loved the connection between the visual creativity and
inspiration of the building with the content of the presentations." Church Leader.

Tim Sims, an expert financial strategist, challenged the church leadership to grasp the ‘ample opportunity’ within their congregations and, through a disciplined and logical process, to integrate the fringe membership towards regular attendance. Infusing this wider congregation was the key to creating immediate operational improvements that could support the development of the infrastructure.

The confronting social and design issues presented by heritage buildings were addressed by Robert Staas, the Heritage Advisor at NBRS+PARTNERS who helped to demystify the often labyrinthian heritage conservation process. James Ward of NBRS+PARTNERS, a business strategist encouraged church leadership to confidently plan for the future and coined a church planning concept, the 3P’s; a strategic plan, a master plan and a concise project plan. James emphasised that an integral tool for the 3P process was a ‘SWOC Analysis’ which could help to define and strengthen opportunities in the masterplan.

The seminar was held at Willoughby Uniting Church’s new ministry centre designed by Andrew Duffin of NBRS+PARTNERS.