Oak Ridge Baptist Church (ORBC), located in Salisbury, Maryland, was on the verge of some big changes. For five years plans had been in the works to build a new 1,700- seat sanctuary on its campus as part of its long-term plan. The time had arrived to put those plans into work.
Familiar with Clark’s work in designing state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems they invited us to get to work on plans for their new space.
But something else happened along the way.
Mark Reynolds, Business Pastor at ORBC, explains, “Everything was ready to go. Plans were drawn up for how to reconfigure our existing spaces. We knew exactly what we wanted to use them for. But it just felt like we ought to take one more look at the construction plans before diving head-first into this building project. There’s a lot at stake.”
Mark and other ORBC staff knew about Clark’s AVL expertise. As they became aware of our Strategic Planning prowess, they decided to let us analyze their building strategy and plans.
Here’s what we did:
We performed a comprehensive review of ORBC’s ministry functions, existing plans and financials and compared those with an analysis of their projected growth and demographics. There were several formulas at play in this process, but looking at the number of people in their worship services and children’s programs helped us get a sense of what configuration of their space would maximize their usage of it for the next 20 years.
In our analysis it became clear that the existing building plan was going to give them more space than they needed and, in turn, cost more money then they could afford. There was no magic bullet; simply leading ORBC through our proven process allowed ORBC to clearly see what they needed to do.
“Clark helped guide us through the process of letting go of the pieces of our plan that didn’t use space effectively. This included scrapping the idea of turning the current sanctuary space into a video venue. Now that space will be used for children and youth,” shared Mark.
An introduction to Clark’s full range of services is allowing ORBC to build less and save a ton of money. When there’s millions of dollars at stake we think that’s a pretty big deal.
We’re excited to continue our relationship with ORBC as we partner with them in Project Development and Project Management through the completion of their project.
