“What would you say… you do here?”
Beyond being a quote from one of my favorite movies (Office Space), this is a variation of a question we receive often at Flourish. Folks (maybe even you!) have a vague sense that we work with churches to reimagine how their space is used, but don’t exactly understand how that works.
Are you church remodelers? some assume after seeing the work we did with the Center of Belonging.
Are you consultants? others wonder upon hearing that we help churches through a process to identify how they might best repurpose some of their space.
Are you like a brokerage? some have even asked, as they learn about ways we’ve helped churches find organizational partners to use some of the space in their building.
The answer to each of those questions is No.
But also, Kinda??
We’re not remodelers, but we do have partners and collaborators that we’ll bring into projects when remodeling work is required.
We’re not consultants per se, but we often coach churches through a process that helps them identify the possibilities for their space and develop a plan to move forward with confidence and clarity.
And we’re not a brokerage, but we have relationships with many churches, non-profits and community organizations, and love it when we’re able to make connections between them to magnify the impact they can have through collaboration.
In short, because each church is different, each church building is different, and each community is different, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the work of placemaking. With that being said, we are in the process of further honing in on clear language to describe our unique place in the world of placemaking, and we’ll share that with you soon.
In the meantime, the way we’ve described our placemaking work lately is,
“God cares about our space, and God cares about how we use our space. In fact, we believe one of the greatest indicators of a church’s theology is to examine how they steward their space for the flourishing of their neighbors.”
At the end of the day, helping churches steward their space for the flourishing of their neighbors is what we do.
Having a case of the Mondays 😉,
