There are hundreds of principles required to being a portable church and doing it well. In this Vlog episode we want to discuss 6 of the most important principles of portability.
#1 consider the weight
Equipment choice is such a crucial piece of being portable. However you always have to be mindful of the weight of all the gear you’re buying. The reality of how much something weighs will determine if people can move and pick up the equipment you buy. And if you have to wheel it everywhere, you’ve got to get special dollies or lifts and that really kills your efficiency. So let’s make sure that we’re choosing stuff that’s easy for people to set up and tear down and doesn’t weigh a ton. Also, when you think about trailers and you start thinking about how much does a trailer actually weigh, you have your trailer weight, then you got all the gear weight that goes inside the trailer and before you know it, your trailer’s overweight. Pay attention to that.
#2 measure cubic volume cost
If you buy huge chairs because you love the look and but they don’t stack well, you have to include the cost of how much space they will take up inside of your trailer. Therefore, it may make more economic sense to get stack-able chairs that will work well in a trailer. Sometimes you will want to spend more money because it ends up costing you less cubic volume wise (read this for example).
#3 ease of use
As a rule of thumb, if after setting up and tearing down a produce you want to punch someone, it is NOT easy to use. Think about your volunteers in this situation and how it will be for them to use on a typical Sunday. If it is too hard, they just won’t use it or if they do, they will hate it.
#4 system reproducibility
There may come a time when you need to reproduce your system in another location or with another campus. You want to make sure that your volunteers understood the system, and that they would be willing to reproduce it. Which leads to the 5th principle…
#5 volunteers are your most valuable resource
When you are tempted to make decisions based only on economic factors, we urge you to keep your volunteers at the front of this process. After all, if you don’t have volunteers, you don’t have a set up team.
#6 break down invisible barriers
Make your church a place where new people can be comfortable and where they want to come back to. Some invisible barriers we have seen include (but are not limited to), a lack of signage that can cause confusion on where to enter the building or find the right rooms, having a lack of (friendly) people welcoming new guest, or a parking lot that is difficult to navigate, and many more.
To read a more about the effective principles of portability click here.
Click here for more portability hacks & tips!
Kevin Jones & Jesse Reed
