Church building committees are a popular way to go through the church building process, but they're not always the best way to go about planning a new church project.

Most commonly church building committees are filled with people who have experience in construction, plumbing and electrical work, maybe also superintendents or contractors, real estate agents or others who have experience with buildings in the wider world.

While these people can provide insight in terms of materials, costs and the physical construction process, it is a lot more valuable for your church building committee to be made up of people who are deeply involved in the ministry of the church.

The pastor or minister, first off, should be on the committee, as well as any lay parishioners who are involved in ministry such as Sunday school teachers, youth group leaders or others who lead the church and outreach into the community.

These are the people who are best equipped to know exactly what the church is about in terms of ministry and what its goals should be for the future.

Who are you trying to reach as a church? How could your building improve your ministry? What are the needs you currently have that aren't being met in your current building? What are your goals for the church or the feeling that you want people to have when they walk into the building?

These are the questions that really need to be asked by a church building committee. Your experts in building are not going to know how best to design a nursery for the day care center or a coffee shop that caters to young people. It's the people who work with those groups every day who are really going to know how best to meet those needs.

This is just one reason it's a great idea to work with an architect with extensive experience in church design. Such a designer is going to be able to guide you when it comes to choosing the right people for your building committee.

He or she also should be well-versed in the right questions to ask when you are thinking about your needs and wants for your new space. A church design expert can also bring you ideas from other successful church projects that will bring even more good ideas to your planning process.

Having the right planning committee will make it a lot easier to determine what every ministry's goals are within the church and to prioritize those various goals into different phases based on what the church really wants and needs, as well as the church's budget and ministry goals.