The Vacation Bible School team was tearing down the set from a great week of ministry and high-octane fun. The church had been transformed into Jerusalem during New Testament times, complete with an entrance to the temple courts. A set constructor innocently asked, "Where can we store this to use sometime in the future?"

"I don't know. All the storage rooms are already full."

The adrenaline rush stopped dead. "Do you mean we have to just throw all this away?"

Like most people's houses, churches rarely have enough storage space. While it's true that churches should build adequate storage space into their overall design plans, spending limited funds on closets may not be the best use of financial resources.

Overcoming "storage room gluttony"

Churches look for more storage space because their current storage rooms are full. But before deciding you need to renovate the church to add more storage space, stop and examine why those rooms are full.

"Storage room gluttony" begins innocently. Someone cleans up from a potluck dinner and accidentally puts a couple of high chairs in the vacant storage room. But it's the wrong storage room for the high chairs. So, at the next fellowship meal the set-up team cannot find the high chairs. They donate their personal ones or purchase new while the original chairs begin collecting dust. Over time the misplaced high chairs are joined in the storage room by the outdated church computer systems—and especially large, bulky monitors. The individuals tasked with replacing the old computers recall how much the church spent when the previous computers were purchased, and they cannot bring themselves to throw them away—after all they were purchased with God's money. Soon the monitors are joined by old VHS tape players and large tube TVs.

Next, a church family buys new furniture and plans to donate their old furniture to the church. But the old furniture has colors and patterns from the 1970s—not to mention some ominous looking stains. So it ends up filling the remaining floor space in the storage room. Finally, Christmas program costumes and props are stacked on top of the furniture—and the door is closed quickly to prevent anything from falling out.

3 steps to more space
If your church has reached capacity on all of your storage space, here's a three step process to find more places to put things: 1. Reclaim; 2. Relocate; 3. Renovate.

1. Reclaim current/former storage space. Full storage rooms should be organized to reclaim the space for valid storage uses. Using church square footage as a place to put obsolete things is not a valid storage space use. However, reclaiming this valuable space may not be easy, so before randomly throwing things away, develop a plan for storage room organizing.
a. Archive items of church historical value. Some papers and records should be permanently stored in file cabinets. Digital storage formats should be evaluated. For larger items with legacy value, consider taking a picture then throwing it away.
b. Distribute items of perceived value. There may be a family in the church that could use that 1970s couch. For that Third Place trophy in the church softball league from 1984, take a picture for a scrapbook, then give the trophy to a member of the team (there may not be any members of the team left at the church, in which case, why is the trophy still stored at the church?).
c. Put Christian materials to work. Bibles gathering dust on a shelf do not help anyone. Various missions organizations will take old curriculum, teaching materials, or church items and distribute them to people groups who would put them to good use. Some options:

—Christian Resources International: cribooks.homestead.com
—Christian Salvage Mission: csmcanada.org
—Edwin L Hodges Ministries: elhm.org

d. Throw away with stewardship in mind. Frankly, using church square footage for non-valid storage uses is poor stewardship.

2. Relocate items among the body. We all agree that the church is people and not a building. There may be numerous opportunities to move church property to locations outside of the church facility. Rather than having people donate things or money to the church, perhaps they can donate much needed space to help house the church's essentials.

Also, consider asking members of a ministry team to store necessary items at their homes since they are the ones who will need to access these items. Be sure to record locations of stored elements in the church office for easy retrieval (or additional relocating in the future as needed).

3. Renovate the facility. When embarking on a building renovation or addition, storage needs should be evaluated, but only after the first two steps have been thoroughly pursued.

And before allocating more square footage for storage, consider creative ways to utilize existing space as storage. For instance, a church recently added a raised roof along with a new entrance. The pastor sheepishly noted that they were using the new attic space for storage, which was significantly less convenient to access than the former storage room. This change, however, allowed the church to convert the former storage room into additional classroom space. I reassured him that his new attic space was a good storage solution, as the new classroom is a much better use of square footage. And, with the storage now in an inconvenient place, it forces people to carefully evaluate whether it's worth storing items.

Putting it into practice
So, what does the Vacation Bible School team do with the great looking set? First they evaluate if it is really worth keeping. Ask, "Will we really use it again?" Props from New Testament Jerusalem might have applications at other times so it may be worth keeping. However, if the VBS theme was "Jungle Safari," the potential uses for the future might be limited. In which case, offer for kids to take home different parts of it (and the parents may take care of throwing it out for you). Or see if there is a church in another city that might like to use your set for VBS the following year?

Second, honestly evaluate how soon the parts may be used again. If a Sunday school teacher would like parts for an upcoming lesson then it can be a candidate for storage on the church property. If no one has a current use in mind, move to Option 2—can any of the VBS staff store it at home? As they take parts, write down what goes where and include copies with VBS information as well as the church office.

Third, when storing at the church, clearly label all parts of the set with any necessary instructions/lessons for reassembly. Store items with care so as not to damage something you're trying to reuse for future ministry.

Finally, when placing items in storage, be sure to organize the parts in as concise a space as possible. If you cut off storage room circulation you increase the likelihood of "storage room gluttony" because people cannot identify and retrieve other things as needed.

After all, the goal of a storage room is not to put something away permanently. Instead, it is to temporarily place something out of sight and be able to retrieve it when needed in the future.

James Rodgers is an Architectural Pastor for Wildesign Group, "Ministry-Focused" Architects in Crystal Lake, IL. He has a Bachelor of Environmental Design (Architecture), Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry. He has served 4 years as an architect, 19 years as a pastor and written for Leadership Journal and Your Church magazine.