What can you do when your church is tight on space and tighter on finances? If you're not in a position to consider expanding your ministry space, try taking these steps to maximize the space you have.

Step 1: List your space needs. On a floor plan of your building, write down what happens in each room during the various hours of the week. Is the present space adequate? If not, what size and kind of space is needed? Do the same for every church activity that happens away from church.

Project the space needs for each of these ministries—and any being planned—for five years from now. Designate the amount of space needed and any special requirements such as location, accessibility, and acoustics.

Step 2: Match groups to the right-size room. Many churches have at least one small class in a big room and one big class in a little room. Simply moving classes around can relieve space pressure. Perhaps you can change group sizes to fit your rooms. You can divide large classes or combine smaller classes and switch to a team-teaching approach.

Step 3: Change furniture. You can increase worship seating up to 20 percent by replacing pews with individual seating. If that seating is movable, the room also becomes available for other uses. Consider these additional ideas:

- A room that uses small tables and chairs can hold twice as many people as one filled with overstuffed furniture. Likewise, children's classrooms grow when adult-sized furniture is replaced with children's furniture.

- For preschool or kindergarten classes, consider moving the furniture out and seating children on a carpeted floor. Oversized play equipment—such as a slide—wastes space.

- If the nursery is crowded, replace full-size cribs with half-size or stacked cribs.

Step 4: Find new uses for space not fully used. A church in Pennsylvania with excess worship seating removed several back rows and installed room dividers, carving out needed space for a foyer, a fellowship area, and a Sunday school class. Some churches use portable partitions to divide large foyers for Sunday school space, and then open them before people arrive for worship.

Step 5: Build a storage building. One church was able to empty three rooms after putting up a storage shed. It's an inexpensive way to add a lot of space.

Step 6: Use creative scheduling. Multiple Sunday services and Sunday school sessions are a must for most fast-growing churches, but you don't have to stop there. What about adding a worship service or rescheduling Sunday school on another day? One children's ministry brought in scores of children from the community by meeting on Saturday. Because the children gathered when there wasn't a worship service, they could use the only space big enough—the worship area.

Step 7: Use alternate space. Most communities have meeting space that churches may use, often just for the asking—homes, motel party rooms, schools, lodge halls, community rooms in banks or apartment complexes. Young singles' classes often work better in restaurants than in church buildings. Some people who are uncomfortable coming to a church building will gladly participate in groups that meet elsewhere.

You may decide that minor remodeling or a modest addition is still necessary. Here are some considerations for keeping that process manageable:

- You might increase usable space by taking a wall out, putting a wall in, installing a partition across part of the foyer, or enclosing a hallway with a partition.

- A larger foyer might make multiple worship services practical by providing visiting space outside of the worship area.

- A remodeled office area could bring scattered staff offices together into a single administrative complex, enhancing teamwork and making the staff more accessible to the community and one another.

With creative planning and the willingness to try new approaches, your church may be able to get more use from its building than you ever dreamed.

This article is adapted from The Church Leader's Answer Book, Christianity Today International.