Foundations: Managing and Listening

While there isn’t a set order to the advice and ideas contained in these pages, this is what we might sometimes call the ‘pre-evangelism’ – putting the foundations in place that enable more meaningful relationships. The way we practically manage our room hires, and intentionally listen to those who use them, are key building blocks that will help the other ideas you find here to be more effective.

Managing the relationship

TMCP produce excellent guidance for how to hire out your building to third parties, and that should always be the first port of call for legal compliance.

However, ensuring legal compliance, while essential, isn’t what builds trust, enables mutual sharing, and opens up the possibility of faith-sharing.

Here are some things to consider:

The Booking Steward

• Make sure that this is someone with a heart for building relationships. Consider making it part of their role description and responsibilities. Perhaps use language of “community partnerships” rather than “room bookings”. This person needs to have a genuine interest in people.
• Another option, if you have enough people to do this, is to have one person to hold the contractual side of the relationship, and a different person to specifically try and build relationships.
• Try and use the first time you meet with a new group leader as an opportunity to build relationship – don’t just sign the forms and hand over keys. Make clear that while there is no pressure to participate in anything in particular, you want them to feel part of a wider church community. See below for how to get the most out of these meetings.
• Don’t only contact building users to ask for payments or when issues arise, also contact them just to check in or to wish them well. Send them a Christmas and Easter card each year.
• As a Stewards team/church leadership/property task group, consider holding a celebration event for the leaders of the groups that use your building once a year to thank them for their contribution to the community.
• Try and practise hospitality even when groups can run autonomously (e.g. if they have their own key) – occasionally still visit in person, ensure the space they use is warm and clean, leave notes and small gifts from time to time.

The Role of the Congregation

• If possible, hold church meetings or events at the same time as another group is using a different room and have a shared coffee time before or after. Or hold church events just before/after other users to enable some natural meeting moments.
• Encourage people in your congregation to join groups that happen in the church building that interest them as a way of naturally meeting new people in the community. Short of that, you can also go along to events organised by those groups (e.g. concerts by a community choir).
• Many congregations have little awareness of the groups meeting on their premises. You could feature a different building user in the church newsletter each month or create a display board highlighting regular users. This helps the church see building users as neighbours rather than strangers.

Case Study

Listening to Building Users

If you are looking to build good relationships with your building users, then it’s important to understand what makes them tick. As churches, we can’t assume we know what will work for a particular group or what would encourage them to have a closer relationship with us – we need to ask and create a culture of “doing with” rather than “doing to”.

The steps below help you to approach new conversations that are consistent and will give you the kind of information that you need to earn the trust that makes faith-sharing more possible.

Step One: What do you need to know?

Before you meet with your users, think about what questions you would like to answer.

For example, you might want to understand things like:

• What do we have in common with these groups?
• What activities might we be able to involve them with?
• What might they welcome in terms of support from our church?
• What would make them feel welcome and included here?
• What are their experiences/perceptions of church?
• Can we foresee any conflicts in the future and can we prevent them?

Think about the information that will be most helpful in terms of building a meaningful relationship.

Holding specific questions like these in your mind can help frame conversations, and if you are meeting with multiple groups or people, then it can make sure you have the same information for each group.

Avoid questions that can be answered with a plain yes or no. Ask open questions that encourage a detailed response, and you will get more useful information in return.

Instead of saying “Do you enjoy using our church building?” ask “What do you enjoy about using our church building?” It can be helpful to ask the flipside question as well: “What could prevent you from using our church building?”

Step Two: Decide how you can best collect the information.

There are a few different ways to listen to your building users. If you have someone who has done Faith-Rooted Community Organising training, or if your District has a FRCO lead, this would be an excellent time to use some of those principles.

With all of these methods, be sure to enter with genuine curiosity, being willing to make space for and to hear negatives as well as positives.

One to One conversations:

It can be helpful to have one to one conversations with key people. This can work well for churches with only one or two building users, or for talking to group and community leaders.

There is some great advice on how to identify the best people to talk to and how to have those conversations, on Card 4 of Our Church’s Future Story. These can be relaxed and friendly – something as simple as a chat over tea and cake.

Roundtable conversations:

These are conversations with multiple people where you meet to discuss ongoing work, or a specific project or issue.

This is a good way to meet people who already have some sort of link with each other, and as part of an ongoing relationship. This can work well if you have a large and busy building with lots of users. This can be a good way to follow on from one-to-ones and maintain regular contact.

Good listening skills, and skills in managing difficult conversations can be helpful here.

Written Surveys:

If you are planning to speak to a large number of people, or if you want to engage with the individual people that attend sessions in the building as well as group leaders, then surveys can be useful.

You can either give out paper copies, or you can create an online form and a QR code, so that people can complete them anonymously online.

You can get good information from surveys and repeating them after a set period can help you to see if you are making progress. The downside is that it can be tricky to get enough people to respond to be useful. Handing them out in person at a session and asking people to complete them right away can help with this, if the group leader is open to it.

Step Three: Make use of what you have learned.

Keep notes you make during conversations so that you can refer back to them later. If there is anything you were going to respond to or action, make sure you set a clear deadline for doing so.

You do need to be careful about how you use and store any notes or data and make sure this is in keeping with GDPR guidelines. If you are unsure on what data you can use, guidance can be found on TCMP’s website. Remember to always ask the person if it is ok to share what they are telling you. Simply say; “Please can I share this with my team? I think it would be interesting for them to hear this feedback.”