Tag Archives: Portable buildings
Children’s Ministry in Portables: Part 6
Posted on30. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
Now that the outsides are painted and ramps and completed, all the focus in on the interior. The insides of these portables look so tacky with the wood paneling and ugly carpet and sagging tile ceiling. The plan is to replace the old ceiling tiles, sheet rock over the wood paneling and lay down a new tile floor. When we’re done, it shouldn’t feel so much like a “portable” building. Next is the decor.
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Children’s Ministry in Portables: Part 5
Posted on23. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
When planning for our portables, we had to plan out our foot traffic. These buildings are almost behind our main kid’s building, so a clear path needed to be built. In addition, we had to create suitable entrances to the portable buildings and the rooms within. If we can expect 100-120 kids in these rooms, we had to create space or drop-off and pick-up lines. To solve these issues (as well as conforming to ADA standards) a beautiful deck was built to link the portables together and provide wheelchair access. We also intend to put in a door between the two rooms in each portable. This way parents can all walk into one portable door, go through the door that connects the two rooms and out the other portable door to exit. They can do this at both-drop off and pick-up which should keep the traffic moving.
We also built a crushed limestone path from the main courtyard (beside the Kids Quest building) right up to the portable buildings. I figured we would have done a cement pathway, but the crushed limestone is very nice. It looks very natural and fitting here at our Austin church. Check it out.
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Children’s Ministry in Portables: Part 4
Posted on22. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
We had a big task ahead of us. We had to help the portables blend in. Well, we didn’t really want them to blend in. We just didn’t want them to be so dang ugly. Honestly, Gateway is one of the coolest and most beautiful church campuses I’ve seen. It’s got a very modern, outdoor "shopping center" type of look. Portable just don’t fit into that genre of building.
Initially our interior designer developed a plan to paint and mural the outside of the portables to create a "destination" for the kids. One that would lure the kids to come and check them out. Honestly, I was afraid that this would make them stick out even more than an ugly portable would stick out. I suggested that we choose some of the building colors and pain them to match the other buildings. That way they’d look like they were planned and that there was some intentionality behind them. It totally worked. These ugly portables actually look really nice. Amazing!
See how this ties into the rest of our facility by here.
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Children’s Ministry in Portables: Part 3
Posted on18. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
We found our portables.
There is one main reason why I dont’ love portables. They’re freakin’ ugly. We picked out two portables that looked very similar to each other. They’re used portables from Colorado. Enjoy the pics.
My favorite part is all the wood paneling. Honestly, do they make these things ugly on purpose. It was only a few years ago that someone had the bright idea to make a computer a different color than beige. Now it’s almost impossible to find a beige computer. What’s up with the innovating trailer colors. Not really a fight I have any interest in taking on though.
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Children’s Ministry in Portables: Part 2
Posted on17. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
I’ll be frank. I hate portable buildings. I think it sucks that we have to move into them. There, I said it.
However, there is another side to this. I love that we have to move into portable space. That means we are growing. I’m also glad to be a part of a church that is willing to do it right. I’ve seen some crappy looking portables and I thank God that by the time we move in, these portable rooms will be very similar to any of the other rooms in our kid’s area.
The first thing we had to decide was who would go into the portables. Typically I don’t know that my first choice would be early childhood. The kids are younger and it’s more likely that we’d have to call a parent or have issues like that. However, the way our building and programs are set, it just makes more sense to put the oldest kids in Early Childhood in the portables. Since we’re doing large group production and small groups with elementary, portables didn’t make as much sense. Also, the two rooms that we’re using that weren’t supposed to be used as classrooms are the two oldest rooms for Early Childhood. So we’re moving both of these rooms to the portables. All kids 3.5 through kindergarten will be in this space. The portables consist of four rooms that each have a capacity of 30 kids. So we’re creating space for 120 kids per service. By moving the two oldest Early Childhood rooms, the portables will start with 75 kids (yeah, the oldest Early Childhood room consists of 50 kids). That gives us room to grow by 45 more kids per service. Since kids promote every month in the early childhood department but kindergartners only promote at the beginning of the year, the 45 empty spaces will slowly dwindle. This is all theory, so we’ll let you know if it really ends up working out this way.
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Children’s Ministry in Portables: Part 1
Posted on16. Dec, 2008 by Kenny.
I know there are a lot of churches who have all or part of their Children’s Ministry in portable buildings, so I thought I’d blog a little about our process of getting and outfitting portable buildings for ministry. When I first started talking to Gateway, I knew they were talking about getting some portables due to space issues. Gateway’s demographic changed substantially when the church moved into the building in it’s current location. As our auditorium filled to capacity, our children’s ministry exceeded capacity. We have kids in a few rooms that were never intended to be kids rooms. So, last spring the process began. It’s been a very long process (mainly working with the city to get permits) but we are only a few weeks away from moving into the portables.
So, over the next few days and weeks I look forward to writing all about what we are experiencing.
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Operation: Name My Trailer
Posted on15. Aug, 2008 by Kenny.
Our facility is full and we’ve resorted to portable buildings… otherwise know as modular buildings… or as we like to say in South Georgia… trailers.
We have such a nice facility but for the meantime we needed to provide some extra space for our kids. Adding two of these portables will give us space for up to 120 kids (but comfortably at 80 more kids). We’re not really expecting a bunch of new kids since our services have been pretty full. It’s more about offloading space and redistributing kids. We’ve had kids meeting in spaces that were not really intended to be meeting spaces. So, in a few more weeks we’ll be moving into these buildings. They’re being painted to match the color decor of our existing buildings and the interior is being decorated to look fun and exciting like the rest of our rooms.
The kids who will be moving out to the portables are 3.5 year olds to Kindergartners. It’s the oldest part of our preschool area. The Children’s Ministry at Gateway is called Kids Quest. The Elementary age it called Kids Quest, the youngest kids (0-2.5 years old) is called Kid’s Quest Babies and the preschool wing is called Kids Quest Junior. Now the bulk of Kids Quest Junior will be moved into the portables.
Currently our preschool rooms have names such as Little Lagoon, Kids Kingdom, Asteroid Ally and Tumbleweed Trail. We’ll be naming each of the rooms in the portables similar names. There will be a beach theme room, a jungle room, an underwater room and something else as well.
However, in a meeting today we discussed how we don’t want to call these buildings portables, trailers or modulars. We want them to feel like a destination. We’ll put up signs and such, but we need to have a name for them. Something that maybe sounds intriguing or exciting. So it’s a part of Kids Quest Juniors and is a collection of four additional rooms. Any ideas on a good name for the buildings or the area. Perhaps it will even be another division after Kids Quest Juniors, but before Kids Quest Elementary. Any ideas you might have would be incredibly helpful!
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