WV Executive

While most churches in the Mountain State are finding it quite difficult to fill the pews on Sunday morning, the Bible Center Church has been quite fortunate to face a challenge of another kind. Since 1976 the church has showed a steady increase of its congregation and in 2006, it's typical to have anywhere from 1600 to 2000 individuals attending the Sunday morning service. With such a large congregation in attendance, the Bible Center has no other choice but to expand.

The Bible Center Church has grown so much over the past 63 years that it's had to expand its structure in 1982 and again in 2001. With such a rapid increase in attendance and a lack of surrounding land, the Bible Center must relocate its congregation to a building that will hold not only its people but also house the spiritual feeling of its congregation as well.

"We love this location and wish that we could have stayed," says Lee Walker, Bible Center associate pastor of administration. "We are out of parking, the sanctuary itself is always filled, we are crowded in everything we do. Our events are overflowing and it's just packed out. Which is a good problem, we are glad for it, but we just don't have anymore room for growth and we are going to always continue to grow." Due to an unfortunate lack of property and parking, the decision has been made to relocate to a new location and construct a building that is more befitting to the size and needs of the Bible Center.

So, now dawns the question to how large of a facility will it take to hold such a devoted congregation? Say 40,000 or 50,000 square feet.not a chance, when Phase I of the new Bible Center Church is built it will be over 66,500 square feet and when all three phases are built it will be over 230,000 square feet with 96 acres of West Virginia surrounding it. When Phase III is complete, it will hold more people than the beloved Clay Center in downtown Charleston and will be one of the largest churches in the state.

Even though the vast size of the structure and the magnitude of such a large congregation is quite impressive, size and numbers are not what drives the Bible Center Church to expand. It's not the Church's goal to awe people with such astounding numbers. The Bible Center Church just wants to maintain the sacred spirituality when making the transition from their old location to their new structure. "The church has grown rapidly in the past nine years and we have a saying around here that we adopted: 'as fast as we grow big, we must grow small.'"

However, with growth sometimes comes change but the Bible Center believes that larger isn't always necessarily better, especially when it involves spiritual interaction. "We understand that there is a possibility of people becoming just lost in the crowd," says Walker. "Our goal is not for people to come to church, sit for an hour, listen to a sermon and go home and not have their lives affected by a church experience. So we try to provide many opportunities for people to get plugged into smaller groups." From smaller, adult bible fellowship groups of 15- 30 people to a more personal interaction of a one on one basis, the Bible Center Church isn't getting lost in the monstrosity of numbers, its passion is still about people and getting through to everyone spiritually while in a comfortable environment.

"There are many advantages of having the resources of a large church but we don't want to lose the intimacy and the accountability that comes with being connected to a small group of people." The Bible Center Church is growing indeed but their commitment and passion of maintaining an excellent spiritual environment for its congregation will continue to be a solid structure.

Selecting a Team

The first step in moving towards the future for Bible Center was selecting a team that would make their vision a reality in the method that the church wanted. "We've been pretty methodical in choosing our team for this project," says Walker. "We've been working on this for about three years. We had a church planning consultant, a fundraising consultant, a local architect and even a construction management team. And in all four of them we used a similar process where we identified eight to 12 possibilities, ran references and obtained information and narrowed it down."

When the Bible Center Church selected the Pray Construction Company and Silling Associates/Architects, they felt that they had the best team possible to make their vision a reality. "The big thing with Silling is that they had already partnered with the consultants that we thought was the best in the country, that's CDH Partners out of Georgia-they have consulted over 325 churches in the past 25 years," says Walker.

When Silling Associates teamed with CDH partners, it became a strategic key in obtaining the contract with the Bible Center. "We have a joint venture relationship, where CDH knows a lot about master planning for churches this size and relocating from one facility to the next and have been through that hundreds of times," says Jody S. Driggs of Silling Associates. "We are gaining from their experiences and utilizing them with the planning process. We are involved from the architecture record to the technical continuity and capacity of the project."

When the Bible Center decided on a construction company, one stood out above the rest. "With Pray construction, we didn't chose them on a bid, it was based on everything else," says Walker. "They came and made a presentation to us and we wanted to learn about them as a company and how they operate."

Pray distinguished itself from the competition in two ways. One way Pray stood out was by their business structure and experience. "As a non-profit organization, we are able to take advantage of not having to pay sales tax and even can avoid some B and O taxes if the project is structured correctly," says Walker. "Pray has a lot of experience in the non-profit structure, so much that even if it's very complicated they can still make it run smoothly."

Mark Grigsby, president of Pray Construction says that Pray was given the project reward based on reputation and history. "They looked at the contractors in our marketplace and at their history of being able to deliver projects on time and in the budget that was indicated. They did their homework and decided that we had the reputation that they were looking for." He adds, "They also wanted a contractor that they could count on for follow-through and someone that wouldn't leave them. When we turn the key over to them we won't be gone!" Pray Construction has the history of having a lasting relationship with the client.

"Pray listened to us very closely when we said that we felt we were going to be a very difficult client," says Walker. "We are an independent church and are not part of a denomination, so we have a congregation form of government, which means our congregation is our final decision maker. Our constitution reserves the decision for things like selling or buying property which means the congregation has to be involved." That means a lot of people feel an ownership in the project and want to be involved in the process. Pray helped the congregation meet their need by establishing a Web site, which helps keep everyone informed of their progress.

The Art of Construction Management

Pray Construction and Silling Associates have taken a different route in designing and constructing the new Bible Center in Southridge. However this isn't necessarily a new concept. Nationally it's quite popular.

"Traditionally it's been design, bid, build," says Payne. "What we are doing with the Bible Center is more of a construction management process where you bring the whole construction team together at the same time. Then you are able to evaluate cost and evaluate engineering which helps before you actually go to bid and you are over budget." By having teamwork within the project it saves not only valuable time but also money.

"What we've been able to do specifically on the Bible Center thus far, it that we have taken an initial set of drawings or documents of what the architect has done at a 35 percent level, meaning that they've only invested 35 percent of their time and we have gone ahead and done a full blown price for that amount of design," says Grigsby. "What that means is that now we can give the owner their price for that particular design without them investing the full amount of money and basically having to back up and redo if we've had financial problems."

The initial low price was $3.6 million and with no change, meaning that they still have the same amount of parking places and they still have the same building plan. We simply massaged the design and shifted things and have been able to get $700,000 out of the site price by doing it with a collaboration with both the architect, site designer, contractor and subcontractor."

By having this project fall under the category of construction management, it also benefited Silling Associates b y giving them the opportunity of working in collaboration on more of a first hand basis with Pray Construction. "The Bible Center Church hired Pray before they even knew what the costs would be," says Driggs of Silling Associates. "That afforded us the opportunity to have Pray set at the table and look at these types of drawings and get their constructability review and verify budget along the way. It's really the first church project that we've done with a construction manager and it's the largest project we've done using such a method.

The New Challenges of Building

The skyrocketing price of trade materials has always been a problem in the field of construction, but not until recently has this rapid increase of foreign consumption been that visible in the American market. "Anything that China is placing a high demand on or tapping the American resource for is creating a rapid increase right now that I have never seen before," says Grigsby. "Copper wire is a big element in that. A 1000 foot spool of #12 romax that was $80 six months ago is now costing over $400." Grigsby has also seen a rapid increase in other materials as well. "It's a supply and demand issue," he says. "It's the amount of supply that we are being able to produce. We were seeing for a while that cement was in shortage and when there is a shortage, prices go up. Right now it's copper; we are also seeing that aggregate or stone is taking a sharp increase as well. It's doubled in the last six months, especially the price we are paying for limestone. That's an unfortunate outcome of coal selling so well. It's affected the barge traffic and barge transportation for the gravel on the river has caused them to raise its pricing."

Despite the rapid increase of materials, Pray Construction is trying to beat the system and use more of their building intelligence rather than their client's wallet.

"What we are doing is trying to be smarter on all of those things. We are not cheapening the project, but there are ways now to use aluminum cable for not the small wires but the large feeder wires, like in air conditioning equipment. So just by using aluminum cable on large feeders to air conditioning equipment and sub panels, we were able to get about $50,000 out of the building plan budget. So that's just another area of intellectual capital that we will add and that came directly from a subcontractor."

The architectural challenges that Silling Associates face are somewhat different from Pray's obstacles. "The challenge for us as architects has been to produce very early images giving the people of Bible Center a way to visualize what it is they want and in a relatively short time, the chance to portray to them what this building will really feel like," says Driggs. "The only way to do that is to give them real drawings that will show them carpet trim, fireplaces and things that they can feel and grasp from an imagery standpoint. We did that in the very beginning of the process and our challenge is to move all the way through construction drawings, that months and months of work and to make sure we stay within budget and that the end product."

Building Excellence

Beyond building documents and innovative construction methods, the end product is still going to be a place for people to come together in faith. Over 1500 people came to the ground breaking of the new Bible Center Church located just within the Charleston city limits. The new church will be built in three separate phases which will run the course of over 10 years to complete. Phase I, which is being built right now, will double the capacity of 50,000 square feet to over 66,500. The sanctuary seats 650 to 700 people at one time and the new facility will hold up to 1200 individuals.

"In Phase I, our school and our preschool will stay in our current building, but in Phase II we will add an office complex, a school and a gymnasium," says Walker. "We are also considering the possibility of adding a middle school and a high school at that time. "Phase III will add a permanent auditorium which will have 2500 seats with a 300 seat separate chapel. All three phases are designed to be over 230,000 square feet." With 96 acres of land, the new Bible Center Church has the opportunity to create something that will compliment the land as well as the building.

"Our design instructions to the architect are that we don't want to build a Wal-Mart church, we don't want them to just mow the trees down and build a box," says Walker. "We want something that fits the land, brings the trees and vistas into the building and says that this is West Virginia."

Jody Driggs of Silling Associates says, "What will be most interesting about the church is that the average West Virginian might not think 'church' when they see the building, but our goal is that people from West Virginia will feel comfortable when walking into the building. That's Bible Center's philosophy: they want to be welcoming and inviting."

In December 2007, the new Bible Center Church will open its doors and show West Virginia that when you believe in a team, great things can happen. The fellowship of Bible Center Church, Pray Construction and Silling Associates has taken that faith of teamwork and designed a building that will house thousands of West Virginians and help restore faith in West Virginia business partnerships once again.