Description
Book SynopsisThis practical and comprehensive guide offers essential and expert advice on every aspect of caring for churches. A money-saving handbook for all who care for and maintain church buildings, it provides expert advice from a leading church architect and an experienced heritage buildings specialist. Drawn from extensive experience of working with local churches, they also show how church buildings can be tools for contemporary mission, packed with potential for effective engagement with the whole community. They cover a wide range of practical issues that affect church buildings, from caring for medieval masonry to installing multimedia electronic systems, and offer essential information and easy-to-follow advice on: • heating, lighting and energy efficiency • installing a kitchen or toilets • dealing with damp • treating timber decay • making your building accessible • what to do about bats • health and safety • seating options • fonts and baptisteries and much more. In addition, this handbook offers a step-by-step guide to planning and implementing an extension or a reordering project, including advice on public consultation, dealing with diocesan committees and fundraising. An annual calendar of basic church care is included, plus a church health checklist and a basic church buildings audit.
Trade Review‘Any priest or parish stumped by the enormity and complexity of the task of making the most of our inherited buildings need look no further. This book is a superb tool for helping us see with fresh eyes the gift of landmark buildings in key locations, and enabling us to realise their full potential for the mission of the Kingdom of God.’ -- Richard Giles
This immensely practical, clear and thorough guide, written by acknowledged experts, will be an invaluable aid to anyone who cares about church buildings, realises their potential for mission and wants to release it. Church buildings can be an enormous asset for the gospel: this book will help anyone who reads it ensure that they are.’ -- Bishop John Inge
'It is a comprehensive handbook rooted in the realities of parish life.' -- John Kiddle * Church Times *
