Live Oak United Methodist Church

Watson, Louisiana

Challenge: Building a new church to accommodate dramatic growth

The past decade has been one of booming growth for Live Oak United Methodist Church, lifting its average Sunday attendance from about 150 in the mid-1990s to more than 700 people each week today. As the church has welcomed its wave of new parishioners in recent years, however, the need for expanded facilities to handle the growth has become increasingly clear. 

"Our facility seats about 350 people, so we've grown from one to three services every Sunday," said Dana Rushing, a member of the church who helped lead its recent fundraising campaign. "Last year, we came to the realization that we had to build a new sanctuary."

Thanks to a building project they had conducted for their family life center eight years earlier, church leaders as well as the congregation knew from experience that mounting a capital campaign was no small undertaking – especially for their planned new 22,000-sq.-ft. facility, which will be designed to accommodate up to 825 people at each service.

Tasks: Create a campaign with broad-based support

A fixture in the center of this small southern Louisiana town dating back to the Civil War, Live Oak has a closely-knit congregation and an active church leadership who recognized that in order to succeed, they would need the support of the church as a whole. When they met with Generis consultant Kent Burklow, they saw in him and the firm a partner who shared their vision for the future.

"We never had to reinvent the wheel," said Rushing. "It was all done in a way in which nobody questioned whether it was the right direction, and it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. It was all so well organized that we never had to learn what we were doing – it was already done, already laid out for us, and we just had to follow the steps."

With a campaign theme titled "Building God's Kingdom," the church began its fundraising communications in early 2005, expecting to conduct a late summer/early fall campaign. But then Hurricane Katrina swept ashore in New Orleans that August, and the church suddenly had more urgent priorities. "The hurricane pushed everything back six months," he added.

Solution: A successful campaign, with construction plans on target

After the delay, the church began its campaign in earnest in the spring of 2006 with a goal of raising $1.2 million toward the estimated $3 million construction project for the new sanctuary, which is set to begin in the spring of 2007. By the time the campaign had ended, more than $1.8 million had been raised.

Rushing said that in working with Generis, one of the most effective communication tools used involved face-to-face meetings – with the entire church.

"That was one of the aspects of our campaign that's been talked about the most ever since, putting everybody in the same room at the same time," Rushing said, adding that Live Oak rented space at a nearby conference facility to accommodate the more than 1,100 members who attended their gathering to announce the campaign.

"The impact of that was just having so many faces in the same place at the same time. That demonstrated to anybody that had any doubts about why we're doing this, here are the reasons why," he said. "To have all of it culminating at that major event demonstrating why we're doing this, that had the highest impact."

Individualized Guidance

Rushing added that Live Oak's church leadership and membership appreciated spiritual commitment that Burklow brought to his work with the church. "His faith in God and his beliefs are unquestioned, and that was a wonderful ministry to our church as well."

And the ability of Generis to customize a campaign specifically for the unique needs of the church, he added, helped ensure that Live Oak's campaign would be a success. "Kent took his program and modified it to meet our needs," he said. "He modified it to meet our needs and it worked beyond our wildest imagination."