operations & facilities
Operations and Facilities Roundtable
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: Glenn Wood, Facilitator
We all have facilities, but how do we run them efficiently? How could your organization’s Operations and Facilities be improved? Come and join a discussion focused on managing and overseeing Operations, Facilities, and construction projects in a church or nonprofit. Bring your questions and learn from others who have “been there and done that”, including Glenn Wood, who will facilitate this insightful workshop.
Creating Your Preventive Maintenance Program for Church Facilities
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: James Burns
A well-planned preventive maintenance program is one of the most effective ways to protect your church's facilities, reduce unexpected repair costs, and create a safe, welcoming environment for your congregation and community. In this breakout session, church facilities professionals will learn how to develop a practical preventive maintenance program by identifying critical building systems, creating inspection schedules, prioritizing maintenance tasks, and implementing documentation and tracking processes. Participants will leave with actionable strategies, sample planning tools, and best practices to help extend the life of church assets while being faithful stewards of the resources entrusted to their care.
Policies, Procedures, and Contracts when Considering Renting Church Facilities Spaces
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: James Burns
Opening your church's facilities to outside groups can strengthen community relationships and generate additional revenue—but it also requires clear policies and careful planning. This breakout session will explore the essential policies, procedures, and contract elements needed to manage facility rentals effectively. Participants will learn best practices for establishing rental guidelines, defining responsibilities, addressing insurance and liability concerns, setting fees, and creating agreements that protect the church while providing a positive experience for renters. Attendees will leave with practical tools and insights to confidently develop or strengthen their church's facility rental program.
Beyond Sunday: Keeping Church Grounds Beautiful All Year Long
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: Alex Lee
Church landscapes are one of the first impressions visitors experience, yet many maintenance decisions are made reactively instead of strategically. This session provides a month-by-month road map for planning and maintaining healthy, attractive church grounds throughout the year. Attendees will learn how to anticipate seasonal needs, budget for major landscape initiatives, and implement proactive maintenance practices that improve curb appeal, protect landscape investments, and create welcoming outdoor spaces for their congregation and community.
By the end of this workshop, attendees will be able to:
Develop a year-round landscape maintenance calendar that aligns seasonal services with plant health and property appearance.
Identify the optimal timing for mulch, flowers, fertilization, irrigation adjustments, arbor care, and pest management to maximize results and budget efficiency.
Build a proactive landscape planning strategy that enhances curb appeal, extends the life of landscape assets, and reduces costly emergency repairs.
Leveraging AI into Facility Stewardship (Intermediate)
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: Nathan Parr
Faithful stewardship means making wise, defensible decisions about the buildings God has entrusted to your ministry. This session shows facility teams — from senior pastors to custodial staff — how AI tools can sharpen everyday judgment: turning vague concerns into clear questions, weighing repair-versus-replace choices, and documenting the reasoning behind capital requests. Through real church examples, you’ll learn to ask better questions, verify answers, and steward both facilities and budgets with greater confidence and accountability.
By the end of this workshop, attendees will be able to:
Frame a facility question so an AI tool returns a useful, specific answer — and recognize when a response needs verification before it’s trusted in a decision.
Build a defensible case for a repair, replacement, or budget request by using AI to organize observations, options, and cost reasoning into language leadership and boards understand.
Apply a simple stewardship test to any AI-assisted decision, confirming it reflects the ministry’s priorities, real site conditions, and wise use of God-entrusted resources.
Preserving and Stewarding the Light: Stained Glass as a Ministry Asset
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: Nathan Parr and Vince Thompson
Stained glass is often a church’s most beautiful and least understood asset — a ministry tool that preaches without words yet quietly deteriorates when no one is watching. This session helps facility teams, from senior pastors to custodial staff, recognize what they’ve been entrusted with, spot early warning signs, and steward these windows wisely. Through real church examples, you’ll learn to protect their beauty, plan for their care, and make sound, defensible decisions about preservation.
By the end of this workshop, attendees will be able to:
Identify the common failure signs in stained glass and its framing — bowing, failing came, cracked glass, and deteriorating protective glazing — before they become costly emergencies.
Distinguish routine stewardship from specialized restoration, so teams know what they can responsibly maintain in-house and when to engage a qualified conservator.
Build a defensible preservation plan that weighs cost, historical value, and ministry priorities, giving leadership a clear basis for stewardship decisions
Planning for Long-Term Facility Maintenance
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: Alfredo Flores and Jason Font
This presentation will help church leaders select, evaluate, and work successfully with professional service vendors while planning for long-term facility maintenance. Using real project experience, the session will focus on trust, communication, budgeting, preventive maintenance, pricing expectations, project planning, and avoiding costly mistakes.
By the end of this workshop, attendees will be able to:
Identify key qualities of a reliable vendor.
Budget and plan for maintenance needs.
Use preventive strategies to reduce future repairs.
Masterplans for Ministry: Designing with Purpose, People & Place
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: Jacquelyn Block
Many churches and schools operate project by project, but a masterplan sets a long-term vision, prevents costly mistakes, and aligns resources with mission. In this session you’ll learn: what a masterplan is, how to engage an architecture firm, who should be involved (staff, congregation, stakeholders), and how the design/architecture process shapes phased growth. Walk away with the initial tools to lead a masterplan for thriving ministry.
What You Don’t Know Can Cost You!
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: Gary Benson & Paula Burns
Churches often assume they are protected simply because they have insurance. However, many organizations are unaware of critical coverage gaps, exclusions, or exposures that may require a separate policy or endorsement. Unfortunately, these are common issues that often don’t become known until after a loss has occurred.
In this practical and engaging session, we’ll explore some of the most frequent insurance gaps we see affecting churches today. Attendees will learn where hidden risks may exist, which questions they should be asking, and how to better evaluate whether their insurance program aligns with their ministry’s unique needs.
By the end of the session, participants will leave with practical tools and greater confidence to identify potential coverage gaps, ask informed questions of their insurance advisor, and take proactive steps to better protect their church’s people, property, and mission.
Basic Church Security and Planning
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: Dean Hensley & Ken Neubauer
This presentation will provide churches that do not have a security or safety team with some basic information on how Champion Forest started, how the integration of uniformed and non-uniform can work together to provide adequate security and safety for any church big or small, and NIMS.
After this presentation, students and attendees should have some basic information that they can take back to their church staff and leaders to come up with a plan and operational tactics to organize a security and safety team.
Facility Construction—So You Want to Build?
Session(s): Coming Soon
Presented By: Glenn Wood
Building or expanding facilities can be a daunting task. This session will discuss the building process from start to finish to provide a broad knowledge of the process, how to make it enjoyable, and some tips on making the entire project flow smoother. Glenn has built over $70M in projects for churches across the country.