Mondays on the blog are about sending you an excerpt from a book on Sunday School, groups, or general leadership principles. Today I’ve chosen to go to a book titled Great Expectations to share with you a paragraph from the author. In it he talks about how expensive clutter is. Hopefully, you’ll never see it again in the same way you may have in the past. Churches tend to accumulate pianos, couches, tables, and other things that the church has either purchased or members have donated. Just how expensive are those items to the church? Getting something for free doesn’t necessarily make it free. Consider this:

“Perhaps nothing squeezes against the psychology of invitation like clutter. Clutter is expensive! Wayne Poling, a Sunday School Specialist at LifeWay and the compiler of The Sunday School How-To Manual, tells about using a tile square to demonstrate how expensive clutter can be. Let’s say new construction is priced at one hundred dollars per square foot. Take the square foot of the tile and carry it around the building with you. How much is the space under the broken pool table costing you? The space under the inefficient old sofas in the youth lounge: The space under the inoperable computers that people have donated to the church?”

So let’s do some quick calculations based on the warning from the author about the real cost of clutter. Every table in a classroom costs something; let’s say that a table measures 3 ft. X 6 ft., or 18 square feet. Every table in a classroom is sitting on top of education space that is valued at $1800 (18 sq. ft X $100 per square foot of construction costs). Now imagine if a classroom has 4 tables for adults to use…that’s almost $6000 of floor space!!

A donated couch in the student ministry area is approximately 4 ft. X 6 ft., or 24 square feet. That old run-down couch is sitting on top of $2400 worth of education space! Clutter is expensive – it’s better to rid your rooms of clutter and use the space to place people in Bible study.

How expensive is the clutter at your church? You might be surprised how expensive it is for your classrooms to hold junk that could be thrown away in order to place chairs (and people) into Bible study groups.

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