The secret to successful church design is often found in the planning. Sadly, few churches today are properly equipped by either training or experience to understand the best way to navigate the church design process. Church design must begin, and be guided by, vision. Vision and mission are the twin lens through which the entire design process, and all the questions therein, are examined. Once vision and mission are understood, these needs must then be mapped into land and space requirements. This is one of the areas where experience plays such an important role. Once needs are determined, it is equally important to understand the financial limitations. The financial ability of the church will drive the scope (size) of the building design, the needs of the ministries will determine how the church's floor plans are laid out.
To better understand the church design process, I recommend the book "Preparing to Build", which can be found here. Preparing to Build will teach how your church can vastly improve both its satisfaction with the outcome of the building program and save tons of money The book also contains an entire chapter on church building guidelines, plus information on financing, organizing a building committee and so much more.
One of the greatest ways in church design can be found in a relatively new offering. It is now possible to purchase church building plans from previous church building programs. This not only saves the church a great deal of time in the design process, but usually allows the church to get its construction drawings at a savings of 50% or more. And don't worry that you have to sacrifice what you want or need to match an existing plan, these plans can be easily customized by any licensed architect, providing a customized set of church construction drawings at half the cost, or less, of drawing the plans from scratch. A huge added benefit is that the church can take the stock building plans and send them out to bid to determine a real cost to build prior to spending money to customize the building plans. This can save tens of thousands of dollars in church design costs, plus greatly shorten up the design and construction process.
There are several firms, that offer church designs from previous construction projects., however, the fastest & simplest way to find the building plans that best suit your church's needs is to let an agent perform a church building plans search. Your agent will have access to hundreds of building plans, and is adept at helping translate your needs into a church design that also fits your building budget.