Church on Wheels

Portable Church Industries is exactly what the name implies. They provide a turnkey solution for churches that have no building. Congregations lease places like schools, theatres, or video arcades for Sunday services, and hire van der Harst to design a system for storing, transporting, and assembling everything from audio equipment to coffee pots each week.

His experience came firsthand in the late 80's while helping plant a local church. After studying what he calls rolling disasters, van der Harst designed products to streamline the Sunday process. By 1993, the homeless congregation of 1300 seamlessly set up in a high school every week while curious onlookers watched. After leaving the church staff, van der Harst was strictly a consultant for other portable churches until one client used cheaper parts and material than he should have.

"Nothing worked right," says van der Harst. "That's when I realized pastors are in the life change business, not project management or equipment acquisition." From that point on, Portable Church Industries began selling customized equipment encased in easily unpacked containers that fit into 24' trailers solving both storage and transportation problems.

First, I find out the client's vision and design a system that can be set up and torn down efficiently and effectively," says van der Harst. "I prepare a report that shows everything from wiring layouts to where the signs go, to how each container fits in the trailer." Nearly 80% of all consultations result in orders. "Delivery is the final side of the business, teaching people how everything works. Our goal is to make an intuitively obvious starter system that a client can operate from day one."

"Thou shall not steal"

Minding the seventh commandment, van der Harst sometimes borrows ideas from previous employers to help solve a client's problems. The idea for their casing systems, the containers that roll on and off the trailers, came from the way UPS loaded igloo systems into a cargo 757 aircraft when he worked for them. He simply built a wooden equivalent that fits into a truck. Similarly, he took ideas from the robotics industry to make setting up and tearing down sound systems quicker.

Occasionally van der Harst repeats design principals used on the 150 churches he's already done, but each client's needs are unique depending on where the congregation meets and what they want. "Speaker systems," he says, "vary when you get into highly reverberant spaces like a gymnasium. One church wanted an entire recreation room with a foosball game, table tennis, and a pool table. The Usher-Greeter area includes variables like a coffee bar, interior and exterior signage, or a full-fledged bookstore. But in Hawaii, the Usher-Greeter area is outdoors, and they use cube vans rather than our 24' trailers because of the turning radii on the island terrain."

Christian Creativity

The fifteen employees at Portable Church Industries manufacture some items, albeit reluctantly, according to van der Harst. "We manufacture in-house when we can't find a good enough item out there. For example, black extension cords. Everything is bright orange or yellow, so we make our own. We build our own cases, but only because we exceeded the capacity of an outside company to build them fast enough. It's too easy to dissipate your focus and worry about whether you can keep your case guys busy. I'd rather be launching churches."

Still, van der Harst has no choice but to create some one-of-a-kind items. "If a children's group meets in the upper level of a gymnasium that has an open pipe railing system, you don't want a two-year-old climbing through and falling to the gym floor. We design a barricade that straps to the pipe."

Selling Salvation

What van der Harst calls multi-avenue marketing is apparently working. "We've run print ads in the Leadership Journal and Worship Leader since 1994. People are finding our web site, being referred by previous clients, and seeing us at conferences."

Alan Jenkins, Executive Pastor at Sienna Valley Community Church in Sugar Land, Texas, knew even before his consultation with van der Harst that he would hire him. "They're well-known in this business," he says. "They knew what we were up against every week and knew tricks of the trade that we didn't."

Using a Portable Church Industries system, it takes 20-30 people two hours to set up for Sienna Valley's 200-300 member congregation, which has met each Sunday for 2-1/2 years in the same public school. "We have church for an hour," Jenkins says, "and it takes another few hours to tear down. But we used to store everything in someone's garage, rent a truck, and carry each thing piece at a time. People stuck stuff in the trailer and tried to get it back in the right place. We were always looking for a missing bin. Now we have clearly labeled containers on casters that you just grab and push to where they need to be. It's all organized in our truck and four trailers."

Home, Sweet Home

Mel Malkoff, president of Malkoff and Associates in Villa Park, California, for nearly 30 years, says most of his clients would pull their hair out trying to do that sort of stuff. "It's tough enough even in temporary facilities to set up and tear down, not just every Saturday night and Sunday for worship but for any other program." Malkoff helps churches across the country with growth planning, permits, land acquisition, and financing.

"Most of our small clients lease industrial space or room in a business park or office building but they are established, not portable. We call it Insta-church. It works until you grow your congregation and raise enough money or qualify for financing." Even then, acquiring land or a building can take up to two years, according to Malkoff.

Alan Jenkins agrees that being a portable church is very demanding and very labor intensive. "Nobody wants to be a portable church," he says. "We want to be successful at reaching people. Write me a check for $10 million, and we will buy a building."

No Place to Go but Up

Predictions of an economic slowdown don't frighten van der Harst, who believes few churches will sink capital into a building if that happens. "It comes down to dollars and cents," he says. "Most fixed site churches cost about $5,000 per seat. I can do for $400,000 what they can do for $25 million. When people are trying to preserve cash, it's an option."

Revenue at Portable Church Industries exceeded $2.5 million in 2000, according to van der Harst. "We're still an immature business and I'm still trying to figure out how to run this thing. We'd love to do everything all over the world but it's difficult because of exchange rates, cultures, and red tape. Right now, we only have enough bays to assemble 14 churches at once and we don't want to do any more than five deliveries on a weekend. Then again, sometimes God uses a 2'x4' to smack you upside the head and change your direction. That's how I ended up in this thing. It's the non-business plan step of faith that may not be politically incorrect to talk about but it's real."