“Peel!” my daughter exclaims, grabbing a new letter from the Bananagrams pile. In this word game, this means she has used up all of her available tiles and we both now have to draw another one. Good for her, bad for me.
I stare at my letters and can’t find a way to make any words with what is out on the table. Bananagrams has some similarities to the classic word game Scrabble. The game comes in a yellow banana-shaped pouch filled with small tiles that have a single letter on them, like Scrabble. Also like Scrabble, the goal is to build a grid of words with the letters you draw.
The similarities to Scrabble end there. In Scrabble, once a word is played, it stays in place. In Bananagrams, you constantly dismantle and rebuild your words as new letters arrive. That flexibility is not optional. It is how you win. And that is why I lose to my daughter every time we play.
“Peel!” she says again moments later. She has removed two words from the table and remade them into three new words. I just sit there with my heart racing.
She is so skilled at remaking words that she leans over and says, “Dad, you could do this…” showing me some options while still playing against me. I do what she says, but she wins easily a few minutes later. She is 19 now, but she has been beating me at Bananagrams for more than a decade.
My daughter is quick to adjust to new realities — the words already there, the letter she draws each time she says “Peel,” the emerging matrix of options on the table. I struggle with this. I can play one word after the other, but once a word is on the table, I have a very hard time taking the letters back to reform them into something else.
Property development is difficult for many church leaders for the same reason I struggle with Bananagrams: Once we have assembled a plan, we become attached to it. But successful development requires us to take plans apart, respond to new information and rebuild the plans into something that still serves the larger mission.
The game of Bananagrams has helped me understand how property development works and given me greater empathy for church leaders that struggle with the process of developing their property.
The principles involved in neighborhood engagement, feasibility, financing, zoning, design and construction are not so difficult that only a small number of people can understand them. In fact, I believe that many leaders, churches and governing bodies can learn to do mission-forward community development on church land.
What makes development exhausting is not primarily its technical complexity — it is the repeated experience of believing a decision has been settled, only to discover that new information requires the team to reopen it.
The process of moving from imagination and ideation all the way to opening a new housing development or community center is not linear. It requires constant adjusting to new information and realities. An initial concept will be reshaped by new financing realities and changing construction costs. It will have to respond to input from neighborhood groups and municipal planning departments. New partners may emerge along the way, and expected partners may drop out. Digging at the construction site may uncover surprises that require plans to shift. Even the weather can add an unexpected twist to a project.
When I was leading the effort to redevelop the parking lot of Pres House in Madison, Wisconsin, into a seven-story apartment building for 250 residents, one of many pivot points came about because of parking. Parking-related difficulties show up in almost all projects at some point. In our case it led to a major change in the project.
Our original plan was to build a six-story building over an underground parking garage. We were building on the entirety of our parking lot, so we naturally planned for underground parking to replace what we were losing on the surface. Our California-based architects had built an amazing 3D model of the development.
But our large and powerful surrounding neighbor, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, made it clear that they would oppose the project if we included underground parking because they also had plans to develop the area around our building into a pedestrian-only arts district. They were willing to go to the city and the public with their objection. This meant we either had to engage in a political and public battle with a billion-dollar organization and risk the project failing or play Bananagrams and make some big changes.
We devised a new plan. The underground parking was removed, and the building height was raised to become seven stories of apartments. We negotiated an arrangement with the university to have access to their parking ramps for our staff and some residents. Ultimately the university gave us their full support, and the project was approved by the city. Pres House staff members who drive to work now have to park a couple of blocks from the office, but the change came with some unexpected upsides. What initially felt like a major setback ultimately reduced costs, increased the number of housing units, and gained the university’s support.
The original six-story model with underground parking still sits in Pres House today. It is a visible reminder of how even when the model looks finished, developing church property is always a game of flexibility.
So how do church leaders deal with this way of being and leading? How do we move projects toward completion while also continually adapting along the way to form new words? How do we avoid getting totally stuck so we can see the vision realized?
The starting place is to simply recognize and accept that developing property is more like Bananagrams than Scrabble. As much as we might want development to unfold in a linear fashion, it won’t. When I share initial ideas and plans for development with church leaders I’m working with, I explain that what I’m describing and showing is not what will actually get built. Getting too attached to something that has been proposed early in the process will make it much more difficult and complicated. Flexibility can be understood as remaining open to the movement of the Holy Spirit while staying rooted in the mission to which we have been called.
Holding a posture of openness to change in most of the aspects of the project will make developing property more enjoyable and realistic. At the same time, it is impossible to hold all options and possibilities forever. Decisions need to be made along the way. Ideas have to be shaped into adaptable plans, but plans nonetheless.
So how can we balance openness with forward movement, and commitments with flexibility? The answer is not to remain flexible about everything. It is to become clear about what must remain fixed so that everything else can change.
Here are some questions to help think about what should not change:
- What core community impact outcomes do you want to see in a development project? Why are you doing this project? Get clear about the mission and stick to it throughout the process.
- What values do you want to hold onto while doing this work? For example, if you are committed to sharing the wealth that is created in property development with the neighborhood, perhaps in the form of affordability or shared benefit, don’t relinquish that value while you move the letters around in the game.
- What goals do you have for how the project will impact your congregation? Do you need to generate a certain amount of income for the project to be successful? Are you hoping to renovate your church space for the future? Keep those goals in mind as you shift the words around.
- What governance and decision-making process will you use to make decisions as things change? Churches often get tripped up or slowed down by not working out how to make decisions in real-time and who will make them. Good governance is critical, but development decisions cannot wait for a monthly board meeting. Establish a process and leadership approach that fits your context, and use it to make quick pivots.
These four questions form the edges of the table the game is played on. Within those boundaries — Bananagrams is on!
The process of property development is one of committing and reshaping; then reshaping and committing again, over and over, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, until the project is complete.
As my daughter has shown me so well, there is no way to know what words will appear when beginning a game of Bananagrams. But if we are willing to trust the process of creation and re-creation, integrate new letters, and keep playing, it can be fun and we can build beautiful new projects for our communities. May we be open to the spirit with our buildings, land and money. Peel, pivot and keep building.
