Bayou Church Case Study Kick-Off

We are currently working with Bayou Church in Lafayette, Louisiana to restore their building which was destroyed by Hurricane Delta in October of 2020. This extensive reconstruction involves renovating roughly 32,485 sq/ft of property and building back a centralized building to include a theater space with additional seating, a lobby, a Café with an adjoined kitchen area, and classroom space for Kindergarten through 5th grade ‘Next Gen’ students. 

Sean Walker, the Senior Pastor of the Bayou Church sat down with us and reflected on the months following the destruction of the church: “What appeared to be a setback was actually a set up from God to do something new. We don’t come to worship the building, the building is simply the tool that allows us to gather. We knew that the decisions we were making would create a ripple effect for years to come so we were determined to partner with an organization that not only had expertise in the industry but had a vision for our church’s future.” 

At the start of this project, Adam Martin sat down with Sean to gain a better understanding of the Bayou Church’s ministry, their vision, and their future aspirations. We then created two plans: a rebuild of the pre-existing structure and ‘the dream’ option. This second, ‘dream’ option “satisfied our goal of centralizing the campus and making it more efficient and impactful, so that we can continue to live out our mission of transforming lives here in Acadiana”, said Sean. Centralizing the campus into one large connected space allows the Bayou Church’s community to have all of their events in one conjoined space. 

The new building adds a theater space, a lobby, Café, and classrooms for the church's Kindergarten through 5th grade ‘Next Gen’ students. “We found that the large 800 seat auditorium is intimidating for a lot of people, so this theater will allow our smaller groups to better connect”, said Sean. KDB also designed a prep kitchen that will serve the Café on Sunday mornings and will simultaneously open up to the theater to serve the Student Ministry group on Sunday nights. 

On the original campus, the entrance to the main building wasn’t visible to the church's guests. One of our goals was to design the main entrance to be tall, visible, and inviting with many doors and a sign. The lobby and Café area just inside the main entrance should also promote fellowship by creating an area for people to congregate before and after services. Ultimately, from one spot, if you turn 365 degrees you'll see everything the campus has to offer. “It's the new spine, and central hub of our campus, and we are so excited”, said Sean. 

For the first time, the Next Gen students will be able to access their classrooms directly from the lobby instead of having to trek across campus to another building. This new space will include new private restrooms for the children as well as thoughtful spaces such as a volunteer room, resource room, health and isolation rooms, and a storage room. “A lot of time and thought has been poured into this space and it’s going to change how we get to do ministry here at the Bayou Church”, said Sean. 

Read the Interview:

Brennan Kent
So Sean, thank you for joining us. 

Sean Walker
Absolutely.

Brennan Kent
I was hoping you could maybe give us a history of the Bayou Church, and then kind of where we are today and what led up to this exciting expansion for the church campus.

Sean Walker  
This church is all I know. I mean, this place is amazing. I literally grew up here. My father was called to be the pastor here in 1984. In the 80s, and 90s, under my dad's leadership, and for sure God's hand and blessing, the growth here exploded. The point isn't the buildings like we don't come to worship the building. But it's a very important tool, it shapes the culture of our ministry. And we lost half of our campus in October 2020, Hurricane Delta, took one of our buildings about 33,000 square feet and just peeled it back like a can of sardines, the entire length of the building. It devastated the inside, messed up all the HVAC, soaked everything and was bending IBM's. And we knew that what appeared to be a setback was actually a setup, from God to do something new. And we're going to centralize the campus and make it not only new, but more efficient, more impactful, more influential. So we can continue to live out our mission of transforming lives here in Acadiana.

Brennan Kent 
That's exciting. And I know when we were first approached, I recall being asked to come almost as a construction deal, the hurricane happened, we wanted to look at rebuilding the ministry building. And I think through conversation with your team we realized that maybe we need to look into something else, and get you guys involved here to help us kind of reposition our thoughts and expand on to the building as opposed to just rebuilding something that's separated.

Sean Walker
Yeah. After the building was destroyed, we knew we had to make some very wise decisions. In the decisions we were going to make, we knew we'd have ripples for decades to come. And if we made some errors or some missteps, we were going to be in trouble for a long time. And so we knew we needed to have someone who was an expert in the industry, who had tons of experience, who was a trustworthy company, an organization that had good people, and that weren't just in it for money or for business, but we're truly trying to serve people. One of the CEOs in our church, who runs home furniture. They're a massive business, with multiple locations. And he said, You've got to talk to Kent, and I was like, tell me why. And he said, Shawn, we just lost a store in Lake Charles, other places couldn't even get into town. He said Kent was there within 24-hours and helped us begin to rebuild that store. He said their store was open months before any other furniture stores in the whole city. So it gave them this competitive advantage. That was, you know, there was no competition. And it's because he said that Kent actually cares about what they do. And then I also talked to a bunch of churches in the area. And everyone I spoke to all said the same thing. Kent is dependable, they're reliable, they come in under budget, they do what they say they're going to do. They're a joy to work with. From our first meeting. I remember thinking we're in good hands. It's clear that Kent's trying to help us win. So to go back to your question that you asked about, we didn't know what our options were when the building was destroyed. We thought okay, well, I guess we just have to rebuild it as is. And so that's when we sat down with Ken and said, the first thing we need to do is dream. We need someone who can tell us that's unrealistic. No, this is a possibility. You have this many people, this is how many square feet you need. Adam came in. And the first thing he did was get an understanding of who we were, how we do ministry, what's our vision? How do you see the future? What's your style of ministry? He showed us a couple plans. One was, here's what it would look like if you again rebuilt the Ministry Center, like you refurbished it, you redesigned it, you poured a whole bunch of money into this, you know, 50 year old building. And then he said, Now I want to show you the dream option. And I said before you show me the dream, just tell me how much more expensive it is. And he leaned into me and said it's actually less expensive when he explained because what he was able to do was to take the 33,000 square feet and redesign it more efficiently. So it's technically less square footage than the building we had. And so this idea, that we were able to go after our dream design layout of the campus and save money on square footage made us quite happy. We were very, very excited. It was so abundantly clear that this is where God had called us to not pour into what was but instead to pour into what could be and what the future held. The plan really is to take the building that we lost and take all the best parts of it and redesign it in a more efficient, more impactful, more influential way. And so because Kent understood what we needed and what we wanted, this building sets us up to accomplish our mission of transforming lives and Acadiana through Christ and relationships literally for decades to come. So we're really, really excited about the building.