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Let’s talk about the mistake that quietly wrecks more church building design budgets than just about anything else—because it hides in plain sight.
If you didn’t budget for soft costs, you didn’t budget for reality.
It usually starts with an innocent question: “Hey, how much did your building cost?” Pastors ask other pastors this all the time. And they usually get a number in return. But here’s the problem: That number is almost always just the construction cost—not the full project cost.
It’s like asking what someone paid for their house and only hearing the mortgage—not the shelves in the garage, the sectional from Costco, the big screen on the wall, or the curtains Grandma sewed to keep the neighbors from staring in. Sure, the mortgage is part of the picture. But it’s not the whole story. And when you base your church’s building budget on that kind of number, you’re planning for about 75% of the actual cost… and pretending it’s 100%.
Every church building project has two main categories of expenses:
Hard Costs – Construction expenses. What you pay the general contractor for materials and labor.
Soft Costs – Everything else required to get the building up and running: design fees, permits, furnishings, AV systems, signage, tech infrastructure, and more.
If you’re not budgeting for those soft costs, you’re only planning to build part of your building.
Most church projects follow this rough split:
So when your “budget” only covers the construction number, you’re not building the full space—you’re just pouring the concrete and framing the walls.
The project finishes on time. It finishes on budget. At least on paper.
You step into your new building and realize…
That’s when the Facebook Marketplace scramble begins—trying to cobble together enough pieces to make your brand-new space feel like home.
The sad truth: you didn’t save anything. You just didn’t plan for it.
A big part of this confusion comes down to language.
If your capital campaign, loan approval, or internal project green light is based on construction cost alone, you’re setting yourself up to come up short.
Soft costs aren’t extras. They’re not nice-to-haves. They’re essential.
If you didn’t budget for soft costs, you didn’t budget for reality.
Missed the earlier posts in this series?
🔙 Mistake #1: Flinching Under Pressure Instead of Leading with Conviction »
🔙 Mistakes #2–4 — Team Hazards That Can Derail Your Church Building Design Project Before It Begins »
🔙 Mistakes #5-6: When Churches Budget Backwards »
