This practical and comprehensive guide offers essential and expert advice on every aspect of caring for churches. A money-saving handbook for all who care for and maintain church buildings, it provides expert advice from a leading church architect and an experienced heritage buildings specialist. Drawn from extensive experience of working with local churches, they also show how church buildings can be tools for contemporary mission, packed with potential for effective engagement with the whole community. They cover a wide range of practical issues that affect church buildings, from caring for medieval masonry to installing multimedia electronic systems, and offer essential information and easy-to-follow advice on: • heating, lighting and energy efficiency • installing a kitchen or toilets • dealing with damp • treating timber decay • making your building accessible • what to do about bats • health and safety • seating options • fonts and baptisteries and much more. In addition, this handbook offers a step-by-step guide to planning and implementing an extension or a reordering project, including advice on public consultation, dealing with diocesan committees and fundraising. An annual calendar of basic church care is included, plus a church health checklist and a basic church buildings audit.

"'It is a comprehensive handbook rooted in the realities of parish life.'" - Church Times