Quick look at Gateway

I tired to snap some good pictures of Gateway church while I was out there last week. Unfortunately, the battery died on me while taking pictures, so I didn’t get a chance to take pictures of all of the campus.

The building is two years old. For several years the church leased an old Jewish synagogue closer to Downtown Austin. They eventually bought land a little further north and built a few buildings. The property looks like it is pretty much maxed out with a little growing room for maybe one more building (maybe for student ministries or something). In the new multi-site model, this really isn’t such a big deal as the idea isn’t necessarily to build a mega-campus.

When you drive up it feels more like a high end shopping/office park than a church. The architecture and colors are very modern and inviting. Everything was built around a courtyard of sorts to facilitate gathering before and after services.

The first building you typically see is the “Garage”/Office building. It’s a rectangular building that houses the coffee shop/bookstore as well as a good size meeting area for breakouts, classes and even student ministry services. It has two large garage doors that open up to the courtyard making it a great gathering place when the weather is great (which is most of the year). The upstairs is all the offices.

Across the courtyard is the auditorium. It’s a very nice/functional building that doesn’t have an enormous lobby (since so much room is available in the courtyard). It’s almost more of a large hallway that runs along the back of the auditorium. The auditorium has huge, floor to ceiling, glass windows on either side of the stage letting in tons of natural light but can be covered if darkness is needed. The auditorium is flat with stadium seating in the back. It’s a great looking auditorium.

Just beside the auditorium is the Kid’s Quest building. Although it is a separate building, it attached on the second floor (leading into the back/top of the stadium seating in the auditorium). The lobby features a huge boat which is where families check in using Fellowship One. On either side of the boat are entrances to Early Childhood. The Nursery features several beautiful, large and independently themed rooms. The Preschool offers large themed rooms with a large central area where the kids gather for “Elmer’s Playhouse,” a really great teaching environment involving Elmer, a big blue puppet. He’s like a rockstar to these kids.

The upstairs is for Elementary space. There are three rooms. One is being used for K-2nd one for 3rd-5th. The other is actually being used by the five-year olds as there are so many of them! The entire building has an adventure/quest look and feel which is a lot of fun! It’s by far the nicest facility I’ve worked at. I’m certainly excited about this!