Scenario walkthroughs

Each scenario hands you a church in trouble or in transition, with goals to reach and failures to avoid. These walkthroughs follow the plans the game's own scripted player, "the steward", uses to win: a sensible pastor with no cleverness. You should do better.

How scenarios work

• Church → Goals shows the briefing, each goal with its deadline and where you stand, and the failures to avoid.
• Goals and failures are checked once a month, an hour after the monthly business. Many must hold for several months in a row.
• A goal is achieved once it holds for its months. It's missed if its deadline passes first, and a missed goal loses the game.
• A failure ends the game once it holds for its months. Some scenarios give you a few months' grace at the start.
• When every goal is achieved, you've won. After a win or a loss, the game carries on, but nothing more is checked.

Revitalize a dying parish

"The church was built in 1958 for twice the people who come now. For twenty years funerals have outnumbered baptisms, the boiler has been patched instead of replaced, and the budget has been balanced by not fixing things. The people who remain love this place and are tired."

Walkthrough

1. Stop the bleeding (month 1). Draw 5% from the endowment. Set a maintenance budget. Recruit greeters, ushers, a nursery team, and a choir. Left alone, the building never recovers, and the Baptist church often runs out of money too: the untouched parish loses every time.
2. Fix access (year 1). A Ramp at the stepped front doors, and a Hearing loop. This congregation is old, and both cost it something every week until fixed.
3. Repair the building (years 1 to 3). Run a two-year repairs campaign while the building is poor, and replace any system whose monthly risk passes 3%. Get condition to 0.6 for three months to tick off that goal.
4. Then grow (years 2 to 5). With money steadier, hire a choir director / organist once you average a $2,500 monthly surplus. Make sure every visitor is greeted. The church was built for twice as many, so you have seats.
5. Baptist only: Southern Baptists don't pledge. People give in the plate and the boxes each week they come, so the money follows Sunday attendance: every family you keep coming is income.
6. Catholic only: pay the diocesan assessment. If money is tight, pay half in the worst months; don't stop. The diocese sends the priest, and you can't let him go; if he's weak, ask for a move once he's been there two years (Staff screen). Renovations are the priest's to decide, on the finance council's advice: they take a week, not the Baptists' four, and he turns down what the parish can't pay for or most of the council is against. Propose when the council is content.

The steward's record: it wins every run in both traditions, the Baptists in about a year and a quarter, the Catholics in about three. Doing nothing never wins.

Plant in a new suburb

"The subdivisions went up in five years and there is no church for miles. Your denomination has sent you here with a core team, a planting grant, and a storefront on a strip that rents by the month."

Walkthrough

1. Fit out the storefront with what your tradition requires: a Baptistry with a Plumbing stack for Baptists, Pentecostals, and Adventists, plus a Drum kit and Sound system for Pentecostals, and Foot-washing basins for Adventists. The newcomers are there; welcome them.
2. Gather people first. Greeters from day one, a nursery, and a restroom.
3. Plan the move before the grant ends (month 48). Run an expansion campaign (the most popular cause), take a building loan, and build a sanctuary of about 150 seats beside the storefront, with a nursery or classroom.
4. Turn the storefront into the fellowship hall. Reaching the Church stage ends the lease, and with it the rent.
5. Keep the overdraft away. The plant runs close to the line. Take the loan before you need it.

The steward's record: 90% of runs as Baptists, every run as Pentecostals, about half as Seventh-day Adventists. Pentecostal worship is cheaper to furnish and owes nothing it must pay. The Baptists no longer pledge: they give in the plate and the boxes as they come, so the plant's income grows with its attendance, and gathering people first pays twice. The Adventist plant is the hardest: it worships on Saturday and keeps only Christmas and Easter of the church year, so there are few feast crowds to grow on. It sends a 15% tithe to its conference, but the conference pays its pastor. Its people give more; lean on outreach (mailings, Vacation Bible School, and the evangelistic series on Community → Evangelism) to reach 60.

Restore a fire-damaged historic church

"The church was built in 1891 and is listed: its walls, its stone altar and font, and its Gothic style are protected, so it must be restored as it was. The fire took the roof and the pews and left the nave open to the sky."

Walkthrough

1. Close the gap. Insurance covers most of it. A restoration loan and a repairs campaign cover the rest. Lean on the endowment while cash is low.
2. Propose the restoration with the Restore button on Church → Church (it shows the price and who must approve it) as soon as the parish can carry it. Members back restoring their own church readily; a bishop wants it affordable.
3. Keep the hall welcoming meanwhile. It's where visitors meet you for a year or more: greeters, a nursery, a restroom.
4. Put the furnishings back when the nave is done: pews and the tradition's furniture. The building check lists what's missing.
5. Don't fight the listing. Build around the protected walls and pieces.

The steward's record: every run as Catholics, 80% as Lutherans.

Build a cathedral across generations

"It will take longer than anyone here will serve. Pastors will retire and successors come; the children in the pews will marry and bring their own; the money will have to be raised again and again."

Walkthrough

1. Keep a building campaign going the whole time. It's how a parish this size funds stone.
2. Raise the nave's walls when cash and the campaign cover them. Don't lay the whole floor at once: an unfloored shell costs nothing to heat, so floor it in sections as you can use them.
3. Add pews as the floor goes in, then a window of stained glass every six months, then the organ (30 months to build), then the steeple. Each is a renovation: at St. Brigid's the priest decides it within a week, on the finance council's advice.
4. Lean on the foundation once the nave stands, at a sustainable rate.
5. Ask only for what the bishop will grant, and ask again for what was turned down once you can afford it.
6. Use Skip a year beside the clock (the calendar page with two arrows). Decades pass event by event: pastors retire and are replaced, generations are born, marry, and grow up.

The steward's record: 95% of runs as Catholics and every run as Lutherans, in twelve to sixteen years.

Long games: what changes over decades

• Fast-forwarding (+ Month, + Year) moves event by event instead of minute by minute. Services are still held and felt, but at once: everyone who's coming sits (or stands) as the service is decided, communion takes no time, and nobody is late.
• Clergy succession, as the tradition has it (see Staff and volunteers). A Catholic priest is moved at the end of each six-year term, his successor arriving the same day; turn moves off on the Staff screen to keep a good one. A Lutheran pastor settles for about eight years, then may be called elsewhere. Most retire after 25 years. A sent successor comes within two months; a called one after a nine-month search, with an interim pastor (and three months more) where the tradition has one.
• Generations. Couples of 22 to 40 have children. Grown children leave home at a fifth a year, half to a household of their own in the church and half away. People who have drifted away for good are forgotten each January.