About Us
Our History
In the beginning, there were church architectural services.
Church Development Services (CDS) was founded over 25 years ago to assist churches with the design and construction of their facilities. Over that time, we have created a comprehensive library of pre-designed church building plans that we make available to churches at a significant discount.
Church Development Services has only ever worked with church and church-related building projects. Our church plans have been built all over the continental United States. Our model of delivery has always been and will continue to be ministry focused.
In 2010, CDS expanded the scope of its architectural services through the acquisition of the web sites ChurchPlansForLess.com and DigitalChurchPlans.com, making CDS the largest source of online church plans in the world. CDS has a library of nearly 1,000 stock plans that can be modified to meet the needs of nearly any church, large or small. By starting from a stock plan and with our ministry pricing model, we typically deliver traditional architectural services for about half of the market rate.
Four Divisions – One Goal - CDS is more than a premier church design and architectural firm. In addition to the church design division, CDS is comprised of three other divisions, church consulting, financial services, and construction. Today, CDS can meet every need a church will have in the journey from planning to dedication of its new facilities. For more information, please see our Services page.
Our Spiritual Focus
Church Development Services is a paid ministry whose goal is to honor scripture and provide superior value to the church.
Church building is our ministry, and we make it our business to ensure churches spend their resources wisely. We put honoring God, ministering to the church, and helping the church become more effective in winning souls as our priorities.
Our ministry role is to get involved when facilities hinder the work of ministry, but our ministry does not stop with the local church. As a company, we support the ministries of the Orphan Network and Young Life Capernaum and others with our time, talent, and financial support.
Visit our Statement of Faith page.
Our Mission
Our mission is to honor God by providing affordable, value-added church building solutions.
We do this through education, consulting, affordable design, and cost-saving construction methods tailored to the unique needs of each church. Church Development Services provides any or all of the missing ingredients to a successful church building program.
To minimize potential negative results in church building, Church Development Services started an on-site consulting service more than ten years ago to compliment our low cost, “pre-designed” church building plans. Within the church, Building Committees often have difficulty leading the church to a final resolution because of vital missing ingredients. Church Development Services and our network of resources consult with churches to provide proven processes and answers to their specific church building questions. We minister to, and support the church from initial consulting through construction, providing one relationship with many benefits.
How do we accomplish Our Mission?
- Through consultations leading to designs that are ministry driven, budget conscious, sensitive to cost-savings techniques, and are tailored to fit the individual needs of each church.
- By not only helping you plan well, but also helping your church raise the money to achieve the vision.
- With our architects and engineers who specialize in church and church-related building design, people with an understanding of church, a love of the Lord and His church, and ministry pricing.
- Our construction management process delivers your project at the lowest cost, and assures cost savings pass through to the church and reinforces the church’s control over their project.
- By providing or arranging church financing, through traditional and non-traditional sources, including but not limited to loans, mezzanine financing, second mortgages, bond programs, individual investors and lease-purchase arrangements.
- In partnership with commercial developers who can help take excess land and turn it into an income-producing asset to fund ministry.
- By being able to provide a complete turnkey solution for your church development campaign.