About Me
I was born and raised in Virginia as a preacher’s kid. I spent most of my youth in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, graduating from Menchville High School in Newport News. I received an undergraduate degree in Architecture from the University of Virginia and spent 16 great years in Charlottesville during which time I worked for about 11 years on the design and construction of healthcare projects and also completed my MBA from Averett University.
On the personal side I’ve been fortunate to have been married to my wonderful wife Lisa since 1993 and we have been blessed with three beautiful children – Brooke, Hannah, and Wes.
In 2003 I took a job that moved my career in a new direction–working with churches around the country–with Church Development Fund and in 2004 we moved to Atlanta, Georgia to further that career. In 2005 I began a new position out of Atlanta with CDF’s sister company as a Project Executive for Visioneering Studios, an architectural, urban planning, and design and development firm based out of Irvine, California with other offices in Denver, Colorado and Chicago, Illinois. In late 2010 Visioneering acquired a firm in Charlotte, North Carolina and in July 2011 we moved our family back northward so I could work with that office. We built a house in Tega Cay, South Carolina just across the state line from Charlotte and have settled in.
It’s been an incredible journey that God has led me on, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to work with some of the most dynamic and fastest growing churches in the country as well as spend time with incredible people both as coworkers, clients, and friends.
Of course my opinions on this site are mine alone and don’t necessarily represent those of my employer, any of the churches or other clients I work with, or anyone else for that matter. Thanks for visiting, and feel free to comment or drop me a line at jcforehand@gmail.com. By the way “Jody” is my nickname and what my family and friends have called me since birth, but “Joel” is my given name (don’t ask me why). You may come across either name out there in the real or cyber world, so don’t get confused, it’s one and the same person.
Great site and I hope I get to know more about you guys in the future!
jody [or joel] tell me more about what you do with church design, environments?
Matt, I work for Visioneering Studios (http://www.VisioneeringStudios.com/) and we provide master planning, architectural design, project management, environmental design, and other related services to churches nationwide. We’ve been blessed to work with some amazing churches around the country including Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA), Elevation Church (Charlotte, NC), Austin Stone Community Church (Austin, TX), Mariners Church (Irvine, CA), Southeast Christian Church (Louisville, KY), and more than 100 others over the last decade and we’re currently working with National Community Church in Washington, DC among many others. We also work with parachurch groups like schools, universities, etc., and continue to do select secular projects to keep sharp regarding the latest in cutting edge design.
If you go to the front page of my blog, you can check out pictures of some of our projects by clicking on my Flickr site.
We specialize in utilizing each church’s unique DNA and ministries to design cost-effective, culturally relevant projects. We are working with churches who are redefining “church” from a half-day a week single use structure that sits empty the rest of the week, to vibrant, multi-use Christ-centered communities that are often active seven days a week. I’d be glad to discuss this in deeper detail if you want to contact me with any further questions. Thanks for your visit!
God bless you, your family, and all of your endeavors Jody!
How great God is!!!
Thanks. God bless you too.
well done! what a cool post – really innovative stuff
Thanks. Glad you stopped by.
Jody,
I find it interesting that you are blogging about many diverse things. As an architect and as a believer I was drawn to your site. My blog is about architecture, but I don’t hide my faith in Christ.
Great to see what you are doing.
Lee,
Thanks for your note. What greater creative inspiration could an architect have than the creator of the universe and the beauty of His creation. I write about what I find interesting, maybe too diverse at times, but I enjoy it and wish I had time to write more.
Just watched the trump video about the rule of committee. I am on the church building committee and I would like to show this video to the other members. How would I go about copying or downloading it?
Thank you for your time and God Bless.
Larry Skiles
Larry,
The video on that post I did about Building Committees (http://wp.me/piNj0-fc) just was an embedded link to a video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Wac3aGn5twc). If you do a Google search there are some sites that can capture videos from sites like YouTube so you can save them if you are trying to show this to a group of people where you won’t have web access. Good luck with your project.