Church Design

Children are a key factor in selecting a church home. But children’s programs, teaching, and activities aren’t the only aspects we take into consideration when deciding on a church. In recognition of Father’s Day, we’ve assembled a list of six ways that churches can create a dad-friendly experience for first-time visitors and members alike:

In 1963, Edward T. Hall coined the term “proxemics” to describe the perception of the physical space around us. When social scientists examine this perception of connecting space, they generally speak of four zones: Intimate (<2’) Personal (2-4’) Social (4-12’) Public (>12’) We need to design for connection across all four zones to foster healthy, dynamic social lives. Let’s take a look at each of these zones.

When I shared "The Five Steps of Leadership Development," you may remember numbers 1-4 ended with “We talk.” People always ask, “What do we talk about? What do I talk to these leaders about?” Let’s walk through six simple questions to go through in a coaching relationship with new church leaders. I’ll use Tony as my apprentice example.

Many studies have been conducted and much has been written exploring the trend of Millennials (born roughly 1980-2000) leaving the church. A survey done by Barna Group, for instance, shows that between high school and age 30, 43% of Millennials who were once active in their faith have stopped attending church regularly. Additionally, more than 50% of these young adults with a Christian background say they are less active in the church compared to when they were 15.

Creating a vibrant and functional children’s ministry space, while communicating your church’s vision and DNA through it, is no small task. Use these four tips to help you as you start to envision your new design.

When I first started working on architecture projects for churches, I began to see ministry space with a more critical eye. I became aware of traffic flow, aesthetics, and details of how church buildings were laid out. But it wasn’t until my first child was born that I began to see ministry space through a new lens—a mother’s eyes.

In our consulting work at Multisite Solutions, we get weekly calls from churches asking two questions: So, why should a church merge? Should we do this or not? When I meet with the two involved parties, usually two senior pastors or a senior pastor and a board member, we talk about the following questions they should also be exploring:

Around 2009, my friend Warren Bird, at Leadership Network, called and asked if I was seeing a lot of mergers in my multisite church consulting. I was, and he was seeing the same. “God is doing something,” Warren said. “We ought to write a book about it.” A couple of years later, we published the book, Better Together, Making Church Mergers Work. Originally, like many pastors and church leaders, I had a vague, negative idea about church mergers. We didn't see it coming when we started thinking about multisite during my years at Willow Creek Community Church, but mergers have become an unintended consequence of the multisite movement.

In part 1 of this series, we examined six keys for a successful church restart. According to Mark Jobe, lead/founding pastor or New Life Community Church in Chicago, a restart can be a story of redemption rather than as a “take-over.” In part 2, Jobe uses the acronym GRACE to describe how to discern whether the restart process is right for your church and God-honoring ways to embark on a restart journey.

New Life Community Church is a multicultural, multisite church that gathers in 25 locations, each with live preaching. When we first started launching new sites, I didn't know hardly anyone else that was doing it. Today, there are many churches taking this approach, and it's a great strategy.  Of our 25 New Life sites, about 14 of them were born out of a “restart.” This is the term we use when an older church has invited us to move into their existing building that was on the verge of closing and restart the church under the New Life banner. Though we didn’t set out with a plan to engage in restarts, they’ve become an important part of New Life’s multiplication strategy.