Aspen Group Blog
Knowledge to navigate the intersection of church culture, leadership, ministry, and facilities.
Greg Snider joined Aspen Group, a design/build/furnish firm for churches, in 1999. Since that time, he has worked with a wide range of churches throughout the past two decades, including many large, innovative, multisite congregations. His mission is to help churches discover how to maximize their facilities and create space for ministry impact. He has written and presented on the power of connecting space, growth engines and barriers, and how to build churches for community impact.
church facilities | Relaunch Church | Rapid Relaunch | Design Week
By:
Greg Snider
October 08, 2020
Lobbies are mission critical for churches. This is the primary space where people congregate to connect with others. However, right now, your congregation is unable to have the close-knit interactions that we encourage in lobby spaces, even if you have returned for in-person worship and gathering at your church.
Multisite | church facilities | Church Culture
By:
Greg Snider
February 12, 2020
Editor's Note: Greg Snider and Josh Gregoire of Aspen Group presented a talk to a full room of leaders from across the country at Exponential in Orlando on March 3, 2020 on "3 Myths About Facilities that Keep Church Planters from Multiplying." Their presentation drew heavily from the same content featured in the post below. Based on positive feedback on the content of their talk, we're featuring this post again on our blog in case you missed it in previous weeks. Pastors who are focused on church planting and multiplying often focus on leadership and ministry as the key aspects of launching new churches. But one critical piece is almost always missing from the multiplication plan—a facility strategy.
Discover the impact Millennials' values, allegiances, and assumptions will have on your church.
By:
Greg Snider
May 24, 2019
Churches once held a place of influence at the center of our communities. In the past, many hospitals, colleges, and social services were launched out of a vision to obey Jesus’ admonition to give to the poor, clothe the naked, care for orphans, and visit the imprisoned. Churches were viewed as an anchor in our communities, and they literally were given a central place in the town square.
church building | Church Culture | Community Impact
By:
Greg Snider
February 20, 2019
In 2004, religious facility construction was an $8 billion a year industry in the U.S. That's a lot of church buildings. At the same time, other research was emerging that indicated that church attendance and growth had plateaued or was declining. We saw a massive stewardship issue—how could so many churches be renovating and building new facilities and yet not experiencing growth, either in attendance or in spiritual maturity?
Church Design | Church Culture
By:
Greg Snider
September 20, 2018
Every church is driven primarily by the same mission: To “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit . . .” (Matthew 28:19). How a church goes about making disciples can be vastly different though. To be effective, each church needs to identify its growth engines and growth barriers—aspects of ministry that either foster or inhibit growth, whether in the number of people who attend, or in their levels of spiritual maturity.
Church Design | interior design
By:
Greg Snider
July 12, 2018
The primary purpose of a church building is to provide a place for two things to happen: an opportunity for people to encounter God, and the chance to build meaningful relationships with others. These two needs for reverent space and relational space can be met through the physical layout and design of the building. In this post, we'll look at how to maximize your lobby to create relational space.
Church Design | Managing Facilities
By:
Greg Snider
January 03, 2018
When we work with churches to design ministry space, high on their wish list is storage—space to stow seasonal decorations, banners, candles, music equipment, Sunday school supplies, tables, chairs, and so on. These are legitimate storage needs. But many times adding more storage isn’t the right solution. There are high, hidden costs attached to it. Before increasing the amount of square footage devoted to storage, here are five key questions churches need to consider:
Church Design | Project Profiles | Church Construction
By:
Greg Snider
July 15, 2013
It's time to break some ground at Community Christian Church's main campus in Naperville, Illinois and expand their main campus building—affectionately called the "Yellow Box."
Church Design | Church Construction | Managing Facilities
By:
Greg Snider
May 21, 2013
This blog exists because of technology, and you're reading it today because you've embraced technology in some way. You found it in your inbox, via Google, on our website or via social media.
Church Design | Events | Multisite
By:
Greg Snider
February 26, 2013
As we’ve seen, the multisite movement is not going away anytime soon. In fact, according to Jim Tomberlin in Outreach Magazine, “there are 3,000 expressions of multisite church across North America ... 50 percent of megachurches have multiple campuses [while]another 20 percent are thinking about it.”