Church Design

Parkview Community Church, nestled in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is a large, growing church, especially known for its outstanding children’s ministry. The original space was built in the 1950s/1960s era, and like any typical church building, it had been added onto, rearranged, renovated, and slowly updated throughout the years. Their most recent update was completed around 2010.

One of the greatest tools a church has available to reach people for Christ is their actual, physical building. Here are three stories of churches that intentionally sought to create space within their buildings for the purpose of reaching people within their communities. Each story reflects a desire to leverage ministry space for the common good and use the church building for more than Sunday morning worship.

Since 1970, Cogun, a co-founding partner with Aspen Group of the Cornerstone Knowledge Network, was in the business of helping churches create space to better facilitate worship and ministry. Over the course of the past 45 years, Cogun completed nearly 690 projects, representing three quarters of a billion square feet of ministry space, and consulted with nearly 2,000 building committees.

Jessica Stollings, author, speaker, and founder of ReGenerations, discussed the power of "generational intelligence" at Aspen Group's Pastors Lunches this year.

“Is your church a giver or a taker?” When Rick Thiemke asked this question at Aspen’s Pastors Lunch in 2008, he challenged local pastors to be intentionally missional wherever their church was at that time.

You change the message on your roadside church signage to get people to notice it. You just likely don’t want Ed Stetzer from Christianity Today to notice it.

As technology has developed over the years, the church has tried to keep pace. Churches in the 1920s streamed services and messages over radio broadcasts, attempting to reach a wider audience and draw new members into physical church buildings. When television became a prominent feature in many American homes, however, Christianity tapped this technology to reach the millions who tuned in to hear the message.

Let’s reflect on the game of football. Two teams compete to carry, throw, or kick an oblong ball (inflated or deflated) into their opponent’s zone at the end of the field or through the uprights behind that zone. Doing so results in points, and the team with the most points wins the game.