What will it take for the church to regain its place in the center of our culture? I posed this question in a panel discussion with three visionary leaders: Tom Elenbaas, Harbor Churches; Mark Jobe, New Life Community Church; and Dave Ferguson, Community Christian Church. (You can see the full conversation here.)  

Carl Chinn, a church security writer, researcher, and consultant, has been tracking deadly force incidents at churches since 1999. According to his findings, 2017 was the worst year for church violence with 118 violent deaths reported at houses of worship. Though statistically an active shooter is a low security threat for churches, gun violence is what makes the news and creates a ripple effect of fear among churchgoers.

Every year we like to look back and see which topics featured on website addressed the top felt needs of our readers. Here is our round-up of the top five most-read articles and resources for 2019:

Your church has decided it’s ready to renovate or build a new facility. Your next big decision will be to determine who you’ll hire as your church building partner. Many church bylaws and rules of governance dictate a due diligence process that includes soliciting multiple firms with a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) or a Request for Proposal (RFP) as a primary means for comparing building partners.

Sometimes, churches fall into a trap of thinking that building generosity for community impact simply means building something external like a community center or a coffee shop in order to inspire people to give more to the church. According to Julie Bullock, Senior Generosity Strategist at Generis, cultivating true generosity, actually has less to do with what people are giving to and more about what people are giving from.

Anyone who considers adding a gymnasium to a church construction project or upgrading an existing gym space knows how large of a project it is to tackle. For some churches, building a gymnasium is a massive undertaking that reaps significant ministry rewards. For other churches, however, building a gym is a diversion from God’s plan and a waste of precious resources.

Since 1997, Community Christian Church has relentlessly pursued its mission of helping people find their way back to God. By 2010, however, it had become harder and harder to accomplish that mission at their main Naperville, Illinois, location. They had been holding five services every weekend in the “gymnatorium”—a gymnasium that doubled as an auditorium for Sunday worship.

When you see leadership potential in someone at your church, how do you develop them into leaders, especially when they’re new in the faith? According to Dave Ferguson, lead pastor of Community Christian Church, a multisite church with 12 locations throughout Chicagoland (including 2 within prisons) and cofounder of NewThing Network and Exponential, it takes an intentional strategy of leadership development to grow new leaders.

When Brady Boyd was brought on as pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO, it was to replace the founding pastor in the wake of a public scandal. “The staff was hurt and wounded and wondering if the church’s best days were behind,” said Boyd in an address he gave at the 2019 Outreach Summit. One hundred days after Boyd started at New Life, a gunman opened fire on the church’s campus, killing two teenage girls before committing suicide in the children’s wing. “Everyone wrote off New Life with these two tragedies,” he said.

When Christ Community Church was originally built, Simpsonville, SC, where the church is located, was a rural setting. Today, Simpsonville is a rapidly developing suburb. Streets surrounding the church have become much more heavily travelled, and the increased noise from traffic was making it difficult to hear within the sanctuary during worship services.