Church Design

The first season of the Making Space Podcast is a wrap! Thanks for joining us for this eight-part series hosted by Jay Kim and Benjamin Windle. If you missed it, you can listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify (or wherever you listen to podcasts), and you can learn more here. During this season, Jay and Benjamin unpacked the Barna and Aspen Group research, Making Space for Inspiration, and delved into how physical space impacts our formation as we experience Jesus together and interact with those in our community. They sat down with various leaders and thinkers to discuss how nature affects our spiritual lives, the value of historic buildings in our digital era, what the church can learn from the design of retail spaces, and offered key takeaways. The following is a quick recap.

Aspen Group, a leading design-build-furnish firm providing integrated solutions for new church facilities, additions, and renovations recently announced the promotion of Vice President of Design and Integrated Services, Derek DeGroot, to the role of President. DeGroot follows Brad Eisenmann in the role, after Eisenmann’s 28-year service to the company.

So much goes into designing church services that are inviting, inspiring, and transformative. Here at Aspen, we believe that same intentionality should also be applied to the physical spaces in which we meet and worship. That’s why we’ve partnered with Barna Group on a new series of research reports called Making Space: Why Church Design Matters in Ministry.

One of the things that makes Aspen Group unique is our integrated Design-Build-Furnish approach. This means our designers, construction teams, project managers, estimating team, and interior designers all collaborate together under one roof to bring the most innovative solutions to our church building projects.

2021 was a busy year of partnering with churches and ministries on new facilities, renovations, and space refreshes! The following five videos feature churches and schools we’ve teamed up with to solve their unique ministry problems, and give their spaces maximum impact so they can ultimately reach more people for Jesus.

We had a blast celebrating Aspen’s second annual Design Week! We focused on five unique projects our team has worked on in different regions around the country. If you missed it, not to worry—here’s a quick recap:

What makes your church your church? The distinctive elements within your building that tell the story of who you are as a faith community? Kevin Miller, Senior Pastor at Church of the Savior in Wheaton, Illinois, shares insights he gleaned from his own experience leading his previous church—Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois—through a major adaptive reuse building project. He explores three keys for discovering the essential elements that make your church distinct in a video series titled, “Telling Your Church’s Unique Story.”

In every great story, there’s a backdrop. There’s a setting that contains the actors and their actions and helps to provide more context and meaning to the storyline. But sometimes, that backdrop can get lost within the narrative…seen merely as a scene.

Can an older brick church serve as a beacon of light in a city blighted by violence and economic distress? Can a newer big-box church serve as a community hub in its affluent suburban neighborhood? Two churches. Two very different stories. Both united by a common goal to bring the Gospel to a broken world.

When Aspen Group, as a founding partner of the Cornerstone Knowledge Network (CKN), embarked on the Making Space for Millennials (MSFM) research project with Barna Group, we knew this would be a study with a long tail. Since releasing the MSFM report in 2014, Aspen has been exploring findings that surfaced from this national survey in various blog posts, conferences, and live events.