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:

There’s nothing like Christmas to highlight the importance of place—a place to worship, to connect, and to grow together. As this year comes to a close, we’re grateful to have worked alongside many churches this year to create this sense of place—facilities that help people connect with God, especially at Christmas.

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.

With Thanksgiving now behind us, churches across the country turn their attention to the Christmas season—transforming their church spaces into a wonderland of shining Christmas lights, shimmering garland, and colorful poinsettias. But setting up these delightful decorations can be fraught with danger for your church staff and volunteers. To help keep you all safe this holiday season, here are some tips on how to safely set up your Christmas decorations this season.

“Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” — Ephesians 5:20 ESV We here at Aspen Group have many, many things to be grateful for—not just now in this Thanksgiving season but throughout the year. God has been good to us in 2019, connecting us with churches that are creating some amazing ministry opportunities in their communities.

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.

Ensuring you’ve got the correct number of parking spots for church attendees isn’t nearly as much fun as selecting the right fabric for all of the seats in your sanctuary. But you’ll never fill those seats if you overlook adding new spaces in your parking lot. Here’s a quick guide to determining how many parking spots your church needs.   3 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Church Building Partner