Throughout 2018, we've published a year's worth of blog posts to help leaders like you maximize your ministry impact. Here are our Top 5 most-read blog posts for 2018:

Church building projects often grow out of a need for more space, or a desire to adapt existing space to better suit a church’s ministry goals. Leaders will often call Aspen Group with pressing questions—questions that relate to tactical aspects of adding on space, such as how much square footage to build, or how many seats to add in the sanctuary to accommodate growth.

"We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:14 From a stable to our sanctuaries, wherever Jesus makes himself known is sacred space. It has been our privilege to partner with churches to make space for Immanuel, "God with us."  

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.

During Aspen Group’s 2018 Alignment Conference, Josh Gregoire, Church Relations Coordinator for Aspen, facilitated a panel discussion about structuring churches to help them regain impact in their communities. The panel included three influential church leaders: Dave Davis, Parkview Community Church; Matt DeMateo, New Life Centers of Chicagoland; Mike Martin, All Nations Worship Assembly. Here are four tips these leaders shared for increasing your church's impact in your community:

I have three children in their 20s. Once in a while, they still ask me, "Dad, what do you do for a living?" The best way I know to describe it is that I help people navigate change. Change is constant. Having worked with organizations in the social, private and public space for years, we've discovered certain patterns of change. And based on those patterns, we created the following Change Formula to help with that process:

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Psalm 107:1  At Aspen Group, we have much to be thankful for this year. In 2018, we completed several new church design-build-furnish projects, and we launched many new ones in South Carolina, North Carolina, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Texas. It’s a privilege to partner with churches as they embark on a building project to expand and enhance their ministry impact. If you’d enjoy following our progress on these projects, be sure to subscribe to our blog and monthly newsletter.  

Leadership development may often be perceived as vague, time-consuming, or intimidating. In reality, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Using “Tony” as my fictional example, here is a proven, five-step mentorship/apprenticeship model that can be used to develop new leaders in church ministry.  

Whatever the churches in your neighborhood look like, stop for a moment, and consider the church that isn’t there. At least, that isn’t there yet. What will it look like? Who will attend? What will its relationship be with the people who live, work, and play in your zip code? How will it be built to reflect the values of those pastoring and attending the community? These are the questions more than a thousand church planters wrestled at the NewThing Gathering and Exponential Chicago, both hosted at Community Christian Church’s Yellow Box location in Naperville, Illinois, recently.

It happens to most churches. You’ve been in the same church building for many years. It was great in the 70s and the 80s, but as your ministries have evolved, your building hasn’t. What worked well when you had adult Sunday School classes or when your children’s ministries didn’t include a large-group worship time, may now be misaligned space. Too often it's the physical space within a church building that defines the type of ministry that occurs. When we miss ministry opportunities because we have a facility misaligned with who we are as a church, it can become a serious stewardship issue.