Church Design

Aspen Group Blog

Knowledge to navigate the intersection of church culture, leadership, ministry, and facilities.

Blog Feature

Church Design | Church Culture

How One Church Redesigned with Men in Mind

By: Marian V. Liautaud
January 28, 2021

Brookville Road Community Church in New Palestine, Indiana, exists to inspire people to become wholehearted followers of Jesus. They place a special emphasis on reaching men because they've found that when husbands and fathers feel more comfortable in the space, they are more likely to return to church and bring their family. The leaders at Brookville Road have cued into a reality that Barna uncovered in a recent study on men in America titled, Five Essentials to Engage Today’s Men. The study, in partnership with BetterMan, a resource for men’s ministries, was conducted to find out how both churchgoing Christians and men overall are navigating 21st-century waters.

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Leadership | Church Culture | Relaunch Church | Rapid Relaunch

Pastor Appreciation Month: How to Fight Discouragement and Find Focus

By: Evan McBroom
October 13, 2020

This month, we had the privilege of hosting a conversation with Monty Kelso, President and CEO of Slingshot Group, a team that helps churches and nonprofits hire well and coach existing leaders. The topic was timely because October is Pastor’s Appreciation Month. Whether you’re a pastor or a church member, Monty shared tips on helping pastors maintain their resiliency, fight off discouragement, and stay focused in this age of COVID.

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Making Space for Millennials Executive Summary

Making Space for Millennials Executive Summary

Discover the impact Millennials' values, allegiances, and assumptions will have on your church.

Blog Feature

church facilities | Church Culture | Relaunch Church | Rapid Relaunch

4 Tips for Maximizing Online Worship During COVID

By: Marian V. Liautaud
August 07, 2020

During COVID, the opportunities for ministry impact have increased along with the complexities of how to offer an engaging and safe worship experience. Church leaders have wrestled with what to offer and how to offer it. How can you deliver high-impact, engaging worship services in the midst of constantly changing circumstances? How do you incorporate additional campuses if you’re a multisite church? How can you make the most of your facility during a time of varying usage?

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Leadership | Church Culture | Relaunch Church

What Pastors Need to Navigate COVID-19 at Church

By: Marian V. Liautaud
July 23, 2020

As a design/build/furnish firm for churches, Aspen Group has been helping pastors and their ministry teams navigate the change that comes with church facility projects. Now, in this era of COVID-19, church leaders are experiencing unprecedented change. Every pastor and church leader will need support navigating the difficult leadership issues during this season, particularly as you think about reentering or reopening your building, and especially as you relaunch your church into a new future.

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Leadership | Church Culture | Relaunch Church

What the Church Can Learn from Amazon, Disney, and J.Crew During COVID-19

By: Rich Birch
June 17, 2020

This has been a difficult season for every business, organization, and church as we deal with the impacts of both the Coronavirus and the extenuating economic crisis left in its wake. No doubt your church is thinking about next steps and trying to wrestle through what comes next, including the process around reopening your church and how to deal with the financial implications that your church is facing. Getting your church fully online took a lot of work, but now there are 1,001 other decisions that you need to make.

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Blog Feature

Multisite | church facilities | Church Culture

3 Myths About Church Facilities that May Be Keeping You from Multiplying

By: Greg Snider
February 12, 2020

Editor's Note: Greg Snider and Josh Gregoire of Aspen Group presented a talk to a full room of leaders from across the country at Exponential in Orlando on March 3, 2020 on "3 Myths About Facilities that Keep Church Planters from Multiplying." Their presentation drew heavily from the same content featured in the post below. Based on positive feedback on the content of their talk, we're featuring this post again on our blog in case you missed it in previous weeks. Pastors who are focused on church planting and multiplying often focus on leadership and ministry as the key aspects of launching new churches. But one critical piece is almost always missing from the multiplication plan—a facility strategy.

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Church Culture

Top 5 Church Building Topics in 2019

By: Marian V. Liautaud
December 23, 2019

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:

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Blog Feature

Leadership | Church Culture

5 Truths for Building Generous Givers in Your Church

By: Marian V. Liautaud
November 12, 2019

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.

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Blog Feature

Leadership | Communication | Church Culture

5 Steps for Building New Leaders in Your Church

By: Marian V. Liautaud
October 21, 2019

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.

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church facilities | Church Culture | Community Impact

If Your Church Were Gone, Would Anyone Notice?

By: Marian V. Liautaud
October 11, 2019

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.

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