Wildesign Group Architects Inc.

Living Hope Church in Merrillville, Indiana celebrated their grand re-opening last weekend!

We worked with Aspen Group and Living Hope Church to give their existing facility a face lift, add a new café and fellowship spaces, and renovate the youth and children’s worship spaces.

The new entrance, social space, and updated design will help the congregation to better welcome the community of Merrillville into the community of Living Hope. We’re excited for what God has planned for them in the near future, and blessed to have been a part of it.

For pictures of the project – from design concept to completion – visit the Project Gallery.

If your church is growing, you’re looking ahead and thinking about space issues. With several options available – more services, renovation, new construction – you may be considering going multisite. Jim Tomberlin answers your question.

Tomberlin has three decades of pastoral experience, and pioneered the multisite strategy at Willow Creek Community Church. He recently contributed an article to Church Solutions to help church leaders determine if they’re in a good position to launch a new site.

He identifies three main stops along the “multiplication lifecycle,” and establishes a principle on each.

1. Blessing. Is your ministry blessing church members and the community?
   
   Multisite Church Principle: Multisite is not a tool to turn around a church, but it can be an instrument to extend a healthy church.
2. Fruitful. “Fruitful churches reach unchurched people.”
   
   Multisite Church Principle: Multisite is not a growth engine, but a vehicle for growth.
3. Multiply. Are you maximizing your current facilities? Is your congregation focused on transforming the community?
   
   Multisite Church Principle: Multisite is not a fad to jump but a proven strategy to reproduce healthy, fruitful churches.

If your congregation is moving through that lifecycle, you may be ready to start thinking about multisite ministry.

You can read Tomberlin’s entire article here. Also included are nine, “key questions for multiplying church impact” that will further help determine if “your church is a good candidate to consider going multisite.”

Pastor Rick Warren recently featured an article in his MinistryToolBox titled, “Why getting connected matters.” The piece starts by discussing the paradoxical phenomenon of a society that is more and more connected, but in which individuals are increasingly lonely.

“Pastor,” Warren writes, “one of the crucial purposes of your church is to help alleviate this sense of disconnection.”

Leadership at Saddleback Church works to encourage community at their church, but from time to time Pastor Warren simply tells the congregation “why it’s important to get connected.” He uses four illustrations from the New Testament to provide a picture of a connected church:

• We’re built like a building. “It’s essential that the parts of a building fit together. You aren’t safe otherwise because there’s no support. Likewise, those who aren’t connected to a church family in any meaningful way have no support.”
• We’re joined in a body. “Being part of the body of Christ means we are a part of something bigger than ourselves, and if we don’t play our specific part, the mission of the church is impacted.”
• We’re born into a family. “Most people think that Christianity is a belief system. There are beliefs in Christianity, but it’s so much more. Christianity is a belong system.”
• We’re attached to a vine. “Your congregation can have all the interpersonal relationships possible, but if they are not connecting with God, they will not have the life that God wants them to have.”

There is more on each of those points in Pastor Warren’s full article.

How is your church helping to alleviate that sense of disconnection?