Skye Jethani, editorial advisor for BuildingForMinistry.com and managing editor of Leadership journal, discusses how churches need to regain imagination in creating ministry space.

"Your church is beautiful. I love the prayer room and the coffee shop!"

"I'm impressed with your facilities. All the signs made it really easy to find my way around."

Roger has heard several compliments like these comments from guests since arriving at his church. Even though he's been a pastor for a few years, Roger never considered the importance of the church building. While he knows the true focus of the church should be to make disciples of all people, Roger now views his church facilities as an important "first time impression" that hinders or helps the goal of reaching people for Christ.

Our research team at Rainer Research interviewed over 350 people across the U.S. who are new to a church. We asked them about their perceptions of the facilities. Did it affect their decision to attend the church? What they told us was surprising. Here are some insights we gained from our interviews.

Imagine this is the mid-1500s—seventy years after Gutenberg was the first to use movable type to print the Bible. Over 1,000 print shops have opened throughout Europe. Martin Luther has translated the Bible into the German language and is challenging the church's authority over mediated salvation. Western culture is at a tipping point. Luther and other reformers see power in the new technology of printed media, and they organize to take full advantage of it. We could say the rest is history; however, history has a habit of reinventing itself.

Broadcast media was equally world changing, but the church did not take the lead in this new era as it did during the Reformation. Still, individuals like Billy Graham and Oral Roberts used this new and powerful tool to bring the Gospel to the world on a scale never before imagined. Bill Hybels, attuned to a generation shaped by mass media, was an early pioneer of using a theater venue for church. Some identify this strategy as "seeker sensitive" or "attractional." The fastest growing and largest churches in America follow some variation of this model. Even churches that are more traditional or critical of the seeker strategy have adopted elements of this model.

If I were new to your community, how many churches would I pass from my house to your church? One, two—ten? What would make me stop at your church instead of the one down the street?

Our culture has changed, and with it our ties to traditional churches have loosened. First impressions count more than ever to people who might be looking for a church. While you can't easily change the exterior of your building, you could transform the impression it makes on passersby by adding a bit more "curb appeal."

Heart Talk
The term curb appeal, which comes out of real estate, describes the impact a piece of property has on a potential buyer who looks at it from the street. "Curb appeal comes from the head and the heart," says Leon Aalberts, a real estate agent who serves as associate pastor of Oswego Presbyterian Church in Illinois. "When people buy houses, their head says that it has to have a certain number of bedrooms and bathrooms and be in a certain price range. Their heart says what it looks like when they drive up and see the picket fence or the geraniums on the front porch."

The same is true for a church. A church can appeal to the intellect by its location or denomination, but its appearance is what will appeal to the heart. The condition of the building, the landscaping, and the signs (or lack thereof) can make the difference between a church that welcomes visitors or gets ignored. Curb appeal is not about tricks; it's about removing barriers that discourage people from coming inside your church where they can experience your true ministry.

Dave Travis, managing director of Leadership Network, based on recent research and his own observations offers his state of the church in America as seen through the "keyhole" of large churches.

Things That Are Changing—

Multi-site churches. According to research for our book Multi-Site Roadtrip, an estimated 2,000 churches in America use the multi-site model. It's assumed that if you're a large church, you're thinking multi-site.

Social media. According to the Pew Research Center, 85 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds use social networking at least once a week. Senior pastors under 40 who are leading large churches all use social media. Travis: "This is a radical shift in how we understand leadership. Fifteen years ago, pastors were wondering how they could be less accessible. Today, younger pastors want more access."

Upon returning to the United States on furlough, a missionary family from Africa was provided a home by their host church. It was much larger than the space they had occupied overseas. As much as the children enjoyed the extra room, the mother lamented that she had lost her family.The sense of connection they had shared in their small, admittedly inconvenient, house in Africa was quickly lost in the larger American home. Eventually the family returned to Africa and reestablished that sense of connection.

Space matters.

When it comes to designing, securing, and using space, many church leaders are motivated by practicality—how many people can fit inside? As good as this intention may be, we must go beyond that. Ultimately we must ask what space will help us have the greatest gospel impact—not just quantitatively (how many people can we accommodate?) but also qualitatively (how is this space forming people spiritually?).

Read the whole article on Leadershipjournal.net.

Ed Stetzer, president of Lifeway Research and adviser to BuildingForMinistry.com and BuildingChurchLeaders.com, released new research on pastors, which will be published soon in our sister publication, Leadership.

Kevin Miller, executive vice president of Christianity Today International, blogged about the new research on OutofUr, which Stetzer shared for the first time at the 2009 Catalyst Conference in Atlanta. Among many other findings, Miller highlighted one statistic that may provide a clue to why the number of young adults attending churches is rapidly declining:

Miller writes: "Among Lifeway's respondents, 67 percent say they 'strongly agree' and 26 'somewhat agree' to 'I am intentionally investing in leaders who will emerge over the next 10 years.' However, those percentages drop (to 52 percent and 26 percent) for 'The church does a good job fostering and developing new leaders.' Maybe this explains why so many pastors agreed (38 percent strongly, 37 percent somewhat) that 'Our church struggles to reach young adults.'"

What are some ways your church fosters and develops new leaders?

Read the rest of Kevin Miller's highlights on Lifeway's Research here.

Cell phone use continues to grow, and cell phone companies have become desperate to find suitable locations for new towers. The sheer number of users has overwhelmed the existing cell phone tower network. Around every U.S. city lay large numbers of cell phone "dead zones." These areas suffer frequent dropped calls, static, or busy signals caused by inadequate cell phone tower coverage. For example, in New York City—the largest cell phone market in the United States—at least 200 known dead zones exists.

This decade-old neo--Gothic Anglican megachurch is layered with stone walls, a thick tower that hoists a cross, and half-oval windows in the shape universally known as "church window." While its original building plan called for theater seating—the sanctuary seats about 3,000—the church instead opted for pews.

"When we built it, there was a lot of movement towards the warehouse look, with black ceilings," says Dana Blackwood, Church of the Apostles' director of facilities. "The church leadership understood that that look was going to fade. People wanted to have a sense of tradition, something that looked like a church."

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Whether debated privately in our hearts or publicly in our church halls, one of the most pressing issues facing U.S. churches today is the economy. While our faith may be certain, current economic conditions are most certainly not. And the situation has even the most confident pastors and church leaders wondering, "How will my church survive this recession?"

It seems that many younger Christians are attracted to formal liturgy and tradition. Are you seeing this in your area as well?

Dan Kimball: The churches I know that are winning new believers and drawing people who did not grow up in the church are not using too many liturgical elements. I think we might be seeing people who were raised within the church and are tired of the contemporary approach being drawn to the ancient practices. But, at least on the West coast, I'm not seeing young people from outside the church being drawn to liturgy. Every person I know&mdashand obviously I don't know everybody—who has moved into a liturgical context has come out of a very large, contemporary church and they just got burned out on the machine. They now find refreshment in a smaller setting with liturgy.

At the same time, our church is using some liturgical elements like responsive readings and the Doxology, but we're not following a formal liturgy. Either way, I think it's great that some people are engaging liturgy again. It's good for young people to know that Christianity was not born in 1980, but it has ancient roots. Are new people coming to faith? Whether our church is liturgical or contemporary we need to ask that question.

The church had all the appearances of success. More than 2,000 people gathered weekly for worship, the music was cutting edge, the landscape was perfectly maintained, everyone loved the pastor's sermons, and the children's programs were creative and engaging.

Drive through the old town center in Anywhere, USA, and you will find two buildings encircled by the main road: the courthouse and the church. Historically, the church has been the locus, or central focus, of the community. For better or worse, it was where people congregated to share life's stories.

Once the center of connection, the church has become an ancillary part of the greater community. It has lost its status as a "third place."

The church is called to maintain a balancing act with the community and culture. God calls his people to be holy as he is holy. In this way, the church is set apart. But the church is also called to reach outward to the community and world. In this way, the people of the church must interact with the culture around them.

We have been given the Great Commission to make disciples, to share the gospel, and to build God's house. But significant numbers of American churches and Christians are not being obedient. For many reasons we remain still and silent. And none of those reasons is acceptable to God.

From a generational perspective, our research shows that churches are losing 70 percent of young adults ages 18 to 22. But our research also reveals good news. We heard from young adults who returned to church after several years' absence. Simply stated, one of the most receptive fields toward multiplication in a church is the young adult group who dropped out a few years earlier.

Churches that are intentional about reclaiming dechurched young adults are seeing significant responses in this group returning to church. Let's look at some of their approaches.

When all the excuses are removed. When the desire returns. When the dechurched make initial steps in returning to the local body, one thing consistently slows their progress and makes it difficult for them to assimilate back into the church: Complexity. Churches have become too complicated, and there are too many unwanted barriers to entry (or re-entry).

Church design is ever-evolving. When I asked pastors for their opinions on trends in church facility design, their responses ranged from disappointment "with the apparent abandonment of the traditional designs in favor of designs that 'package' God to meet society's wants and desires" to support for more contemporary approaches "because they utilize 'less scary' designs that draw more people to the church to hear God's Word."

In an ever-changing world, church leaders struggle to relevantly reach their community. This is evident by recent statistics from groups like The Barna Group and the Gallup Organization. But pastors don't need research to tell them the church is in decline and lacking relevance to Christians and the unchurched alike. They can see it in their own community.

A recent survey probed nearly 1,700 unchurched American adults, putting photos of four different church exteriors in front of them. Respondents indicated their preferences for designs by allocating 100 points across the four images, giving more points to those they liked and fewer to those they didn't.

The medieval-style cathedral averaged 48 points, more than double the next-highest finisher, a white-steeple-and-pillar exterior that averaged about 19 points. The other two churches, possessing more contemporary, suburban-plex feels, averaged 18 points and 16 points, according to the study, commissioned by Cornerstone Knowledge Network and conducted by LifeWay Research.

So with increasing attention paid to evangelicals who are drawn to liturgical church styles, should church leaders weighing new building designs opt for traditional approaches as a way to attract the churched and unchurched alike?

Download a copy of research results.

For at least some people who don't attend church, the idea of setting foot in a Gothic cathedral for worship may not be as intimidating as we think. In fact, it might actually appeal to them.

In this video clip, Ed Stetzer provides some context for how the "Sacred Space" research can inform church building and design decisions.

People leave the church. The dropout issue is well known and widely discussed. Perhaps less known is the alarming rate of young adults rushing for the exit doors of churches. We discovered this disturbing trend when we analyzed the results from a national survey of 18- to 22-year-olds.