Aspen Group Blog

I’m excited to announce that Aspen will be holding another in our series of Pastors Luncheons in Chicagoland on June 10th.  Guest speaker Michael Trent of Third Place Consulting will be presenting along with our president, Ed Bahler at the new café facility at Moraine Valley Church (MVC).  Please join us as we discuss the characteristics of a truly engaging café and how it relates to your church ministry.

This will be an opportunity to hear from an experienced consultant in the Third Place/café arena and also to see the newly completed facility at Moraine Valley Church.  Also on hand will be the café staff from MVC—to answer questions and serve you some great coffee!

Call 815-806-1705 or e-mail kruther@aspengroup.com today to sign up for this event!  You can also download the postcard for the event at the Downloads section of this blog.

See the Photo Gallery and the Moraine Valley Opens Café post on this blog for information on the MVC project.

It's a pleasure to draw your attention to another exciting Aspen project -- the newly completed LaGrange Bible Church! We'll soon be mailing a postcard to several thousand churches in the Illinois and Indiana area highlighting the job. You can get a sneak preview  at the Downloads section of this blog.

LaGrange Bible is located in an "inner ring" suburb in Chicagoland with limited real estate availability.  Faced with a desire to reach out to the neighborhood youth while also accommodating the elderly, the church partnered with Aspen to renovate and add to their existing facility within a tight site footprint.  As you can see from the "before and after" pix below, we also gave the place a bit of a facelift as well!

Check out additional pix in the Photo Gallery! 

I'm pleased to report that our friend and client Pastor Tim Harlow of Parkview Christian Church will be speaking at the fall Cornerstone Conference in Chicagoland on September 23!  Tim will be sharing a talk entitled "Growing your Leadership" and will address the critical subject of maintaining ministry momentum during a building program.

Rex Miller, author of Millenium Matrix and friend of Aspen and CKN has a great article on the Your Church website entitled "What Would Luther Do?".  Click on the link or Luther's picture to read it.

Rex references three great "must read" books on the Digital Age subject, The World is Flat, The Long Tail and his Millenium Matrix.  I can vouch that all three are worth the time.

Those attending the WFX conference this week will get to hear Rex keynote on Thursday.  And please feel free to stop by the Aspen/CKN booth -- we'll be serving free gourmet coffee served by our CKN partner, Michael Trent of Third Place Consulting!

Hope to see you there... 

I just got back from the Exponential Conference in Orlando.  In addition to some very thought-provoking sessions, it was great to connect with several friends.  The team from Community Christian Church did a fantastic job with the conference -- Dave Ferguson was conference president and the CCC team was there hustling on stage and behind the scenes to make it a great week.

One of the best parts of the conference was seeing some friends and clients from “back home” such as Tim Harlow, Bill Brown and several others from Parkview Christian; Jerry McQuay of Christian Life Center, Jeff Robinson of Lincolnway Christian Church, Jul Medenblik of New Life Church, Lance Hurley of CDEA, Brad Leeper from Generis and others.  And as always, it’s great to hang out with our good friend, Bill Couchenour of Cogun, our partner in Cornerstone Knowledge Network.

Having just read “The Shaping of Things to Come” (see post below), I was primed to hear what Alan Hirsch had to say.  Among my many notes:

• The root word of mission is “sent”
• The Contemporary Church Growth Model appeals to at most 40% of the U.S. population (in Australia, where Alan’s from, it’s more like 15%) – you must become missional if you want to reach the other 60% i.e. act like a missionary would when taking the gospel to a foreign culture. America is becoming a foreign culture' we can't rely on the Judeo-Christian ethic as universally understood or embraced e.g. Europe is almost entirely post-Christian
  
• “Hell is the only place you can be safe from the disturbances of love” – C.S. Lewis.  Risking enough to truly love is a biblical imperative
• China went from 2 million to over 120 million Christians in 60 years without church buildings!
  
• The primary confession of the church should be “Jesus is my Lord and I cling to Him”.  Everything the church does must be calibrated back to Jesus.
  
• Consumerism is the alternate religion of our society.  It’s too easy for churches to play into this.

Andy Stanley had some great stuff on vision.  It had been awhile since I read his “Visioneering” so it was a good refresher:

• State it Simply (memorable is portable)
• Cast it Convincingly (Define the Problem, Offer a Solution, Explain Why and Why Now)
• Repeat it Regularly
• Celebrate it Systematically
• Embrace it Personally and Publicly

One more comment about the CCC team – the “co-emcee” was Eric Bramlett, their arts director.  Eric is one funny and creative dude. Speaking of that, you might enjoy the “Dude” series they played at the conference below: