My daughter was reaching out to Daddy. What a joy to see our nine-month-old longing for me from the arms of the nursery worker following our mid-week service. Hannah was being gently rocked by the wife of one of our elders, but it was clear she wanted down. I thanked the woman for watching our daughter while I led a prayer group and my wife taught some of the older children. She assured me that she held Hannah the entire time, except when Hannah was sleeping in one of the stacked cribs. While I appreciated her diligence, I let her know that Hannah enjoyed crawling.

"I'm not comfortable with her crawling on this floor," the worker replied.

The floor was carpeted and vacuumed regularly, so I asked why. With a look that conveyed a terrible secret, she confessed, "The carpet may look clean, but it's laid on a wood floor that was built on top of the original tile floor because we have a water problem. I'm sure you smell the mustiness."

I acknowledged the damp smell. She continued, "I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but look at the wallpaper." She pointed out some dark spots that crept up from below the carpet level. "I don't let any babies crawl on this floor."

Since the 12th century, Christian church buildings and steeples have been practically inseparable. Noted British architect, mathematician, and astronomer Sir Thomas Wren, who was commissioned to rebuild many churches destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666, placed special emphasis on steeples and spires. His designs continue to be embraced, resulting in churches that are as beautiful as they are useful.

Steeples have long been used as means of communication. Steeple bells ring to tell the neighborhood, town, or village that services are beginning (or ending), or that an important announcement will soon be made. And on April 18, 1775, two lanterns displayed in the steeple of Boston's Christ Church, also known as the Old North Church, warned Samuel Adams and John Hancock that the British were attacking by sea.

Today, steeples remain an icon of American churches. But choosing a steeple for a church building, or even deciding to have one, is far from a simple decision. Fortunately, manufacturers and providers of steeples understand their church clients, and offer a wide variety of steeple products that will last many years.

At the TAG Consulting Leaders Forum in Scottsdale, Arizona, this week, Jim Osterhaus spoke on a topic that comes up every day in church leadership, yet is so challenging: How do you navigate competing values?

Jim is senior partner of TAG Consulting, a veteran psychologist, and author of Thriving through Ministry Conflict: By Understanding Your Red and Blue Zones (Zondervan, 2005).

Jim says, "Competing values wreak havoc." Yet they can be hard to discover in yourself or in your church, because "Our minds can hold two competing values and then go about covering up the contradictions."

At the TAG Consulting Leaders Forum in Scottsdale, Arizona, this week, noted Christian leader Leighton Ford spoke on how to move from crazed busyness to focused attentiveness. Leighton is president of Leighton Ford Ministries. For 30 years he served as associate evangelist and later vice president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. His newest book is The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence in All Things (InterVarsity, 2008). In introducing Leighton, Jim Osterhaus pointed out that Leighton has been at the forefront of 4 major church movements of the past 50 years: mass evangelism (with BGEA), reclaiming the social dimensions of the gospel (with Lausanne), the study of leadership (with Arrow Leadership Program), and now the reintroduction to evangelicalism of the good of contemplative living (his books).

Sign up for this live webinar event featuring Ed Bahler and Bill Couchenour with Skye Jethani of Leadership journal, on November 17th, 11 a.m. (CDT).

Will spoke about how a church can discern its unique calling at the 2009 Cornerstone Knowledge Network conference in Charlotte. Here's what he had to say:

Kevin Ford is the Chief Visionary Officer and Managing Partner of TAG Consulting, a management consulting firm specializing in strategy, leadership and ministry development. TAG's client list includes Merrill Lynch, the Federal Aviation Association and the Salvation Army. While Kevin loves consulting with companies and ministries of all sizes, his passion is to help leaders of the local church.

In his workshop at the 2009 Cornerstone Knowledge Network Conference in Charlotte, Kevin presented on the topic of "Leading Through Change." Here are some of the highlights:

The primary task of leadership is to distinguish between what needs to be preserved and what needs to change. Work on what to preserve before tackling what needs to change.

How do you take your church through the process of change? First, determine what you need to preserve.

Growing churches can be stopped by the stress of deciding what to do next. Fortunately, there is a clear way to overcome these growing pains.

Christ Church is a rapidly growing denominational congregation in a suburban area of a midwestern city. The church has been around for 160 years and is on the National Register of Historic Places. People love the church's history, but they are more excited about their future of reaching the unchurched people in their community. Church members unanimously agreed that a building was needed to accommodate growth, not only in worship, but also in education and ministry activities. In fact, the church already had some money in the bank for a building program.

When church leaders envision their next building project, many are selecting interior and exterior styles that may deter the very people they're trying to reach—the unchurched—from visiting.

According to the Church Facilities Expansion Study, a joint research project in 2009 between the Cornerstone Knowledge Network (CKN) and Christianity Today International, church leaders consistently chose building designs that are the opposite of what the unchurched said they preferred in a prior study, Sacred Space, conducted by CKN and Lifeway Research in 2008.

In the Church Facilities Expansion Study, most churches that are planning to build within the next 18 months say they will go with a more modern look for their exterior, sanctuary, and foyer designs. However, Sacred Space respondents, all of whom are unchurched and do not currently attend a church, said they prefer churches with a gothic-like design.

Should churches base their building plans on what the unchurched say they want? Not necessarily. According to Jim Couchenour, director of ministry services for Cogun, Inc, a design/build firm for churches and a co-founder of CKN, a balanced perspective is needed.

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.

Each year our sister publication, Your Church magazine, publishes an annual Church Buyer's Guide. Check out the free, electronic PDF of our "Facility" section from the 2010 Church Buyer's Guide here.

You can see a digital version of the entire 2010 Church Buyer's Guide too!

This research aims to understand overall church experience and church plans for facilities expansion. It explores church growth in attendance, types of worship associated with the growth, and how churches are accommodating such growth. In addition, the study aims to compare respondents' reactions to different images of church buildings (both exteriors and interiors) to learn what types of design they would most likely create if they are going to build or design a new church facility in the near future.

Download the executive report:

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.