MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- New churches aren't just about steeples and choir lofts any longer, they're a fine blend of old and contemporary ideas, according to Jim Couchenour, director of marketing and ministry services for Cogun Industries, which specializes in the construction of churches nationwide.

"For example, in the older cathedrals you would have the stained glass windows, and essentially that was the multi-media of the day, where people could sit in a church building and look at one picture and see a story being told," Couchenour told the Memphis Business Journal in a recent story. "Today, with multi-media projection and computer systems, you have the same concept of the visual image being projected, but in a modern-day form."

The North Lima, Ohio-based firm started its Cogun Ministry Services arm two years ago in order to assess American cultural values and work them into new church designs.

"We wanted to design a building that would speak to those needs," Couchenour said.

Couchenour said it's important to design a building that will be technologically appropriate 20 or 30 years from now. "We can see a day that maybe a teacher might be up there interacting with a three-dimensional hologram of a biblical character and again you have that visual image coming to life even though it's virtual reality."

Consultant and church designer Dan Maddox said each church building has a life to it, and that working with a company that understands the intricacies of each congregation's services is necessary to producing the right facility.

Memphis architect Bill Fuller, who is collaborating with Cogun for the first time in designing the Church of God Church in Starkville, Miss., called most of the recent churches he has designed "soft contemporary," having a modern interior but a more traditional exterior. Clients say a church needs to look like a church on the outside, but function like a multi-purpose theater on the inside.

"They're going more for fan-shaped seating patterns in the sanctuaries now -- they're all state-of-the-art as far as the lighting and sound is concerned, even video and TV -- everybody is going toward theatrical platforms," Fuller said.

Multi-purpose churches are the wave of the future, Fuller added. As a solution to greater use of church-related buildings, he said he's designing family life centers to replace the traditional gymnasium.

"Churches are becoming more than churches," he says. "I'm glad to say they're doing what churches should be doing -- an outreach ministry that starts in the community and the architecture reflects that."