Easter Creativity - God is at Work! March 31, 2008
Posted by Steve in : The City, Sunday Services, Church, Powerful Passages, Methods & Strategies, Missional, The Cultural Conversation, The Arts in the City, DifferenceMakers, Culture and Faith, Entrepreneuring , 1 comment so farIt’s now a week after Easter and I am checking out the blogs and news to see how God used people this Easter weekend and what drew people in to hear the Word of God on Easter. Wow! There is lots of creativity out there and that affirms that God is working His plan with the churches here in the United States and new creative thinkers are bringing the Gospel to the folks. I love God’s verse on creativity in the church — in Luke 14:23 (NASB) it says:
23“And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.
“COMPEL THEM TO COME IN” –
Here are my “Sweet Sixteen” creative teams who I found that did a lot of brainstorming, planning, hard work and execution with excellent creative ideas to COMPEL PEOPLE TO COME IN this Easter — To God be the Glory!:
1. The Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina that is just over two years old celebrated as 4,800 people showed up for services for an excellent start to a series called “Breakout” and over 500 people gave their lives to Christ! Check it out here.
2. Oak Leaf Church, less than 19 months old, did a message on TATTOO and left their mark by giving tattoos live on stage for all three services. The point of the message was that external marks are meant to point to internal life change. The point isn’t the mark, it’s the story and the meaning. In the same way, external behavior modification is never enough…what makes us Christians are our changed hearts. They were praying for 1,000 people but had 1,350 with 60 people accepting Christ (read about it here)
3. Craig Groeschel and the folks at multi-site Lifechurch.tv Started a new series on Easter and handed out fortune cookies with a note inside of them inviting people to the series entitled “The Warrior.” They placed huge barrels of fortune cookies outside and asked people to give them to their friends. More than a grand total of 31,000 people attended all 13 LifeChurch.tv campuses this Easter weekend with 479 hands raised during altar calls.
4. Scott Hodge and his team from Orchard Church in Aurora, Illinois dropped Easter eggs from a helicopter. 20,000 eggs and thousands of people (see pictures here)
5. National Community Church in DC also celebrated with 20,000 eggs and a baptism service on Saturday (read about it here)
6. Gary Lamb and the folks at Revolution Church in Canton Georgia also dropped Easter eggs from a helicopter. I love this idea from all three of these churches! Check out the story and pictures.
7. Eric Bramlett and his team in Naperville IL at Community Christian in Naperville have a really funny video as they debuted their series called “Losing My Religion” which started Easter Weekend. Check it out HERE.
8. High Desert Church in CA continued their series called “The Most Spectacular Show on Earth” and had more than 6,000 attend and over 100 people come to Christ after battling spiritual warfare with everything going wrong on their sound systems at their various locations.
9. Travis Johnson and the crew at Life Point Church in Homestead FL held a Moonlight Easter Egg Hunt (7-9pm) and had 7,000+ people show up. How creative is that idea? A moonlight Easter Egg Hunt!? They had a great turnout on Sunday with many coming from the community who attended that Easter Egg hunt.
10. Cross Point Church in Nashville had an amazing Easter at their two campuses locally (read a great letter from someone who was greatly impacted here) and at their new church start-up in the Dominican Republic. A team of 20 from Cross Point spent their week working on the church building and while the building was far from being completed, the pastor led their first service in the new church on Easter Sunday. How cool is that?
11. Check out the things Granger Community Church had people hold in their hands during the service. HERE are the pics. Read about it here and here.
12. NewSpring Church saw 12,000 people attend their services and over 120 people receive Christ (read here) and held a great service in their Man Series called “Ultimate Fighter”
13. The team at Seacoast Church launched a new campus on Easter in one of the most crime-ridden areas of the country. HERE is the story.
14. Connexus had more than 1,300 at their two compuses with some moving stories.
15. Jordan Creek Church played the Upside Down Video.
16. A worship leader in Atlanta experienced what true worship is really all about (read this moving story here)
PS…BONUS COVERAGE I just found out that Saddleback Church opened two new sites on Easter and their San Clemente site celebrated its one year anniversary! The first service of Saddleback Corona gathered 490 attenders and 43 accepted Christ. That’s almost 10 % of those who attended! The first service at Saddleback Irvine gathered 1,826 attenders and 34 accepted Christ! The service at Saddleback San Clemente (open one year) gathered 1,550 attenders and 39 accepted Christ!
Willow Creek A2 Conference - Day One Summary October 25, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, Methods & Strategies , add a commentWow! What a day of team-building and mind-stretching by some of the best ministry minds in the land. Got to Willow and into the 7,200 seat auditorium in time for some great cross-cultural worship to open up the conference. Then Bill Hybels came out and began to talk about key events in his life that have shaped him as a leader (other than his profession of faith). These are not small things but events where God touched your life, rocked your world, and caused you to dive into ministry.
My Personal Key Takeaways from Bill Hybels:
- What would the world be like if every pastor raised their game 5%…just 5%. This had me thinking about incremental gains that could be made and time-hog projects that could be jettisoned to get 5% more effective in our ministry at Park Community Church in the city of Chicago.
- He was impacted because a Godly man asked him a couple of simple questions: “What are you going to do with your life that will last forever? Are you going to just keep accumulating stuff and experiences as the signature of your life or are you going to leave an eternal legacy?” Also, his youth pastor told him “the only thing that will move on after the fervent heat of Christ’s return melts the earth is people, so why would you invest your one and only life in anything other than people?”
Man, can this guy tell personal stories that get you motivated or what?
Then Craig Groeschel from Life Church in Oklahoma came out to address their strategy of multii-site church. Life Church is one church, meeting in nine locations through the use of video and satellite technology. This enables all of the locations to be connected as one, no matter how far apart they are physically. Each LifeChurch.tv location has the same dynamic worship experience, with its own “personal touches”, including its own live band and campus pastor to lead worship. People who attend LifeChurch.tv find the quality of a large church with the intimacy and personal interaction of a smaller church. The Mission of LifeChurch.tv is to lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ.
My Personal Key Takeaways from Craig Groeschel:
- They have taken an “evangelism as our priority” view and therefore have been on the forefront of multi-site church.
- He was quick to say — don’t follow us — ask your own questions and figure our what God is doing in your backyard.
- He did give us some great questions to ponder as he taught out of Acts 2:
- What is we invited peopel to surrender their lives to Christ’s headship EVERY Sunday?
- What if we gave to everyone who had need?
- What if we promoted other churches in the area and people left Craig’s church but got plugged in at their new church?
- What if you preached to people on video?
- What if a church was no longer bound by walls and buildings?
- What if we could redeem technology for Kingdom expansion?
This has promoted team discussion on the viability of multi-site in our young urbanite setting and its potential. Very interesting to ponder…..
We then got to hear from Matthew Barnett of the LA Dream Center, who gave a riveting message based on Nehemiah 2:10 — promoting the welfare of the Israelites. This was a good day to sharpen iron against iron — it also allows us to focus as a team on some of the issues raised and how we would deal with them.
Off to the Willow Creek A2 Conference October 24, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, Urban Church, Technology, Methods & Strategies , add a commentTomorrow a few of the Park Community Church team is headed to the Willow Creek Acts 2 conference, including Jackson Crum, Scott Clifton, Jen Cousino and Franklin Woodland, one of our elders. It is so exciting to do ministry with these folks and the rest of the team. Each of them has a passion to see people come to know the eternal salvation offered through Jesus Christ, and we have such an opportunity in the city of Chicago!
Some of the speakers include Bill Hybels, Craig Groeschel, Erwin McManus, David Ireland, John Burke, Mark and Nicole Connor, Matthew Barnett and Gene Appel. We are hoping to get a better undestanding of the role multi-site plays in a church’s life, as we continue to expand in the city.
