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!
Great Reminder on Stewardship as a Leader February 27, 2008
Posted by Steve in : The City, Family, Church, Urban Church, Methods & Strategies, The Cultural Conversation, Culture and Faith , add a commentTim Stevens, the Executive Pastor at Granger Community Church is a person I respect greatly, and he has another great nugget of wisdom for leaders of all types concerning how to get a strong financial framework in your life. As I move out of the church business and into my sports-oriented social networking start-up, FanFuego.com, these lessons hit home for me…here are some of my favorite nuggets on maintaining a good financial situation…read the whole article here.
If this is an area of concern for you, you should know that at Park, we have one of the leading stewardship experts in the land named Matt Bell. Check out his website at www.financially-speaking.com and you can subscribe to his excellent Biblical newletters on good financial management practices here.
- Don’t use a credit card for anything you can’t pay off right away. Use a credit card for convenience, but don’t ever pay interest. If you can’t control yourself, get rid of the cards.
- Tithe–I really believe that God blesses those who tithe. I think he keeps the car running longer, the roof from leaking as soon as it would have, and He loves to sprinkle you with raises and added cash you didn’t expect.
- Give generously. The tithe is the minimum. We began our first year of marriage giving 10% of our income and then increased it every year until we got to 20%. The first 10% goes to the general fund at our church. The other 10% we use to support missionaries, give to new building projects at our church, and bless people who come into our lives.
- If you are married, don’t ever make a big purchase without talking to each other. Really, trust me on this. [AMEN BROTHER - I LEARNED THE HARD WAY )
- Teach your kids to handle their money. They aren’t going to learn financial management at school. No one else is going to teach them to be generous. By the time they’ve been out of your house a week, they will have already received 14 credit card invitations. Teach them early.
- Set aside money for fun. Fun with your spouse. Fun with your kids. Fun for yourself (for me, that means buying a geeky gadget on occasion).
- Don’t wait until you have more money to put wise financial management into practice in your life.
Join us for TRANSFORMED January 10, 2008
Posted by Steve in : Chicago, Sunday Services, Church, Inside Park, Urban Church , add a commentThis weekend we kick off a new series at Park called TRANSFORMED, that explores one of the most important books of the Bible for believers, the book of Romans. Through our study of the book of Romans, we’ll be answering some difficult questions and dealing with issues that are important to our Christian faith.
Romans 12:1 says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Through this series, we hope to see our hearts transformed as we grow in our knowledge of Christ! Come ready to be challenged and inspired.
PLEASE INVITE YOUR FRIENDS TO THIS LIFE-CHANGING SERIES and join us at 10 am or 5:30 pm each Sunday at Torry-Gray Auditorium at Moody Bible Insititute (840 N LaSalle) or at 11 am at Francis Parker School (2233 N Clark St)
