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This is sort of a part 2 to yesterdays post about One Prayer. I wanted to share one other way that this series has been so great for us. One Prayer has been an awesome way to get our peeps ready for video sermons. We’ve been talking about going multi-site for a while now (read more here), so this has been a great way to introduce them to video pastor. And the response has been so much better than I expected. They reacted no different than if the speaker were live, they laughed out loud (especially with Perry), the would say their typical ‘amens,’ and they bowed their heads when the speakers prayed. Which is exactly what we were hoping would happen.

Our next step in evolving into a multi-site church is to start one video service at our current location. Our plan as of now will be to record Saturday nights message and then roll it during any one of our Sunday morning services, and the fun thing is that we are going to keep it random. We’re doing this for a few reasons:

• 1. Our auditorium only seats 500, and every seat is within 75 ft of the stage, so iMag has never been needed, it may would even be more of a distraction (and that totally misses the point of iMag). So our people aren’t used to watching the screens as they are in so many other churches, so rolling it on Sundays gets them used to it and hopefully makes it a little easier to transition them to a video campus (our goal is have 200 or so commit to helping us launch our first off-site campus).
   
• 2. We’re keeping it random so we can introduce it to everyone, not just one service or group of folks. We’re sharing the love man! And hopefully it will kill the negative preconceived notions that a lot of people may have, you know the ones that have never experienced it but will still complain and point out every reason why it won’t work. Those people are so much fun.
   
• 3. The last reason is to give our Pastor a break. He’s been preaching 4 services a weekend for over a year now. To keep him from burnout, we feel its a necessity to introduce a video message in one service a weekend.

For the most part these are initial ideas, we’ve still got a lot of planning and learning to do before we truly get a lock on whats gonna be going down. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts, especially you guys out there that may be in a multi-site church or planning to go multi-site… give me yo wisdom!

I’ve loved the One Prayer series, its been incredible. Not only is it one of the most innovative things the global church has done, but its had an amazing effect on our local church. From our congregations perspective, we’ve never had much outside influence or oversight. We’re a part of a larger denomination for accountability purposes, but most of our people wouldn’t know it (and we like it that way). So to say this has been groundbreaking is an understatement, I think its been so huge for our church to think beyond us and see what God is doing around the globe. Talk about new perspective. Plus its great to introduce them to other communicators. I know from the weekly amount of positive feedback that we’re getting, our people are going to be subscribing to some new podcast. 

Here is our One Prayer schedule:

./Week 1. Jerry Taylor - Make Us Free
./Week 2. Craig Groeschel - Make Us One
./Week 3. Jentezen Franklin - Make Us Passionate
./Week 4. Perry Noble - Make Us Dangerous

Every week of this series has been great. There’s no doubt this is something that will go on our calender every year. No matter what the global series is next year, I’m sure we’ll be a part of it.

I’ll post tomorrow on another way this series has been so impactful for us.

Ok, all you Bay folks out there, and I know there are quite a few, don’t make me call you by name :). Most of you never comment, but today that needs to change. So come on out of hiding for just a sec and let me know how this series has affected you. I want to hear your thoughts, what God has revealed to you through this series. Don’t be timid… I want to hear from you!

This is a bit of a repost, but this time its for Creative Chaos.

I was in the youth sound booth the other day for some reason, and I saw this bad boy which brought back some good memories. This Powerbook G4 was my first Mac, I got it around 2002 and its served us very well. Its worked its way down the ranks, and basically become a 15″ iPod (I need to pick them up an armband for it, that would rock). Yep its been reduced to running iTunes for the youth and children, and knowing it as well as I do, I’m sure it does a bang-up job at whatever is thrown at it.

It’s kinda cool to walk around the office and see history lying around in the form of out-dated gear and technology. I like seeing how far we’ve come as the church, and that we are serious about affecting culture through the language it speaks. When I’m frustrated about how slow I feel we’re moving, it reminds me that we are moving faster than we’ve ever moved to engage our culture in new ways. Thats pretty rad.

For the last year we’ve been feeling that multi-site was the direction God was taking us. I had the opportunity to go check out LifeChurch.tv and see how they roll… which is a sight to be seen if you’ve never been out there.  Go. Thats all I’ve got to say. Anyway, all you guys in the blogosphere that I read have taught me tons on the subject as well, and I’m sure we’ve got a long way to go, especially when it comes to fine tuning ‘our way’ of doing multi-site. Everybody is doing it so differently, and its working for you guys where you are. So right now, we are in the phase are studying, researching, praying, and trying to figure out what ‘our way’ looks like. 

Over the last 2 days, I’ve been meeting with the guys from Fowler Design Group about wiping our existing video system and taking us to HD from lens to screen, as well as designing the delivery system for each of our future campuses. Which is our first step in the journey of going to a second site. On top of that, we are in the process of extending our existing building to accomodate more room for youth and kids, as well as a second venue on site, which will technically be our first venture into multi-site. 

So, to step back and look at this, we are doing a lot all at once. A full video overhaul, including lighting, in the main worship space, and then full production (audio, video, & lighting) in the new youth room, the new kids room, and the second on-site venue, all while making plans for our first off-site campus launch some time early to mid 2009. 

So my last 2 days have been working through this, dreaming a little about what is possible. And of course filling my head with more acronyms than I thought existed in the entire world. Can you think of another industry with more acronyms than the video/production industry?

So needless to say my head is hurting right now just thinking about it all. But at the same time, its really exciting. I love technology, especially when its used to advance the kingdom. 

I’ll be posting a lot more details in the future. We are still in the infant stages of this, but as we build this system and our plan for multi-site I’ll be posting as much info as I can.

I ran across this yesterday on Tony’s blog and I loved it so much I wanted to pass it on.

7 Reasons Why the Church Needs Artists

1//Only through art can we know God more fully. A person encounters God as an artist before he encounters him as a theologian. We have reduced God’s primary interests to truth and goodness. We must remember that beauty is a primary of interest of his.

2//We must see God’s world more truthfully. Only seeing one theme is insufficient. Artists must help people see both the brokenness and the promise of renewal.

3//We must embrace God’s salvation more completely. Art as morality dictates that we should create more than just “religious” art. Everything is to be redeemed. Everything is worthy of artistic representation.

4//We must worship God more humanly. Because of the image of God, humans make art. Humans create. No other organism on earth does.

5//We must believe God’s promises more confidently. We are blinded to the glory that is here now. With art, you encourage and enlarge hearts to believe the impossible.

6//We must proclaim God’s kingdom more powerfully. Truth has bigger muscles in art.

7//We need to meet God. The primary place where we experience God is in our imagination–the intersection of our mind, emotions and will.