This week, we had some obstacles when it came to setting up for church. Just like anyone who uses a rented facility, we have to work with the tenant. We have to work with how the preschool set things up and leave them. For the past few weeks, the school has been gearing up for another year and have piled all of their books together to sort for the classrooms. They left them on the tables and the ground and we’ll move the boxes to setup.
This week, we had 2 major things happening. First, they were cleaning the tile in the entrance and moved everything into the space we use for EKids. Second, they had more books and boxes scattered where we would setup our stage and chairs. Here’s what it looked like when we showed up:
Our crew could have griped and moaned, but they decided to change things up a bit. Instead of moving all the school’s boxes and stuff, they simply blocked off the space and we had our Sunday experience with a different look and feel. It was more intimate and change is a good thing. I am so proud of our setup team for doing their best to arrange things so that people can come into Elevation and feel welcome. Their weekly sacrifice creates a welcome environment so that people far from God can know Him and grow in Him. Thanks guys!
I’ve thought about this for a while now. Why do we print bulletins each week with virtually the same information that is on our web site? Isn’t there another route we can take? Today, I saw Tim’s post today and it got those creative juices flowing again.
About 3 years ago, I attended one of Granger’s Saturday night services. I still remember Tony saying that we could use their free WiFi and connect to a special site to get the bulletin there. I downloaded and saved the file which you can view here and here. I loved this idea and always kept it in my head that this was certainly a new idea for churches to use. As far as I knew, no one had ever done it like that before.
About a year ago, my family visited Pete’s church (Crosspoint) and noticed that their bulletin had general information about the church. Inside the bulletin was an insert with message notes and simple announcements on it. After the service, you were encouraged to drop off your used bulletin that would be recycled. Keep the notes, reuse the bulletin. Innovation at its best.
So why do churches still print bulletins? Answer, because it’s always been done that way. In this techie world we now live in, I’m thinking it’s time for some changes. Why not link up with facebook for your announcements or scheduled events? Or possibly have an rss feed (Google calendar) with your upcoming events scheduled. I know LifeChurch.tv already uses this on their site. Another thing is to have signups using your online church database like CCB or Fellowship One. How could we make message notes available with fill in blanks? Not sure about that one, but somebody will think of a way.
How can you incorporate all of these things into weekly bulletin and do it with excellence? Right now, I’m just beginning to think about this process. It sure opens up the door for some major opportunities.
With 3 kids practicing everyday of the week for football, my time to post has been very limited. I’ve been keeping up with the blogosphere and bookmarked several posts that I think are definitely worthwhile. BTW, If you haven’t checked out Nelson Searcy, you really need to. He’s got some great resources that are worth every penny.
I am just blown away by the response to our movie night. What started out as a passing conversation after Sunday’s tear down 3 weeks ago has turned into something amazing. I have been getting calls about it everyday since last Friday. I came home about an hour ago from passing out flyers and stopped by Gary’s Place to replenish their supply. I gave them 100 flyers last Saturday and they only had about 5 left. I walked around and passed out about 2 or 3 before I met a guy named Dave. He took my stack and passed them out to everyone in the place. As I was leaving, I heard a big shout out on their loudspeaker about the event and I even heard a cheer or two.
For more info about our movie night, click here.
If you haven’t read it yet, you seriously have to go and read this post by Perry Noble.
So our church meets about 100′ from a pub. I’ve been in Gary’s Place a few times to hang out with Gary and meet people. Gary is the person that recommended our guitarist to come and play for us. He’s just a great all around guy that I like to chat with. In July, Gary’s Place and Elevation Church is partnering together for an event that we hope will be awesome. I’ll share more about that when I return from our family’s camping trip.
There’s been lots of discussion in the blogosphere lately about christians drinking beer, churches meeting in bars, does Jesus belong in a pub, would jesus have a beer with me, and many many others. The list of sites discussing this issue is huge. I have huge respect for each person I linked to because they’re bringing this subject out in the open.
What’s your thoughts on the subject? I’d love to hear them.
If you could pray “one prayer” for your church - what would that be?
This weekend, we are going to hear from Craig the vision behind One Prayer and be challenged to pray for each of the churches that will be united during this series. As of this post, over 1,150 churches representing over 725,000 people will be participating in One Prayer. It’s so awesome for Elevation Church to have the opportunity to be part of something that is so much bigger than us.
June is definitely going to be a month to remember. We are going to hear from some of the most influential pastors in America. Don’t miss this series - it is going to rock your world!!
My hope for Elevation Church is that we will be a church that does things a bit differently so that lives will be forever changed. Since our beginning, we have given 10% of our tithes to organizations that we believe in. I’ve spoken about how we support The Well, but I haven’t mentioned other people that we help support.
One Community Church is a new church in Arizona that we help support. Mark Krenz and I were both youth pastors in Indiana and became good friends during our time there. When Elevation was looking for someone to support, I thought about Mark and then we threw our support his way.
Mark’s church did some amazing things lately and I wanted you to be able to hear all about it. Click here to read all about it.
As a Network church with LifeChurch.tv, there are times we have to preview the videos we receive. Since many churches have signed up for the One Prayer series and are now previewing the messages, I’m hoping today to throw out some useful Windows programs to help you along (I don’t have a Mac yet). Make sure to check out Media Ministry Matters as Charles has many useful tools as well. These are all freeware. If you have something that is better to use, go for it.
- The program we use to preview the .iso file is the VLC Media Player.
- You can use a DVD player to play the message, but we like to have things seamless.. We play the .iso file in Mediashout using Daemon Tools (thanks Bill) by mounting the .iso file and playing it as a DVD. Since LCtv videos come in HD, I couldn’t find out how to display them in the correct size. Searching around the net, I found the dimension we needed. You must change the file setting to “Custom” with a proportion of “1024×576″ for HDTV.
Hopefully, these two will help you during the One Prayer series and if you ever use a message from Open.
So what video tools do you use?
