Greg Atkinson

I read this intriguing post on Steven Furtick’s blog by Guest Blogger: Chunks Corbett. I thought it was worth us discussing.

If you came to Elevation Church on August 9th, you were sorely disappointed. You weren’t greeted, nobody was there to help you park. There were no ushers to help you to your seat.  The worship leader carried a powered speaker out on stage and delivered an acoustic set without a band.

Overall, it was not a day to remember for the programming. But the day’s impact will be felt for a long time. A few months ago Pastor Steven came to the Lead team with the idea of “No Show Sunday”. We weren’t thrilled with the idea but the more we talked about it the more it made sense.

So on August 9th we pulled off the most unimpressive worship experience ever and it was awesome…kinda.

The goals were simple. We wanted to appreciate our current volunteer base and motivate the rest to get plugged in. It was a huge success with 500 people signing up to volunteer.  It was also a great chance for Pastor Steven to cast vision for our upcoming fall as we add 3 new Worship Experience times and our first permanent campus.

He was also able to dispel the myth that Elevation is a “one man show” with some stats like these. It takes 860 of our current 1800 total volunteers over 3400 hours per week to pull off our 8 Worship Experiences at 3 portable locations every Sunday. The volunteers are the lifeblood of Elevation.

Here are a few more fun details on the day: The only sign we had up was “Elevation Church is meeting today”. We intentionally printed crooked black and white programs with the song lyrics and scriptures. Pastor carried a rickety music stand on stage to preach from with no fancy bumper or video playing in the background. We did have full children’s ministry (the goal was to create an experience not a distraction). It was Bizzarro-Sunday.

Pastor tied it all together with a powerful message of Jesus turning the water into wine. He pointed out that though everyone at the wedding got to experience the product of the miracle, only the servants who fetched the water got to see the actual miracle take place.

*** One of my most memorable Sundays at Bent Tree was when we went low tech (as I blogged about here). It was a powerful time of worship. So… share with me your stories of similar experiences. Have you ever done something like a “no show Sunday”? If so, how did it go?

The following is an announcement from Kent Shaffer’s blog that I thought was worth you knowing about and keeping an eye on:

LifeChurch.tv’s interactive online Bible, YouVersion, is about to take the interactivity up a notch and to congregations around the world.

It’s called YouVersion Live (October 2009 launch). And it allows pastors, conference speakers, teachers, and group leaders to share content and real-time feedback on mobile devices during live events. Essentially, YouVersion Live is interactive digital message notes that allow the audience to:

• take notes and save them online
• read the Bible
• ask questions and get answers during the message
• do surveys anonymously via a YouVersion Live poll
• get extra content via blog links, YouTube videos, and other resources
• share the message with a friend
• request prayer
• give online

It is easy to create a YouVersion Live message guide. All a speaker has to do is drag and drop the features he wants to use into his template on a super-simple YouVersion Live admin area. All an audience member needs is a web-enabled phone, netbook, or laptop.

Already over 1.8 million iPhone users have YouVersion on their phone, which is equivalent to 1 in 27 iPhones. YouVersion’s rapid growth means your user base already exists. All you need to do is use YouVersion Live’s super-simple admin panel, and you can take your audience engagement to incredible new places.

YouVersion Live launches in October 2009. Until then, you can sign up for updates atYouVersion.com/live.

It’s Labor Day. Take it easy. Be with your family. Have fun and get some rest. God is good.

The following is a great (and informative) video that Maurilio, from The A Group in Nashville, showed at the BUG Conference. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

This came out recently on SermonCentral.com and I thought it was worth passing on. To read the 20 non-preaching websites for better preaching, go HERE.

I wrote a new article called “Lessons from a Secret Shopper” that will be coming out on SermonCentral.com in a couple of weeks.
I look forward to sharing it with you.

What are websites and resources that you use in message preparation?

It never fails, everytime I visit a church, I notice the senior pastor sitting in the worst seat in the worship center. I experience this weekly at my home church (Fellowship Dallas) and used to experience it weekly at Bent Tree.

In each case the senior pastor would sit on the side, front row (right in front of the subs and closest to the drums). Then they will say it’s too loud (when it sounds fine out in the house to the other thousand or three thousand seats). The sound engineer then feels his hands are tied as he tries to mix for 1100 seats (at Fellowship Dallas) or 33oo seats (at Bent Tree) or whichever church I’m visiting – the audio guy has to adjust for the person in the worst seat and thus has a bad mix for the majority of the room. How backwards is that?

My suggestion to the pastor sitting in this worst possible seat – trust your people and tech team out in the house and let them mix for the entire room. Don’t ask them to adjust things to your liking – it’s not practical. How about you? Have you experienced this in your church?