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?