Well, we tried something new this weekend at Park… we did a text poll live in service!
We put our ‘Shiny Happy People’ series on hold this weekend to take some time to talk about the economy. Many people in our church are feeling the affects of what’s happening on Wall Street. People are losing their jobs, being threatened to be laid off, and others are fearful about their retirement funds. With Chicago being a big banking city, it’s a big issue for our people.
Our lead pastor Jackson preached an incredible message… I normally wouldn’t do this, but if you have some spare time, I really encourage you to listen to the message. Preaching out of Matthew 6, Jackson challenged us to take stock of what we are putting our faith in, and reminded us that in this time of uncertainty we need to put our faith and trust in God.
We asked our church to help us out and let us know how they were feeling about the current situation and asked them:
Does the current economic crisis cause you to worry about your financial condition either now or for your future?”
Between the three services we had over 750 people respond — 61% said that they were worried and 39% were not.
It was pretty cool to watch the stats go live on our screens and to engage our audience in that conversation.
Our pastor placed the poll in the middle of his message and after the results were revealed spent the remainder of his message talking about how to deal with worry and fear.
It was a great morning and a great opportunity to once again lower the barrier between the platform and the chairs and allow people the opportunity to engage with us!
