In 1986, Mark and Shelia Beeson came to northern Indiana with a dream of planting a church. They had no congregation, no building. But they did have a vision. From its early days, when they met in a movie theater, Granger Community Church has grown to more than 6,000 under Mark’s leadership.

A dynamic speaker with more than “just a little energy” about touching hearts and reaching lives. Mark is considered one of the best storytellers in America today. And he’s not afraid to tackle issues the church considers “hands off.” If you let him, Mark will challenge you to consider how God can use you and your ministry to reach a changing culture in new and meaningful ways.
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Everyday you are moving toward or away from your goal. If you take steps you end up somewhere. You can’t take steps in an opposite direction. We need to move our feet in the direction that leads to life and the fulfillment of our destiny in Christ.

The longer we live, the longer we get to know ourselves. There are limitations on our life – there are things we cannot do. Do we know our limitations? Do we know what we can’t do?

There are lessons in life that we learn that clarify who we are and who we are not, and sometimes those lessons hurt.

Mark talked about when he was in college doing Judo and taking on a Judo master… ouch.

The more you know about yourself, the more honest and clear you can be, and the more you can relate to others. Some of us, sadly, don’t know enough to have an opinion. We need to study more and learn more to have an opinion that has value.

As we pursue innovation, we need to intentionally know who we are.  When you know who you’re not, you have clarity.

We need to know and understand the value of the mission and our own limitations, and leverage our gifts for the greater good. So many people are under-challenged and are waiting to leverage their gifts to be used for something of eternal value. They long to do great thing for a great mission to serve a great God.

We have to present the mission, the vision and invite them to join us.

Linear thinking is obsolete – people think in a matrix of images and pictures. We need to use images and pictures to reach our focused audience and try to help them ‘get it.’ Creativity and innovation support our vision and help us reach who we are trying to reach. We should never innovate for the sake of innovating.

We need to collaborate as a team to create a synergy of conversation and ideas that lead to creativity.

It is amazing to see what a team can do – it’s far greater than something one individual can accomplish alone.

If our life mission is to truly reach people, we will increase effectiveness if we build a team of people around us. We are the body and we all have unique parts and unique roles to play.

As the body of Christ, each church needs to be working in harmony, playing its part, finding their shape.

We all have experiences in life, and our challenge is to leverage them in a way that God can redeem them. Our shared experiences help us see things that we couldn’t see by ourselves.

We all have different perceptions, we all see different parts, but together we can see what really needs to happen.

We are all different parts of the body and if we think we’ve gotten ahold of ‘it’, we’ve undersold and underestimated it.

When we are united in love for Jesus Christ and lift Him up, the world is on its tiptoes watching – and the more we are united, the more we understand the value of team, the better we will truly reveal the full expression of what the church is to the world.

Different people (and different churches) reach different people. We have the same message, but a different way of communicating and interacting with it. We are all called and we are also limited. We need to know who we are and who we aren’t so we can FOCUS.

You have to know who you are before you can build a team so you can reach your focused audience.

Your focused audience is….

1 – a group of people with a past.

Many people have experienced rejection in their lives and in turn are moving in a direction that seemed like a good idea at the time… but in the end are empty. We have to  intrude with love and compassion and tell them that they don’t need to keep going the way they are going. We help them understand that their shame and guilt can’t hold them back. We are brining Good News – hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless.

2 – a group of people who don’t know their value.

People don’t know their value or that they have a future.

Mark used a great illustration about paper plates and china. We use paper plates when we don’t care, but we take great care of our china and only use it at special times.

Mark brought out the point that many of the people we are trying to reach have been treated like paper plates their whole lives – they’ve been used over and over again and discarded.

Our challenge is to innovate to communicate how truly valuable they really are.

Mark challenged us to look at the parables of Jesus (the pearl of great price, the treasure in the field) with the thought that we are the treasure – that we are so valuable to God that He did every thing to have us. Jesus emptied Himself of His glory and came in the flesh, fully man and fully God, was born to a peasant family and was the perfect sacrifice so we could be made new.

Jesus gave His life to have the treasure… you and me…and the people we are trying to reach.

3 – a group of people who need a translator.

The difficulty of translation is huge. It’s our job as communicators to ‘bail people out’ and translate the language in a way that they can understand.

Jesus didn’t have a halo when He was born, neither did Mary or Joseph, it’s a translation error we’ve created.

The problem oftentimes is, they we believe people actually get it and we need to understand that we live in a world that doesn’t speak “God.”

We have a translation error and we need to communicate effectively to the people we are trying to reach. Not everyone gets it, not everyone understands and we have to create and innovate so people can get it.

We need to leverage the energy of our culture and bring truth and insight.

We need to make the church a safe place for a dangerous message – a message that will change the direction and course of people’s lives.

Tim joined Granger Community Church after serving nearly 10 years in various leadership positions, including executive management with Life Action Ministries. With a desire to make an impact in the local church, he develops the church’s vision and values and helps plan for the future.

He is instrumental in handling the day-to-day operations, hiring staff, completing major construction projects and developing Granger’s nationally recognized Children’s Center. You can hear Tim weekly on The Simply Strategic Show. He has also co-authored three books, including Simply Strategic Growth.

Tim’s blog.
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Buzz happens when you have a product people talk about. Buzz is people connecting. Buzz is what happens when normal people talk to others about your church and what you are doing without the approval of the board or elders!

The Blair Witch Project is a prime example of buzz at work. It profited over $248 million, purely on buzz, people thinking it was real.

Buzz is created by things that are unusual, outrageous, taboo, hilarious remarkable, or secretive. Anything rooted in emotion.

Tim talked about things that have created buzz this year: Warren Buffett giving his money away; Hezbollah; Mel Gibson’s DUI; the British terror plot. We all buzz about things.

Buzz simply lends momentum to the opportunity.

Tim talked about Granger’s PureSex series and buzz that was created throughout their community concerning what some thought was an edgy subject for church. ((Sidenote: my favorite part of their media coverage was when the reporter was asking a guy who he thought put up the billboards promoting the series, and when she told him it was a church he said, “really… which one?))

Granger’s average attendance prior to the series was around 5,000. The first weekend of the series (thanks to the buzz) was over 7,000! They figure they had a net gain of about 500 people as a result of the series.

Tim talked about the flywheel of buzz and the parts it’s made up of: IMPACT, LANGUAGE, BELIEFS, which ultimately lead to BUZZ.

The problem with many of our churches is that we aren’t making an impact.

Tim shared a gripping story about when he was growing up in Iowa and some boys triggered an explosion in a military bunker that was holding over 25,000 pounds of dynamite. The impact was physically and emotionally huge.

To have an impact means to have an immediate and strong affect on something or somebody.

Where is the church that’s impact is so loud that people can’t deny it?

How different would our communities be if our churches didn’t exist?

How are we helping the down-and-out’s out of poverty and the up-and-outs with busyness and issues with parenting and family?

Who is educating? Who is helping to create the values and morals?

We need to be thinking about the people in the community, not the people inside the church.

Is there an undeniable impact in our community that our church is making?

Impact only happens if you speak the right language.

Tim used an illustration from the movie National Treasure. The map looked differently depending on what filter they looked through.

Filters are important because we all have filters in place in our minds. People have filters when they come into our churches.

There is a filter that is strong in today’s society and throughout our entire culture and it’s the filter of pop culture. Pop culture is the language of today. We live in a media-driven world. TV, movies, music, books and everything else are forming people’s ideals. We need to leverage the language of pop culture to reach people.

Every church has a choice on what they do with pop culture…they IGNORE it, and say, “let us pray…” and create a safe haven, a church separate and ‘safe’ from the world. They SEPARE from it, and say “come ye apart from the world” and become rule-generators. They CONDEMN it and say, “go forth and boycott,” and create a militant political force. They EMBRACE it, say, “let’s party!” and they are no different from the world. OR, they LEVERAGE it, they proclaim, “Jesus is alive!” and they are effective.

We find movement through pop culture. If you look at TV, movies or music you can see that people are filled with a great spiritual hunger that is communicated through art.

Our challenge is to become cross-cultural missionaries. We need to be missionaries who indwell the culture around us and use the signs and symbols of our culture to reach people.

”The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” – John 1:14, The Message

Jesus lived in the culture of His day and used its symbols as an in-road to the message and built a bridge. We can’t afford to be out of touch with pop culture. Its impact on our communities is far-reaching.

We need to look at it and find out what it reveals… and use people’s response to it to connect people back to God.

1 – We need to use pop culture to appoint people with stories from the Bible.
2 – We need to look for pop culture examples to illustrate Biblical truth.
3 – We need to use secular images or songs to raise deep life issues to the surface of people’s thinking.

Using pop culture isn’t watering down the Gospel. We know that the Gospel is the Gospel; the truth is the truth. Truth produces life change and we need to use what people connect and relate with to bring out spiritual truth and ultimately, life change.

People don’t listen to us sometimes though… people can’t hear us because (1) there’s too much noise, (2) they don’t trust you because of other people’s failures, (3) and because they are connected…they have everything the need.

Buzz only happens if we are making an impact. Impact only happens if you are being understood and are speaking their language.

You can’t fake what you believe at you core.

Granger’s billboards added fuel to a buzz that was already there. Their own people were already talking about it. They were a tool to spark conversations.

Buzz will do nothing if you don’t deliver and don’t sustain it. It’s about doing effective ministry and introducing people to Christ. It’s creating services for people who don’t like church.

We need to focus on our core – it affects our language. Create the changes that make an impact and buzz will start.

It all boils down to us communicating to people that we care and that they matter… to us and to God. People can’t hear you unless they feel you care for their needs.

Kem draws from more that 14 years experience in corporate communications to help increase the competitive edge of the church today. She uses a non-nonsense approach to lead a team of communications and technology professionals at Granger Community Church. Using best practices, they live to find ways to remove barriers that keep people from connecting.

With more than 5,000 in weekly attendance, Granger Community Church was recently identified by Outreach Magazine as one of the 100 fastest growing churches of the 21st century.

Kem’s blog.
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Kem began the session asking people to tell about their current website situation. Some people shared about how they lacked content or the ability to get a website going. Some expressed challenges of creating a site for a multi-site church, another person was in the process of creating a bilingual website. There are many challenges when it comes to creating a web strategy.

Not having a web presence is better than having a bad website.

What’s fun about a website is its bells and whistles, the stuff that you see… but 70% of it is the work behind it, planning and creating a web strategy.

Kem talked about the three phases to a web strategy: DISCOVER, PROPOSE and DELIVER.

Discovering and proposing will be 70% of your work – it’s conversations, research and meetings.

One of the age old problems in developing a website or a web strategy is knowing who really is in charge… is it IT or communications? It can be neither or it can be both.

Your website is drive by communications and your message.

DISCOVER

In the Discover phase, you don’t even talk about the website, you talk to your stake holders: your elders, your senior management team, etc – anyone that represents the entire church.

Ask questions. Try to identify gaps. Try to get an audience with all of the key people all at once. Find one ‘champion’ or one project manager to keep the energy going.

Questions you need to ask in the discover phase are:

1 – What does your church do?
Shawn Wood from Seacost Chuch shared about how at Seacost they needed to nail down their DNA as a church and focus on what they did well.

You can do everything, but you can’t do everything all at once. You need to focus on what you do best. Where does most of your energy, resources go – where to connections happen? What do you do? What’s your mission?

What’s your brand? It’s not who you think you are, it’s who people think you are.  It’s knowing how you are perceived, knowing how you want that perception to change/what you want to change.

2 – How does communication happen?

Look at your database, how you do promotions, how you manage your calendar, how you track member info – identify what tech platform you are on.

You need a central database. Your website is least important on your priority list if you don’t have all of your information in synch. You need centralized calendars, a centralized communications strategy and streamlined communication.

Your infrastructure needs to be in place before you go to the web. You can’t build the house when you’re living in it.

Don’t show up with problems, show up with solutions when you are having conversations with your senior leadership team.

PROPOSE

In the propose stage, you ask what’s working. What’s not working? Don’t take your current website into consideration as you ask these questions. Instead, focus on where you want to be five years from now, that helps you so you don’t ‘design yourself into a corner.’

You need to know your goal and let every decision you make guide you in that direction.

It’s better to have nothing at all than to have out-of-date, irrelevant information. Keep it current and manageable. Get down to bare minimums. Ask who is in charge. The project manager needs to support senior leadership.

Phase 1, Discover, is your map, it helps you identify what doesn’t match your overall vision and what matters.

We aren’t supposed to put the smack down on our ministry partners, our responsibility is to communicate to your lead person and tell them the cause and effect. Take it out of the emotional side and take out ‘what you have always had’ and ‘what you’ve always done.’

Who is going to develop it?

When developing a website keep in mind that when your church builds anything, you hire a contractor. Contractors build and volunteers and staff maintain. When building a website it’s vital you hire a contractor. Granger’s site was developed by AspireOne.

Who is going to maintain it?

What problem is your website going to solve? What question will it answer? How will people find it? Are the ‘googling’ it or are you driving them there?

How do you measure effectiveness? What do you need to know? What do you not care about?

PROPOSAL

This is where you present all your answers. Present your documented answers, give your ideas, find out your budget, etc.

Remember the overall mission of your website is to support every ministry of your church.

Your website is a first impression. People will visit your website before they visit your church.

Develop your site to match your target audience  and build functionality for your regular attendees.

Here’s Kem’s notes from the session.

Since 1992, Rob has passionately communicated the message of Christ at Granger’s midweek and weekend services and Core Class 401 – the final class in the church membership series. He has taught Purpose-Driven ® Church to church leaders throughout the world, including Sudan, India, and Slovakia. He’s also been a main session speaker at Saddleback’s Purpose-Driven Church Conference.

At Granger, he also oversees outreach ministries, which are expanding rapidly under his leadership and teaching. Since 2001, more than 150,000 people in India have come to know Jesus Christ as a result of church planting and growth training curricula that Rob has delivered to Indian pastors.
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There’s a tension we live with when it comes to communication. We know that communication matters. There’s a sense that we get our people at one hour, at most two, per week, and we have those important moments to communicate the message of Jesus to our culture – and there’s a lot of competition. Our competition is not each other. Our people are being bombarded every day with different messages.

Texas A& M Study: average American encounters 800 multimedia messages a day… email, snail mail, bumper sticker, magazines, radio, TV, news – all day, everyday. People are spending millions of dollars to get their messages into our people, and its working very well (i.e. kids and McDonald’s). They are working to get these messages that are counter to the Kingdom – how do we cut through the noise?

The stakes are so high. Every time we program a service or craft a message we need to realize we are up to bat and it’s the 9th inning for someone.

The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation – the question is, how do we cooperate with God in the church when it comes to communication.

There’s a shift in how we do communication. Maybe there’s some things that need to change.

Story causes people to lean in and listen. It’s a primary shaping-force when we are coming up with services and sermons.

Shifting from a linear presentation to an engaging conversation.

When we come to a message we need to make a shift from a linear presentation to an engaging conversation.

>> What’s your relationship with the audience?

One is content driven, the other is relationship oriented. There’s a big difference.

Our messages are a series of moves in a conversation. We don’t have a linear series of points in our conversations – it’s organic. We go from block of thought to block of thought.

Conversations are not linear. There’s a natural flow… you can go on for hours and hours.

>> What if instead of thinking how we can get from point a to point b, but we rather think about how we can move our people in symphony?

There’s a natural flow to moves.

A lot of us learned to think of communication in a linear way…

>> Engaging Conversations Happen When Three Stories Intersect.

My story – everyone’s story – God’s story

The goal is to bring three stories together – and the more they intersect, you create a catalytic moment.

1. My story. As a communicator, you are telling your story. That’s what makes it authentic and real. When it comes to telling your story you need vulnerability and humor.

Most people think the church is where people come and pretend they are better than they really are. They think we are fake or hypocrites. With humor and vulnerability, they learn there is permission to be a human being in church. There has been a disconnect from the ‘people on the stage’ and the people in the audience. Stories lend authenticity to make your stories real.

Vulnerability can make people uncomfortable, but we need to be open about our weaknesses because it celebrates God’s grace in our lives.

Stories endear the audience to the speaker.

2 – Their Story
This is where we find common ground with the issue, we find where the stories overlap.

Taper the story to your focus audience – Jesus was the master of this. Women at the well, He talked about water. Fisherman, fish. Farmers, seed. He looked at his audience, He paid attention to who he was talking to and he adjusted his message to the audience. He connected to the person who was immediately in front of him and told the story in a way that they could get it.

We need to get into our people’s lives. It can be hard. It’s easy to stay inside the holy huddle… and building relationships with unchurched can be difficult.

Your degree of relevancy is dependant on how invested you are in relationships with unchurched people.

When you are programming your services, put the name of a person on your whiteboard, describe the person you are trying to reach and do all that you can do to connect to them.

Let your people tell their stories. Real life people. Real stories.

Sometimes we need to get dirty to know the joy of being clean.

When new people walking into GCC, one of the first questions that they ask is, “is there anyone like me?”

We tell our story – we connect with their story and we connect with…

3 – God’s story.
There are three dimension’s to God’s story:

The historical dimension
We swim in a very deep, historical stream. We are a part of a historical movement of people who said, “Yes!” to the revolution. We need to help people get that God’s Story (the Bible) is a real story, with real people… it’s not just a self-help book, it’s real people who met with a real God in a real place and a real time.

Tell the Scripture as Story. We need to start with God’s story and see where it intersects with where we are it. How can it be communicated? Story? Video? Etc.

Many people have a systematic theological background, which is great, but we need to tell the Scripture as a story. Instead of being an esoteric thing, it’s a historical reality that we find beautiful enough that we orient our life around it and invite people to join in on it.

Begin the conversation, don’t end it. In the past, a good communicator was someone who ended the conversation. The pastor had the final word.  Great teaching leads to great questions. It leads to answers and questions.

Sean Penn, “When everything gets answered it’s fake. The mystery IS the truth.”

There are huge parts of life that go unresolved.

When you give the cliché and the pat answer, and  boil it down, there is a sense that things really aren’t like it. When you have an infinite God… there are infinite answers.

Become a story collector!  Find stories in metaphor. Find stories in other communicators.  Find stories in culture – this is what Jesus did.

The framework of all that Jesus taught on was the Kingdom of God. When he taught He used examples from everyday culture. He used things that people see.

We’ve got to find a way to let people know that the applause of Heaven is for them – when their lives are transformed by amazing grace. Jesus is inviting us to join… because we matter to God. No matter who you are, where you are, where you’ve been or what you’ve done… you matter to God. That’s our story. That’s their story. That’s God’s story.

Mark began asking who had been to Disney.

When it started, Walt Disney wanted to build a theme park around the Disney characters. Walt asked the team developing it, “when people go back, what photos do we want to see in their photo albums?” What experience do we want people to take away when they leave our theme park?

Begin with the end in mind.

From the moment they step on to the church campus until they leave, they have an experience. The experience must “stick” with people. The more senses we touch, the more indelible the experience.

The intentionality of our programming needs to have a narrow focus so people leave with one thought, one theme.

The goal is to foster God-experiences so people can take their next step… we need to do it on a consistent basis.

They used the classic example of Ethel & Lucy in the chocolate factory…. Sundays are like that. They keep coming, they keep coming, they keep coming.. and we have to come with idea, idea, idea – and they can’t be the same.

If we don’t have a process and the right people, we’re going to have to eat a lot of chocolate.

We need to consistently create ideas.

GCC Series Planning Process: A year out they block out time for allotted for series; 10-12 weeks out, senior management team meets and discusses a series they’d like to do.

Series Outline Document – list of title of the series, title, big idea, next steps for people to take, key promotions.

The whole process should be done as a team.

The document is taken to a brain-storming team made up of different people from different departments of the church. They brainstorm ideas, and the arts team makes a general idea and decisions.

A list of elements is then distributed to drama, stage/lighting, programming, music/arts, writing team – it all funnels down to the weekend service. The purpose of the process is to eliminate risk. We don’t want to do things sporadically – we want to do the best things with the right people.

The theme of process is predominant in Scripture. Creativity takes time and collaboration.

Live music, live drama, spoken message, video, ambiance, transitions – the palette that contributes to the painting of the weekend service.

What’s on your palette needs to be what you’re good at. Your palette will paint a beautiful canvas.

The beginning is all about ambiance and mood. It’s not what we want to walk into, it’s about what we want them to leave with. Once you know the end, you know when to start the experience.

GCC uses preludes to kick off services. They oftentimes use secular music so they identify with something familiar. Preludes are always UP! Loud, fun, uplifting. A lot of it also has to do with lighting and set design.

Touch senses… sight, sound, feel. It all creates expectancy.

Flow – timing and energy continuity. We need to keep energy high when it needs to be high and low when it needs to be low… we don’t want it to a pulse, we want it to be evenflow. Flow needs to be consistent with the mood.

Granger does 1-2 songs in a weekend service. Their main thought was that for the unchurched person standing, watching people they don’t know singing songs they don’t know could make them uncomfortable. They leave midweek as a time for worship on Wednesday when there is a focused audience who are committed Christ-followers.

Most people don’t like to come to church in the summer! Granger tries to make church fun in the summer so they did Saturday Night Live! People like to have fun in the summer.

We don’t care why people come or why they come back – we want them to come back! We want them to know that they matter to God.

There’s buzz and there’s felt need. In planning for the year, they identify times where they can speak into felt needs of people in their community. Things that people care about, important issues – parenting, finance, dating, sex, etc. Draw people into the conversation and address through pop culture, issues that are real to life.

Take old ideas, fresh concepts and create a unique ‘sticky’ factor.

It’s better not to take a step back! Don’t be afraid to make hard decisions. Artists and people on the platform don’t want to look bad. They want to be safe and know you are the leader who will make the right decisions, with the audience in mind. It’s not about us, it’s about our mutual vision to connect people to Christ.

I just went to this workshop for fun and to learn how to explain blogging to some members of our staff who are toying the idea of starting a blog.

If you are reading this, chances are you know what a blog is, so therefore I won’t post all my notes.

It was great to see so many people who aren’t blogging in there. I hope that the session sparked some interest and we’ll see more blogs as a result of it.

They did a great job of doing Blogging 101, explaining what blogs are, how to use them, how to create and maintain them, etc.

A few key points:

Blogging is a tool to get information out. There’s connectedness and expressiveness.

A website doesn’t allow for interaction, a blog does.

Use Bloglines to read your blogs. Use typepad for your blog because all of the Granger people do, and so do I, and that means you are cool.

A blog is a personal site, but it’s not private. What you are posting is going to be out there for the whole world to see. If your church has bloggers, it might be good to come up with a blogging policy.

Be respectful when you blog. Don’t engage in in arguments, instead engage in private dialog and feedback.

Don’t apologize for light blogging.

Share link love, don’t ask for it.

Balance self-promotion, don’t get a big head. If we’re blogging, it’s usually a good sign we have an ego.

Balance your opinions.

Don’t get too vulnerable. There’s stuff people shouldn’t know and don’t want to know.

Take the opportunity to build people up – COMMENT! – it’s a version of community.

SPELL CHECK!

Keep the conversation short. (I’m guilty of keeping it too long!)

Reveal your idiosyncrasies.

Push hot buttons.

Have fun!

Mark serves as lead pastor of National Community Church (NCC) in Washington DC, which meets in movie theaters throughout the district. NCC targets emerging generations; 73 percent of those who attend are single “twenty-somethings” who live or work on Capitol Hill. Mark enjoys life in DC with his wife and three children. Starting with a core group of 19, NCC has morphed into one church with five services in three locations. The chuch also owns and operates Ebenezer’s, the largest coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. Mark is also an entrepreneur and a daily blogger. He’s also the author of In the Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day (Multnomah, October 2006). Want it early? You can pre-order at Amazon.

National Community Church website.
Mark’s blog.
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This was the second chance that I had to hear Mark Batterson speak in the last two weeks, and again, he hit it out of the park. Mark shared the story of how National Community Church started and what they are doing to impact DC – and the world – through their use of technology and innovation.

The cure for failure is small doses of failure. Failure opens us up to consider new things. Sometimes we can have a sense of destiny and still have a sense of density.

Mark shared about how NCC started in movie theaters and compared multi-site churches to the Tabernacle. While the Temple remained stationary, the tabernacle moved… and with it, so did the “production team and set-up team.” It was a nomadic church culture, and it’s really taking church to where people are at. Jesus modeled this when He ministered, He went to natural gathering places.

There are ways of doing church that have never been thought of yet.

Jesus said to go to the highways and byways and to compel people to come in – He didn’t say how. We need to use every possible medium that is available to communicate the truth of the Gospel.

How we came to Christ influences how we do ministry. Mark got saved after watching the movie The Hiding Place. Much like how stained glass in older churches were used to communicate the message of the Gospel, our modern day screens provide a way to communicate the Truth.

We are wired to process… we process print an average of 100 bits per second, and process images 100 billion bits per second. We need to find creative ways to communicate the message visually.

John Wesley broke the mold when he started circuit riding and field preaching. That was revolutionary for his time. It’s estimated that in this lifetime he traveled over 250,000 miles on horseback. It’s amazing how today we can travel over 250,000 miles and reach tens of thousands of people through the click of a mouse.

Our generation has the unprecedented opportunity to fulfill the Great Commission – taking the message of the Gospel to the world!

Mark shared five things as we endeavor to innovate:

1 – Enjoy the journey.

We can create internal expectations of where we want to be in life and in ministry, and sometimes those expectations can let us down. You can either live in the future our enjoy the journey.

2 – Be Yourself.

Life is too short not to become who you are. Be yourself. Be who you are. Don’t be a ‘pastor,’ don’t hide behind your title, just be yourself. There is a difference.

3 – Stop criticizing.

”Criticize by creating.” – Michelangelo

We need to be known for what we are for, not what we are against. The Apostle Paul didn’t boycott, he engaged people in their territory and he spoke their language.

4 – Offend Pharisees.

Don’t worry about offending the Pharisees, but do not offend the Holy Spirit. Don’t live out of the fear of people.

5 – Make mistakes.

Mistakes are what you look back at and laugh at…

Sometimes we think what we regret most are our actions, but the truth is, when all is said and done, the thing we will regret most is our inactions. What we didn’t do.

Everything we do is an experiment – and when you are experimenting, you will make mistakes.

Too many of us are concerned with sins of commission and not as concerned as we should be about sins of omission.

Perry Noble is the founding and senior pastor of one of America’s fastest-growing churches, NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. What began in his home in 1998 as a weekly Bible study for college students grew from eight people more than 150 in less than two months. From there, it grew into a Sunday evening service on the campus of Anderson College. After several adults began attending the service designed for college students, a core group began praying about what planting a church that “did things differently.” Since its first Sunday morning service in 2000, NewSpring has added additional services – and about 5,100 people. In February, NewSpring moved into its own state-of-the-art facility, where it continues Perry’s vision of a creative, relevant church that makes a difference in the lives of those who attend.

NewSpring’s website
Perry’s blog

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Perry was hilarious. Absolutely fantastic. Following up on the heels of Mark’s talk, when the lights came up he said, “I don’t have a coffeehouse, but I’m sure we have some rednecks who will make you some moonshine.”

Mark Batterson did an amazing job of collecting the ‘Perry Quotes’ from the session.

If you are a senior pastor, you need to the fire in your church. Don’t say, “I just wish my people would get fired up…”, get on fire yourself, lead the way. Your church will get on fire when you do.

Perry shared a story about one time when he got sick and went out at midnight to get some NyQuil. (( He’s a Baptist, so he looks forward to when he’s sick so he can get drunk on NyQuil: it’s the night time, stuffy nose, sleepy…why the heck did I wake up naked in the bathtub? Medicine.)) He went to the grocery store and there was a lady in line with a ‘buggy’ of groceries. No one was there to help them and apparently the lady had been standing there for 10 minutes waiting on someone. No one came. Perry took matters into his own hands and he used the overhead pager to get someone up to the front to wait on them.

You have to be the one to take action, you can’t stand and wait for someone else to move. You’ve got to make the move yourself.

Perry said the South is known for two things: Waffle Houses and churches, because they have them everywhere. He shared about how when they started their church they didn’t want another church; they wanted a church with a real concern for what really matters.

He said the problem with Christianity oftentimes is that we focus on being too small.

He shared four ways we can impact our communities:

1 – ENGAGE

People have expectations. They expect when they show up to church it’s going to be boring. They expect to show up and make up their grocery list.

Why can’t church be fun?

Church should be the most engaging place on the planet because we have the most exciting, most engaging message. If the tomb really is empty, we need to act like it!

Remember God made everything, and what the enemy meant for evil (music, pop culture, etc) God can use for good.

We need to let God out of the box we have Him in so He can move. He wants to do something in our churches.

2 – ENLARGE

We need to see the Kingdom grow and numbers do matter because numbers represent souls.

We need to hit the needs people really need to hear.

We need to be more concerned with who is coming in our churches instead of who is going out. We shouldn’t be concerned with “steeple people”.

We shouldn’t be concerned with closing the back door, if we are the church and the church is the body… we can’t shut the back door, we’ll get spiritually constipated and we’ll need a ‘Holy Ghost enema.’

People who don’t know Christ are more important. We will offend the Pharisees.

If we target the people nobody else is reaching we won’t be able to contain our growth.

Hold true to your vision, be more concerned with who is coming in instead of who is going out.

3 – ENDURE

The church is not effective when the pastor ministers to the people; it is effective when the people minister to the people. You are successful when your people do the ministry. Teach people how to endure. Teach the church to depend on each other.

4 – ENABLE

See people discover their potential in Christ. As people begin to volunteer they begin to discover things about themselves they never knew before. They will sit on their blessed ASSurance as long as you let them.

We don’t need to worry ourselves with other people’s passions. People’s passions are not our responsibility or our burden. Be true to who you are, not to who you aren’t. We will empower people to fulfill their passions, but we won’t accomplish it for them.

Get on fire and stay on fire. This is the greatest time for the Church. We need to get out of the pews and into the field – that brings transformation.

We live in a real world with real hurt and real heartaches and we need people to know that we are real.

Arts have an impact – they do something to us. Art moves us to think about reality.

Good theater is mutually agreed upon suspended disbelief: the actors believe there isn’t an audience and the audience believes the actors aren’t actors.

You have to believe to engage.

Good theater we will suspend our belief. The reality is we need to present what’s true.
When we pick dramas and music, we determine together to go along and no one feels betrayed.

However, if a Christ-follower sees a leader ‘faking’ – if our beliefs or commitment isn’t real – it is devastating blow to the church.

What do you really believe? You can’t pretend. Your people can’t believe you are pretending. What we are doing is not good theater – it’s authenticity.

There are times in church that we need to come to grips with the fact that it’s not theater. We want people to know what’s true. We want people to encounter God – its truth, its reality.

To be a real church, being obedient to a real God…you need to FOCUS.

God loves you, and everyone else has a plan for you and your ministry. The community has a great plan for you. You have to focus your time on energy on what’s really ‘you.’ You can only do so much. Focus on what it important and leave the rest up to others.

Amos 3:3 – Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so? We need to all be on the same page, not just by our dictates, but by our hearts being united.

Stop doing everything.

Get away with the people who are your key influencers and take time to focus.

It’s good to have fun.

Schedule your life with the most important things first.

Are you doing what somebody else could do? Are you doing what only you can do?

Mark shared about how GCC’s key leaders went on a retreat to Phoenix and outlined their top five priorities for the life of their church and how they came back and communicated it to their staff, volunteers, leadership and congregation. They created Focus on Five and a sermon series to get the message out there.

What matters most is the ‘why.’ Why? So people will follow Jesus.

We need to go back and think carefully about how we can focus so our churches aren’t doing good theater, but are bringing people into the real presence of the real God.

When you get aligned with people who know Jesus is King, God will be glorified.

Mark challenged all of us by asking who of us was ‘in.’ Who will play their part.? Who will pay the price?

What we are doing isn’t a game, it’s real, it’s reality.

It’s not on our own strength, but by the Spirit of God.

We need to innovate if what we are doing isn’t working. We have to find a way.

If Jesus trusts us, we need to trust ourselves. It’s not done in our own power, but His.
Be where you need to be. Do your part.