Thursday, September 4, 2008

Hillsong Reflections

In the past two weeks we've had team members at two conferences.
I love that our folks are committed to learning, growing, stretching themselves, and investing in awesome experiences. Like I wrote before- it's all about the shared experience.

We had 13 folks go to the Hillsong United Conference in Toronto this past weekend.
The worship was amazing.
The music phenomenal.
The speakers inspiring.
So here are the honest thoughts that go through my head as a church planter as I experience something like Hillsong unfold:
  • First, God is so good! When you have so many folks worshiping, it's so easy, so great, to just let yourself be enfolded into the moment. Loved it.
  • Second, they did well what they do best. No dramas, no skits, no long list of 30 workshops to choose from. They did worship, they did sermons. They did them both well.
  • They maximized their media. They used video clips for intro, during sets, for announcements, for everything, and it works so good. I'm more convinced than ever we are going in the direction of "Media, Music and Message."
  • I love lighting! Great lighting makes such a huge difference in creating mood, effect, emotion, and moment. The old expression was, "If they can't hear you, they can't hear the good news." That was the rationale for great sound systems. Now I'm saying, "If they can't see us, they can't see the good news!" We need to create powerful visuals of the good news we are communicating- this means great video and lighting production.
  • I need to love where I'm at. We don't have a building. We don't have equipment. We don't even have staff! There will be a time when Connections is huge. When that happens, we will start to talk about "the good old days" when we ran on a shoe string budget, made tons of mistakes, trusted fully on God, and had a blast every step of the way. These are those days- and I do love it!
We have awesome volunteers, we have vision, we have enough "stuff'" to create an event, and we have Jesus. Sounds simple, but it's the profound truth. There is so much more you can say about something like Hillsong, but it's really one of those things where "You just had to be there!"

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