Hello
It’s way past 11:30
My mind will not shut down
I am awake when I should be sleeping
Reviewing the goals I wrote for my ministry teams five days ago
Actually since I changed every one of them I cant claim I set them last week
I love visioneering and creating and setting goals for huge accomplishments
But I am a dreamer and narrowing my focus is all but impossible
I will do my best to narrow big dreams
In to short concise statements
Then sleep until 5:30
Goodnight
I remember, several weeks ago, sitting in our weekly Creative Planning meeting and going over our upcoming services about community. One of our team members mentioned how tough it was for some people to feel comfortable committing to a small group. He began to describe it like a personal tug-of-war, constantly pulling against the demands of life in order to grow spiritually as a christian. Suddenly an idea was born. The team came up with a drama about a guy pulling on a rope that continually refused help because of his own pride.
The idea was great but there was a big problem, we do not have a drama team at FCC. That may have seemed like a deal breaker for most but we have an axiom we use a lot in our planning meetings, “Don’t let logistics get in the way of a good idea.” The team began to jot down names of people who might be able to pull this off and began the process of convincing them that they were the right people to make this happen. Here is the result.
I know there are a lot of Worship Leaders and Creative Arts people that read this so I want to take this opportunity to tell you, no matter what the obstacles you face, “IT” matters.
The time you spend in creative and planning meetings matter.
The evenings you give up to rehearse with your band matters.
The mornings you drive into the office before the sun even comes up matters.
The countless hours you spend investing into the lives of your volunteers matter.
The tech meetings matter.
Your hard work matters.
The lives you touch matter.
“IT” Matters… to God
God is so incredible. He has a way of taking the little things we do and turning them into major life changing moments. Thanks Mike for your amazing testimony!
This week we took down our set to prepare for Christmas stage. I really liked the direction this set took. We were pretty limited on budget so we had to put our creative brains to work. This is definitely not the design we initially planned but I loved the result.
We have some big ideas for our upcoming series…
I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails on how we plan out our services. To be real honest we are still trying to figure it out. FCC has doubled in size since I started working here about eight years ago. It seems like every time we find something that works, we have to change it all over again to accommodate the new growth in our services.
So far this has been the tool that has worked best. I actually stole this from a friend who leads worship for a church in a nearby town. I think he stole it from a church in KY… Its a flannel graph!
We print a title page for each week. It includes who is preaching, the date, the sermon title (which becomes the theme of the week) and the scripture reference for the sermon. PC usually has those done a few months in advance.
We set up the song order and any “special elements” in the service underneath the title page on little tabs with Velcro backing. We also include any regular service pieces that would be in every service such as communion and the message.
We color code everything. This helps us make sure we are considering not only how much we are trying to cram into one hour but also who is in our services. Part of worshiping in a church that has been around for 100+ years means there is a diverse group of ages participating in the AM services each week.
The green tabs represent fast songs, yellow for medium paced songs, red (obviously) for slow songs and the blue for hymns. The orange tabs are parts of the service that happen every week and pink (I was running out of colored paper)are for special elements such as drama, video or special music. Everything is laminated so we can write on the tabs with dry erase markers. we even have some blank (white) tabs to we can write in new things.
There it is…
How do you plan?
Living Sacrifices 