The Creative Department has decided to make an unprecedented move. And Pastor has approved the shift. Beginning today on Pastor’s blog, stevenfurtick.com, we will begin the Elevation Staff Twitter.

We hope it will shed some light to other church planters on what exactly we do (ie what meeting each staff member is in, how they spend their day, etc.). I think the other takeaway will be just how much fun we have together.

So check it out as we expose the midgets behind the curtains running Elevation Church.

Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor

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A few months ago, we realized that our Worship Department and Creative Department were not as integrated as they should be. This really became evident after visiting Fellowship Church for C3 and seeing how seamlessly every worship element flowed together to create a very unified experience. In order to improve this at Elevation, we changed both our organizational structure and the way we brainstorm for each series.

We followed the example of many similar churches and placed the Worship Department under the Creative Department in our org chart. Our Creative Pastor is now responsible for everything that happens within the main worship experience. As the Worship Pastor, I report to him. The Creative Pastor is now able to focus on the big picture of the worship experience and how every element works together. This structural change has brought a great sense of unity and cohesiveness to the department.

Practically, this shift has changed the way we brainstorm for each series. Previously, the worship leaders would bring final set lists and performance songs to the table and the creative team would bring video ideas, stage set ideas, etc. There was no effective collaboration and we did our best to reconcile the two plans and make them work as one. Now both teams participate in every brainstorming session together.

In our initial meeting that occurs 50-60 days out from a new series, every idea is put on the white board. No one is allowed to shoot down any suggestion. We cover every element from set design, sermon takeaways and song ideas. We also invite people from other departments to contribute in these meetings. Our graphic designer might suggest a great performance song while one of the worship leaders brings a cool video idea to the table. We then have a follow-up meeting one week later to talk through which ideas are worth pursuing. Tasks and responsibilities are then delegated out to the appropriate people.

The Creative Pastor now has the ability to “land the plane” in these meetings and make decisions when we don’t all agree. As a result of these changes, we have seen new levels of creativity within our worship experience.

Wade Joye, Worship Pastor

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One thing we like to do at Elevation is learn from other churches. This weekend I took a group of men from our church on a marathon Sunday. The guys I took make up the church’s Acquisition Team and they are currently helping us pursue our next facility step.

The goal of the trip was to stretch our vision and see other churches doing ministry with excellence in permanent facilities. Here is a quick itinerary of the day: We left Charlotte at 5 AM, arrived at Northpoint’s Browns Bridge campus in time for the 9AM service and had a tour afterwards. We then headed down to Buckhead for a tour and time with David McDaniel (Genius). We finished the day by stopping at Newspring for some time with their Facilities Director and caught their 5 PM service. We were back in Charlotte at 9:30 PM.

One of the big reasons we wanted to catch the 9AM service at Brown’s Bridge was to see how they do their video campuses. They use a very sophisticated 24 ft. wide center screen that really gives the appearance that Andy Stanley is actually live. They have traditional image magnification on the side screens that are close ups that you spend a majority of the time watching just as you would in a big venue if the sermon was live.

It’s not a magic trick, but it is ministry done with excellence. I’ve experienced it before but couldn’t explain it to my team so they had to experience it for themselves.

So there we were in the center of the auditorium, a little over half way back. The worship ended and a bumper fired before the sermon. The huge center screen came down as the stage was cleared. It was pretty dark so you could barely see the screen coming down. I had a pretty large group with me but when Andy popped up on the center screen the guys closest to me were blown away with how good it looked.

Andy concluded another superb message; I was relieved to see my Acquisition Team finally get what I had been trying to tell them about for months. They finally understood just how excellent we could do video in a permanent facility. That is, all except for one of my guys. He leaned over to another guy with our group as we were exiting the sanctuary and said “Chunks is going to be disappointed that we drove all the way to Atlanta to see the video and Andy was live”.

So there you have it. Nothpoint does video so good that one of my sharpest guys in the church drove all the way to Atlanta to see the “Video Preacher” and was disappointed by thinking that it was actually live. That’s video done “too good”.

Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor

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The last time I posted on Access Elevation, I wrote about reports.� Since I got more response from that post than I have gotten from any other post I’ve written I thought it might be helpful to take it to the next level.

In the last post I emphasized having good content, making your conclusions obvious, and sticking to a consistent format.� In this post I’m going to dive a little deeper into what I meant by making your conclusions obvious.�

First, let me point out that there are different levels of reports:

• Vertical - reports to your boss
• Horizontal - reports to your peers
• Internal - reports to people that know your ministry details (staff and team members)
• External - reports to people that don’t know your ministry details (volunteers)�

The information is this post assumes a vertical report and would not necessarily apply to the other types of reports.

Making your conclusions obvious is not always easy.� Chip and Dan Heath wrote about the “curse of knowledge” in their book Made to Stick (114).� Basically, as someone who spends their entire time buried in the details of your ministry, (finances, small groups, children’s ministry, volunteers etc…) it’s going to be hard for you to recognize what’s really important; to you, it’s all important.�

Every time someone asks you about the number of people on your small group rosters you say, “this week there are 1050…but we have also drastically improved our systems to get people plugged in, and we eliminated a lot of people from the rosters that weren’t really going to their group, and we just had several leaders quit, and we’re heading toward the summer, and, and, and…”

Your curse is the same as mine, you know too much about your area so when you produce a report you’re tempted to give too much information, or to qualify the information you’re giving…�

What I’ve learned is that whatever metric you consistently show includes all that stuff – that is, if it’s the right metric!� Sure, 1050 doesn’t tell every detail of the Small Group Ministry, but if that number is the right metric it will reveal the plot line, and for someone that doesn’t understand all of the nuances of your ministry, getting them to understand the plot is a HUGE win for your ministry.

John Bishop, Ministries Pastor

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