I think most people would agree it’s not anyone’s goal to simply stay the same for as long as possible. It’s not very many people’s goal to maintain the status quo; that’s not inspiring, that’s nothing to get excited about long-term.

Something to get excited about is breaking new ground in your ministry areas. Something to get excited about is discovering people are falling in love with Jesus in a deeper way. Something to get excited about is people becoming the church they were intended to be.

One of the greatest challenges we face is trying to figure out how to make progress in the midst of just trying to stay afloat. Unfortunately, things don’t really ever change. When we were a church of 500, now that we’re a church of well over 3,000 and even churches we talk to with sizes closer to 20,000 all experience the same challenge. We all feel like there is so much to do, but we all feel the pressure of trying to push everything we do to new levels at the same time.

We’re either all crazy, or we’re facing the million-dollar question…together. I believe it’s the latter, and here’s my answer.

The only way to consistently innovate in the midst of all the maintenance is to expect what’s coming. We have to know that we’re going to feel overwhelmed, but we also need to believe that there may be no greater thing we can do than to stop in the middle of the chaos to evaluate processes, details, results.

The evaluation process typically gets pushed to the backburner because it just doesn’t produce the results we all love quickly enough. But, the truth is, without evaluation, we’ll never push ourselves to those next levels we’re longing for. Simply because we’ll never have a point of reference to start with.

Evaluate everything. Make the time. We can’t afford not to.

Then, when the evaluation is done, go do something about it. When you realize your camera shots aren’t communicating the moment very well, change them. When the lobby doesn’t get anyone excited, do something different. When the production team is getting burned out, find a way to bring new people and inspiration into the mix.

Don’t aspire for the status quo, it’s way too small for what God wants to do through you.

Larry Hubatka, Creative Pastor

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Our volunteer staff is incredible at Elevation. You hear almost every time we post anything. The truth is, we’d be sunk without them.

This past week, we had a casualty of war when we lost one of our 42� flat screens in an epic battle between a TV stand and a volunteer.

It went a little like this…TV was placed on the TV stand, but wasn’t completely secure. An innocent volunteer walks by and bumps the TV. Not being fully secured, it fell about 3 feet to certain death onto the stage. We tried to revive it, but realized there was no hope once we actually pushed the power button. It looked like we might be able to recover it after just seeing a few large scratches, but once it was on it looked like someone had taken a bat to the screen.

Lesson learned: there are going to be casualties along the way.

I wish I could say we didn’t ever have to reorder, replace, redesign or remake anything, but the truth is, it happens. In the business world, you hear, “that’s the cost of doing business.� Well, the same can be said of what we do.

When budgets are being built, build for the reality, not the ideal situation. TVs break, picture frames crack, batteries die and VGA cables go bad (a lot).

The specific things we burn through like water in our production: ProCell 9V batteries, gaff tape, VGA cables, BNC connectors, DVCPro tapes and power cords (don’t know what they’re even called, but the kind that you’d run from a monitor to an outlet…square with 2 corners cut off…someone tell me what those are actually called).

Plan for the casualties, it’ll make things a lot easier down the road.

Larry Hubatka, Creative Pastor

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About 3 weeks ago we had the opportunity to pull off the largest production to-date at Elevation Church.

We’re typically operating in multiple high school auditoriums with a seating capacity in the 600-900 range per auditorium, a couple cameras, 6-8 people in the band on stage and a few of key transitions. On this particular Sunday, which happened to be our Christmas worship experience, we were upping the ante all-around.We went to a local well-known city venue with a seating capacity closer to 10,000, which we cut down to around 6,000 with some well-placed house curtain. What was usually 2,500 people spread out over 5 services was turning into 5,500 in a single service. What was usually a 75-minute worship experience was turning into a 120-minute experience. What was one church doing its thing was turning into a multi-church event with different style collaborating to preach God’s word.Here’s what I discovered:

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There has never been a time in history when church leaders had more access to what the most influential churches in America are doing. Between blogs, podcasts, online sermons, open source materials, e-mail, and books, we can access some of the most innovative leaders of our time. And there are also a multitude of church conferences offered all around the country. We have had some special times as a church when we’ve taken our leaders to conferences. In the past we’ve been to the Drive conference at Northpoint, Unleashed at Newspring, C3 at Fellowship, and Catalyst. They have all been great and have their own unique strengths. Pastor Furtick is actually speaking at Mountain Lake’s churchplanters.com conference this February. Â

So what is Elevation’s plan for 08? Well, of course we’ll take a crew down to Mountain Lake to support Pastor and check the conference out. We’re also going to go big for Unleashed at Newspring. The best thing about Unleashed (other than Newspring is great) is that since it a shorter event and close we can take our volunteer leaders. We’ll also be returning back to our roots this February. We’re excited to be taking our entire staff to C3 at Fellowship Church in Dallas. Prior to launching Elevation, Pastor and I made our first trip to C3 to begin dreaming about what would become Elevation. At the time, my knowledge about church was minimal to say the least and C3 rocked my world. We’re excited to expose our entire staff to what God is doing in Dallas. Â

The other conferences that are on our potential go-to list are Innovate at Granger and if we can work a California trip in, the Thrive Conference at Bayside. In the end, our goal is to expose ourselves to what others are doing and what God is blessing all over the country. Finally, we use these conference trips to develop and invest time in our staff and key volunteers. The conferences are great but some of the most valuable time is spent before and after the event with each other. You definitely can’t measure how valuable a conference trip can be at building a strong, unified team from a line item in the budget. Â

Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor

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