God has blessed Elevation Church and we want to share some of the things we’ve learned in 14 short months of ministry. The intention of Access Elevation is not to tell anyone how they should run their Church. The goal of this blog is to simply allow the staff members of Elevation Church to share what they’ve learned in their area of ministry.

Before we begin this venture I must throw in a few disclaimers. First, we don’t have anything figured out. God has given Elevation Church an unbelievable wave of momentum that this team of fishermen is simply trying to not screw up. Our hope is that through this blog we will give anyone that wants to know some insight into why we do certain things, how we arrived at those decisions, and hopefully keep you from repeating our mistakes.

It is important to know that as systems evolve we must be willing to change. This means that if we ever decide the way we do things is perfect, then we will confine ourselves to the very system we’ve created. Thus, the innovation is lost and we get stuck. We refuse to do this at Elevation Church. So, as we describe some of the processes and systems of Elevation Church, know that in 6 months we may think a particular idea is horrible and be ashamed we ever posted about it. But we’re not scared. A growing Church is on a journey not headed for a particular destination. Along the way there are many stops that we will be addressing in routine blog entries.

The plan is to post 3-4 times per week with different staff members chiming in each time. Our prayer is that this is a resource for the Church starts, while also ministering to existing Churches. We are also well aware that there is more than one way to skin a cat. This is how we’ve skinned it and continue to skin it. If you’ve got better systems, praise God and stick with them.

Chunks Corbett - Executive Pastor

Filed under: Church Planting, Growth, Marketing | Comments Off

Good design goes a long way when you’re developing print materials for your church. But it quickly can become all for naught if your print piece comes back from the printer with misspelled word or misplaced period. Like a pimple on prom night, it doesn’t matter how pretty your dress is – everyone else is only seeing the zit. Without good proofing, one glaring error that would have taken just a second to fix now seemingly negates hours of quality design work.

Developing a good proofing system is key to keeping these mistakes to a minimum. As a designer, I can definitely attest to the fact that, after you’ve been working on a piece for a while, the words themselves become secondary to their placement on the page. So before you send it off to the printer, here are a few tips that hopefully will keep you from explaining there isn’t a Sunday massage this week, but rather a Sunday message.

• Begin by taking a break and allow yourself some time between designing and proofing. Get up and walk away from your computer screen or work on another project. Come back to it when you have a fresh set of eyes and a clear head.
• Print out the piece. Errors are easier to catch and easier to highlight when its on paper.
• Look for left-out words by reading the piece out loud, focusing on every word as you read. Don’t let your eye move ahead until you spot each word. Also make sure you don’t have duplicates of any words.
• Develop an assigned group of detailed proof-readers (2-3) who look over everything that goes out.
• To minimize spelling errors, look at each word in the piece individually. Move from the end of each line back to the beginning to prevent skimming.
• Assign or accept the responsibility of being the “last set of eyes� that sees a piece before it is sent out the door. This develops accountability and responsibility if errors are found.
• Hopefully these tips will save you some sleepless nights waiting for your brochure to come back from the printer, only to find out that ushers will not seat latecomers, but instead eat them.

Ryan Hollingsworth - Graphic Designer

Filed under: Creative Elements, Marketing | Comments Off