VA Beach trip

So Frankie and I headed up to Virginia Beach to hang out with Vince and the staff at Forefront. Sorry to Pat and Chris for me not bringing you along. We learned a bunch. Vince invited us over to his house and talked with us for a couple of hours. One of the biggest things I got was a question he asked me, "After experiencing one of our services, what needs improvement?" It takes a lot of guts to ask that question (and really want an answer), but it's a great way to get fresh insight into your Sunday gatherings.

I was impressed by a number of things. First, the staff was incredible. They went out of their way to talk with us, answer our questions, make us feel welcome... they were great. Second, the people of Forefront were great. One of the guys drove us to Starbucks when we got there (because after an hour of driving we couldn't find any breakfast... VA Beach is a confusing place). People hung around after the service and talked and talked and talked. Third, Forefront makes great use of humor. They know their crowd and what kind of humor works for them and they use it all the time. It's a great way to get people to unfold the arms (more on that later). Fourth, we got to sit in on their creative planning meeting on Monday. I learned some great stuff about creative planning. Actually, they have a system to their planning and I love systems.

That's all I have time to write right now. I'm so thankful that Vince and his staff took time to let us learn from them. And next time I'll invite other to go too.

Off to visit Vince

I'm pretty pumped. Frankie and I leave this AM to travel up to Virginia Beach to check out Forefront and hang with Vince. I'm looking forward to two things: Hanging with Frankie and learning from Vince and Forefront. They are doing an awesome job at reaching unchurched people, which is a passion of mine, so off we go to learn. I'll post some thoughts about our trip later.

Need a band?

I want to give a shout out to the band that helped us out at our preview this past Sunday. My Calvary did a great job. I'm pumped to be able to have them back in August. So if you need a band, give them a call.

To answer Melanie's question

I'm pretty sure it was Melanie that pointed out to me in a cleverly disguised comment that the links on yesterday's post all went to this magazine, so what articles am I recommending? Here you go: Can a Muslim be a follower of Christ, A Movement to Jesus withing Islam, and Muslim's who believe the Bible.

Must Read

I happened across this magazine last night and was blown away by these articles. You can read them here, here and here. I believe that these articles have so much to say to Christians in America, especially those of us who are planting churches.

Here's my challenge to our Launch Team: Read the articles. Figure out how they apply to us. Post a comment about your thoughts. Pray like crazy for God to use whatever mean necessary to reveal himself to people and that he will lead them to us to find out more.

A thought on God leading them to us... we need to be a community that God trusts enough to send people to. Does that make sense? One of the guys in on of the stories knew what to do when the man came to him. If God sends people our way do we know what to do with them?

Here's another thought... how can we get unchurched people reading the Bible? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. I firmly believe that the Bible is the primary way that God speaks to people, so we've got to get people reading the Bible.

Preview report

Hub City Church had it's first preview yesterday. I would have posted about it yesterday, but I was too tired. All in all it was a great day, but not in the way you might think. The band, My Calvary, was great. Our problems began in the middle of their first song when we blew the power in the theater we were in! We lost lights, sound, video. I decided to go ahead and do the sermon first, without sound, and then we would do music at the end, if we could get power back. We were finally able to get power to the sound, but were still without lights and video. What we learned was that the outlets in the theater are all on one breaker. This was a good lesson to learn.

Something that was funny was that they were showing Batman (which is a great movie) in the theater next to us, so I had a soundtrack that was playing behind my sermon. It was a bit distracting, but more than that, it was just funny. it fit with the comedy of the morning.

Since they were showing movies during our worship there were all kinds of people at Spartan 16. I loved having our gathering in a place that was also being used for something other than church. People were very inquisitive about church in a movie theater.

The theater management was awesome! I can't say enough good stuff about Perry and the staff. They went above and beyond for us and were so gracious the entire time. They told us that we needed to keep our signs up during the whole gathering so that the people coming to the movies would know about us. That was pretty sweet. Also, theater employees kept coming into our gathering to check us out.

Our kids areas were off the hook. Our team did such an incredible job. When parents find out about what we're doing I think they'll come to Hub City Church just for the kids' stuff.

I hesitate to post this, but some of you are dying to know how many people were there. We had around 60 people (including our team and volunteers) who were there. That's more than I thought would show up to a preview. I am extremely thankful for the team from Revolution Church in Florence for coming to help. You all are amazing servants.

I must say I love the whole preview idea. It gives us a chance to learn before we officially go public. I think of it as a preseason game. We do it again on August 17. Maybe we'll have power for the whole gathering next time!

Lights, ________, Action

I've got to give a shout out to Sammy Clary for letting us borrow lighting for Sunday's preview. It was looking like we might have to purchase lights with money that we don't have, but that's not the case. Thanks for the lights.

Pray for our preview. I can't wait!

Obsessed part 1 - Our FIRST preview!

This Sunday we’ll begin “Obsessed,” a two part series for both of our previews (July 20 and August 17). Love the graphic that Frankie created. It’ll be worth coming just to see the video promoting our launch series, “No Perfect People Allowed.” Funny!

The gathering begins at 10 AM at Spartan 16 movie theater. Click here for directions. Bring your whole neighborhood! For more info visit our website: www.hubcitychurch.com.

Movies in the Park #3

This Saturday Hub City Church will be hosting our third Movies in the Park @ Barnet Park. We'll be showing Shrek the Third, giving out free popcorn and sodas, and giving away hundreds of dollars worth of gift certificates to local businesses. I can't wait. It should be a blast. So excited to have Chris Reeder's group coming to help out.

They'll also be helping out with our FIRST preview on Sunday: 10 AM @ Spartan 16. Not sure what to expect. We've done our part. Can't wait to see how God shows up.

Please pray for both Movies in the Park and our preview.

Confession

I have a confession to make: I'm a slack blogger. But you knew that already.

Two BIG, ENORMOUS, HUGE things this weekend: Movies in the Park on Saturday, and our first preview on Sunday. I'll write more later.

Power Plant

Today's the first day of Power Plant. I am the project coordinator for the Greenville/Spartanburg Project. I met the summer staff on Thursday and think they are great. We had them over for dinner. My boys REALLY enjoyed spending time with them. I've never seen such sword fighting. We had a war of foam swords that lasted an hour. The groups are set to arrive around 2 today. Now I've got to go pack!

Needs

Our first preview gathering is in 18 days. We're in need of a few more things to be ready to go. I thought I'd float our list out there for you to pray over our need and with the hope that there's somebody reading this who could hook us up. Here they are:

Baby wipes
Lysol
Bibles to give away
handtrucks
sheets for a pack and play
beach balls
foam/puzzle flooring for preschool rooms
DVD player
Kidmo Curriculum
Age appropriate children’s Bibles (birth – 2 and 3 & 4 yrs.)
gates/fencing for 3 & 4 year old room
2 projectors (4500 lumen min.)
sound equipment
lighting equipment
signs
a band
money

Kidmo

Any of my church planting buds use Kidmo? I'm looking to borrow or purchase for a discounted price. Can ya help a brotha out?