Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. You’re going to love today’s super practical conversation with Doug Garasic from Rust City Church in Youngstown, Ohio. Doug is here to talk with us today about a decision to make major name and brand changes at his church and how to incorporate these sorts of changes into your own ministry.

* Can you change your church name? // When Doug began his church plant in 2011 in Youngstown, it was originally called The Movement. Back at that time, he was a young pastor and the group he worked with wanted an edgy, unique name. After researching they couldn’t find another church named The Movement, so they moved ahead with that name. But soon afterward the term “movement” became a popular phrase in the church world, and they began to feel that they’d lost some originality. Additionally, other churches in the state of Ohio adopted the name The Movement. In the end, this created confusion because people in other cities assumed these other churches were affiliated with, or campuses of, The Movement in Youngstown. It wasn’t long before Doug and his staff began to question what to do. Do you change your church name? Is it okay to change your church name? The answer is yes: you’re not married to your church name. The vision that God gave you for your community is what you’re married to, not your church’s name.

* Does your name really work? // One of the issues Doug found with their name was that it didn’t communicate what they were. They had intentionally left “church” out of the name and over time they realized “The Movement” sounded like it could have been a gym or a yoga class. The vagueness of the name especially caused confusion with unchurched people. Ask unchurched people what your church name means to them. Ask if they can explain it to you to find out if it really works.

* Slow down and take your time. // Once Doug and his staff decided to go ahead with changing the church’s name, they realized this next step in the process couldn’t be rushed or forced. They weren’t going to just choose a new name right away to get rid of the old one. The goal was to choose a name they could be married to for years to come which would explain who they were and what they were about. It needed to be an inspired name from God that could handle the criticism from people that didn’t like it, or they wouldn’t bother changing the name at all.

* Don’t be afraid to get outside help. // Doug and his team hired an outside agency to help them with the rebranding process. During this time, the agency explored with Doug and the staff who they were as a church and what their big WHY was. What makes them tick? How are they unique from other churches? One of the strengths they discovered is that they love their localness and the community they are in.

* Embrace your ugly. // Youngstown was once a thriving manufacturing area of Ohio, but now is one that young people flee in order to pursue opportunities in larger cities in the area. As a result this depressed area has become known as the “Rust Belt”. Doug wanted that grittiness and salt-of-the-earth feel to be reflected in the identity of the church. So they chose the name Rust City Church. With it’s new name, the church’s mission became: Inviting people in the heart of the rust belt to forget religion and find God and move towards a new possible. Don’t be afraid to “embrace your ugly” and turn it into something beautiful that you can own to reflect what God can do and is doing.

You can learn more about Rust City Church at their website rustcity.church and quitworryingaboutmoney.com. You can also reach Doug on Instagram @doug_garasic.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. You’re going to love today’s super practical conversation with Doug Garasic from Rust City Church in Youngstown, Ohio. Doug is here to talk with us today about a decision to make major name and brand changes at his church and how to incorporate these sorts of changes into your own ministry.

* Can you change your church name? // When Doug began his church plant in 2011 in Youngstown, it was originally called The Movement. Back at that time, he was a young pastor and the group he worked with wanted an edgy, unique name. After researching they couldn’t find another church named The Movement, so they moved ahead with that name. But soon afterward the term “movement” became a popular phrase in the church world, and they began to feel that they’d lost some originality. Additionally, other churches in the state of Ohio adopted the name The Movement. In the end, this created confusion because people in other cities assumed these other churches were affiliated with, or campuses of, The Movement in Youngstown. It wasn’t long before Doug and his staff began to question what to do. Do you change your church name? Is it okay to change your church name? The answer is yes: you’re not married to your church name. The vision that God gave you for your community is what you’re married to, not your church’s name.

* Does your name really work? // One of the issues Doug found with their name was that it didn’t communicate what they were. They had intentionally left “church” out of the name and over time they realized “The Movement” sounded like it could have been a gym or a yoga class. The vagueness of the name especially caused confusion with unchurched people. Ask unchurched people what your church name means to them. Ask if they can explain it to you to find out if it really works.

* Slow down and take your time. // Once Doug and his staff decided to go ahead with changing the church’s name, they realized this next step in the process couldn’t be rushed or forced. They weren’t going to just choose a new name right away to get rid of the old one. The goal was to choose a name they could be married to for years to come which would explain who they were and what they were about. It needed to be an inspired name from God that could handle the criticism from people that didn’t like it, or they wouldn’t bother changing the name at all.

* Don’t be afraid to get outside help. // Doug and his team hired an outside agency to help them with the rebranding process. During this time, the agency explored with Doug and the staff who they were as a church and what their big WHY was. What makes them tick? How are they unique from other churches? One of the strengths they discovered is that they love their localness and the community they are in.

* Embrace your ugly. // Youngstown was once a thriving manufacturing area of Ohio, but now is one that young people flee in order to pursue opportunities in larger cities in the area. As a result this depressed area has become known as the “Rust Belt”. Doug wanted that grittiness and salt-of-the-earth feel to be reflected in the identity of the church. So they chose the name Rust City Church. With it’s new name, the church’s mission became: Inviting people in the heart of the rust belt to forget religion and find God and move towards a new possible. Don’t be afraid to “embrace your ugly” and turn it into something beautiful that you can own to reflect what God can do and is doing.

You can learn more about Rust City Church at their website rustcity.church and quitworryingaboutmoney.com. You can also reach Doug on Instagram @doug_garasic.

Are you an executive pastor wondering where you should focus your time and energy?

Are you wondering exactly how things are really going at your church?

Are you a bit mystified about how to evaluate what’s really happening under the hood of your church?

Executive pastors are an incredible gift to growing churches. The best executive pastors sit at the intersection of vision and reality. That is to say, they spend their time balancing the bright future of the church on one hand and the facts of where the church is today on the other. In order to move a church from where you are to where you believe God is leading you as a community, you need a series of robust systems. Systems are simply repeatable processes that “Save You Stress, Time, Energy, and Money”.

Executive pastors need to think about how these systems are performing across all areas of the church. In a very real way, the executive pastor is like a farmer cultivating a garden of systems by balancing each of the varying needs and requirements of the church against each other. An executive pastor should spend a considerable amount of time evaluating how well each of these systems performs and adjusting them accordingly when they don’t function the way they should.

This is a perfect time of year, the season of change, to build a plan for evaluation and adjust the systems required to help your church move forward. Here are six systems you should consider when leading as an executive pastor:

Outreach

How does your church attract people through a variety of channels?

Your church needs to have a consistent flow of new guests arriving on a regular basis. Churches that are healthy and growing consistently find ways to reach out to the world around them and invite new guests to join them.

If your church’s ability to reach new people begins to slow, you’ll eventually plateau and might even slip into decline. Evaluate your outreach efforts and how you use marketing and communications to increase your community’s awareness and interest in your church. Keeping a close eye on the outreach efforts of your church needs to be a core function of every executive pastor.

Connection

How does your church move people from their first visit to feeling fully at home?

It’s not enough for churches just to reach people in their community and have them come to church once. We also need to move people towards a deep sense of connection.

The healthiest and fastest growing churches in the country spend a tremendous amount of time and energy thinking through the exact next steps for transforming new visitors into plugged-in advocates of the church.

Deliberately measuring this process to see if your connection systems are performing at a high enough level is an important task of an executive pastor. This could be looking at the numbers for new-here guests, people joining groups, and those getting plugged into volunteer teams. The trick here is to test both the total number of people connected along with the velocity of people moving towards further connection with the community.

Service

How does your church mobilize people for volunteering and service within the church?

Above and beyond getting people connected, we need to find a way to see more people in your church serving others. The core message of the Gospel is that our lives are to be oriented around other people, and therefore the church needs to orient a tremendous amount of its effort and resources around serving.

Does your church have an adequate number of people serving? If not, what adjustments do you need to make as an executive pastor to ensure that more people are serving than ever before? Looking closely at the overall volunteer experience to measure both the number of volunteers as well as the quality of their experience is a system that you should consider.

Giving

Are you an executive pastor wondering where you should focus your time and energy?

Are you wondering exactly how things are really going at your church?

Are you a bit mystified about how to evaluate what’s really happening under the hood of your church?

Executive pastors are an incredible gift to growing churches. The best executive pastors sit at the intersection of vision and reality. That is to say, they spend their time balancing the bright future of the church on one hand and the facts of where the church is today on the other. In order to move a church from where you are to where you believe God is leading you as a community, you need a series of robust systems. Systems are simply repeatable processes that “Save You Stress, Time, Energy, and Money”.

Executive pastors need to think about how these systems are performing across all areas of the church. In a very real way, the executive pastor is like a farmer cultivating a garden of systems by balancing each of the varying needs and requirements of the church against each other. An executive pastor should spend a considerable amount of time evaluating how well each of these systems performs and adjusting them accordingly when they don’t function the way they should.

This is a perfect time of year, the season of change, to build a plan for evaluation and adjust the systems required to help your church move forward. Here are six systems you should consider when leading as an executive pastor:

Outreach

How does your church attract people through a variety of channels?

Your church needs to have a consistent flow of new guests arriving on a regular basis. Churches that are healthy and growing consistently find ways to reach out to the world around them and invite new guests to join them.

If your church’s ability to reach new people begins to slow, you’ll eventually plateau and might even slip into decline. Evaluate your outreach efforts and how you use marketing and communications to increase your community’s awareness and interest in your church. Keeping a close eye on the outreach efforts of your church needs to be a core function of every executive pastor.

Connection

How does your church move people from their first visit to feeling fully at home?

It’s not enough for churches just to reach people in their community and have them come to church once. We also need to move people towards a deep sense of connection.

The healthiest and fastest growing churches in the country spend a tremendous amount of time and energy thinking through the exact next steps for transforming new visitors into plugged-in advocates of the church.

Deliberately measuring this process to see if your connection systems are performing at a high enough level is an important task of an executive pastor. This could be looking at the numbers for new-here guests, people joining groups, and those getting plugged into volunteer teams. The trick here is to test both the total number of people connected along with the velocity of people moving towards further connection with the community.

Service

How does your church mobilize people for volunteering and service within the church?

Above and beyond getting people connected, we need to find a way to see more people in your church serving others. The core message of the Gospel is that our lives are to be oriented around other people, and therefore the church needs to orient a tremendous amount of its effort and resources around serving.

Does your church have an adequate number of people serving? If not, what adjustments do you need to make as an executive pastor to ensure that more people are serving than ever before? Looking closely at the overall volunteer experience to measure both the number of volunteers as well as the quality of their experience is a system that you should consider.

Giving

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We’re honored to have Darryl Dash with us today from Liberty Grace Church in Toronto.

Liberty Grace Church is unusual in that it’s a fairly small church with a storefront that meets at four o’clock in the afternoon in the middle of a wealthy section of Toronto. Technically they are Baptist, but Liberty Grace doesn’t make a big deal of the denomination and instead focuses on being authentic and honest about faith in Christ.

Darryl is with us today to talk about engaging the culture in Toronto and how to help people wrestle through what it means to grow in their relationship with Christ.

* What do you think it means to be fully alive? // Liberty Village, the place where Liberty Grace is located, is a well-off community where everyone has good jobs and nice houses, and yet there is a restlessness inside people in which many of them still aren’t happy. Darryl uses this as a conversation opener as he reaches out to people and discusses what it means to be a Christ follower. He finds wisdom from the book of Ecclesiastes helpful. It tells us if we have a good job enjoy it. If you like good food and wine, enjoy them. Enjoy nice clothes. But in the end, they won’t satisfy you. The road to happiness is not found by pursuing happiness, but by pursuing God. And by pursuing God, not only do you get to enjoy His gifts, but you get to enjoy Him. That doesn’t make you into a “serious” person as Christians are often perceived, but rather fully alive.

* Take the pressure off. // We live in a tired society that’s sick of proving themselves so at Liberty Grace they try to ease people into encountering Jesus and his claims. The last thing people need is more pressure so the church works to create a space where people can come in messy, honest, full of questions, struggles and doubts. We need to make a place that they  feel safe and connected to Jesus. There are habits that lead to growth, but it begins with Gospel + safety + time.

* A culture of shame vs a culture of guilt. // We’ve moved away from a sense of guilt in our culture to a culture of shame. No one would say there’s a set of objective standards or moral laws that we’re violating, but that’s been replaced with a sense that there’s something deeply flawed within me. It’s often this feeling that opens people up to the Gospel message.

* Help people develop habits to make them grow. // Because people exploring the Christian faith can feel overwhelmed by taking next steps, Darryl has tried to break down developing spiritual disciplines into practical, bit-sized habits. LifeWay did a study about what behaviors Christ followers want to cultivate and what leads to those results. Liberty Grace took these learnings and asks people to commit to three things in a very manageable way. First: encounter the Word of God. The truth is that even within churches, most people don’t read the bible. Most people sitting in a church haven’t heard scripture since the last time they were in church. Help them break it down into something they can ease into—a three day plan of reading some verses, then moving into a five day plan, a seven day plan.

* Speak with God. // The second habit is prayer. Don’t come to God thinking you need to be pious or put together, just come with your mess. Share everything with Him. Make it much more relational and conversational. View it as a way to manage your life with God’s help rather than another thing to add to your life.

* Open up to each other. // And third, get involved with community and worship within a church. Begin to open your life to people. We tend to hide what is really going on in our lives instead of letting others in and finding that support we need. Be real with each other.

You can contact Darryl or find more information about his book How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to A...

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We’re honored to have Darryl Dash with us today from Liberty Grace Church in Toronto.

Liberty Grace Church is unusual in that it’s a fairly small church with a storefront that meets at four o’clock in the afternoon in the middle of a wealthy section of Toronto. Technically they are Baptist, but Liberty Grace doesn’t make a big deal of the denomination and instead focuses on being authentic and honest about faith in Christ.

Darryl is with us today to talk about engaging the culture in Toronto and how to help people wrestle through what it means to grow in their relationship with Christ.

* What do you think it means to be fully alive? // Liberty Village, the place where Liberty Grace is located, is a well-off community where everyone has good jobs and nice houses, and yet there is a restlessness inside people in which many of them still aren’t happy. Darryl uses this as a conversation opener as he reaches out to people and discusses what it means to be a Christ follower. He finds wisdom from the book of Ecclesiastes helpful. It tells us if we have a good job enjoy it. If you like good food and wine, enjoy them. Enjoy nice clothes. But in the end, they won’t satisfy you. The road to happiness is not found by pursuing happiness, but by pursuing God. And by pursuing God, not only do you get to enjoy His gifts, but you get to enjoy Him. That doesn’t make you into a “serious” person as Christians are often perceived, but rather fully alive.

* Take the pressure off. // We live in a tired society that’s sick of proving themselves so at Liberty Grace they try to ease people into encountering Jesus and his claims. The last thing people need is more pressure so the church works to create a space where people can come in messy, honest, full of questions, struggles and doubts. We need to make a place that they  feel safe and connected to Jesus. There are habits that lead to growth, but it begins with Gospel + safety + time.

* A culture of shame vs a culture of guilt. // We’ve moved away from a sense of guilt in our culture to a culture of shame. No one would say there’s a set of objective standards or moral laws that we’re violating, but that’s been replaced with a sense that there’s something deeply flawed within me. It’s often this feeling that opens people up to the Gospel message.

* Help people develop habits to make them grow. // Because people exploring the Christian faith can feel overwhelmed by taking next steps, Darryl has tried to break down developing spiritual disciplines into practical, bit-sized habits. LifeWay did a study about what behaviors Christ followers want to cultivate and what leads to those results. Liberty Grace took these learnings and asks people to commit to three things in a very manageable way. First: encounter the Word of God. The truth is that even within churches, most people don’t read the bible. Most people sitting in a church haven’t heard scripture since the last time they were in church. Help them break it down into something they can ease into—a three day plan of reading some verses, then moving into a five day plan, a seven day plan.

* Speak with God. // The second habit is prayer. Don’t come to God thinking you need to be pious or put together, just come with your mess. Share everything with Him. Make it much more relational and conversational. View it as a way to manage your life with God’s help rather than another thing to add to your life.

* Open up to each other. // And third, get involved with community and worship within a church. Begin to open your life to people. We tend to hide what is really going on in our lives instead of letting others in and finding that support we need. Be real with each other.

You can contact Darryl or find more information about his book How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to A...

In October 2015, McDonald’s made a significant change to its menu that made a huge difference to its bottom line and market reach. That month they added all-day breakfast to their offerings, and in many ways it ended up changing the course of history for this corporation.

For years, insiders had been saying that all-day breakfast, while a great addition to the menu, simply couldn’t be done. In fact, the turnover between the breakfast and the lunch menu kept stumping the logistics folks. It was almost a joke that you could get breakfast up until 10:29 a.m., but at 10:30 a.m. the entire kitchen had to turn over to lunch orders only.

People who follow this industry had been saying that offering an all-day breakfast menu was a potential way for McDonald’s to increase its reach and attract customers who normally wouldn’t return later in the day. I know for our little family this change meant a switch in our consumption habits. You see, my wife is the decision-maker when it comes to which restaurants we frequent. Now that she could order oatmeal or an egg McMuffin for dinner, it meant that McDonald’s was now on the list of restaurants that we could go to if we needed to make a quick stop for a meal!

The story of why McDonald’s began offering all-day breakfast is a fascinating one for church leaders to consider. For more than thirty consecutive years, the company had seen increases in its profits and stock value quarter after quarter. It was the darling of the Warren Buffet strategy to blue chip investing because of its consistent results.

However, for the first time, McDonald’s was experiencing a downturn with lower profits than the previous quarter; subsequently, their stock value fell. The company sprang into action and made a number of changes organization-wide. One of those outcomes included the introduction of the all-day breakfast menu. The rest is history: McDonald’s became wildly profitable again, their stock value increased [ref], and they essentially set the trend for all-day breakfast menus in the fast-food industry. A&W, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and the Canadian chain Tim Hortons all eventually made the switch. The impact of this trend was profound. In fact, there was such a significant increase in the demand for eggs that the price spiked in the year following McDonald’s introduction of this change. [ref]

How does this pertain to church leaders? It’s important that we try to glean lessons from an organization like McDonald’s as they discover the changing trends in their industry and ask ourselves if there’s anything we can learn as we lead our churches. When considering the all-day breakfast trend, I see at least five clear lessons that you and I can apply to our churches.

What got us here won’t get us there.

McDonald’s decided to offer all-day breakfast because they realized that offering more Big Macs or Quarter Pounders wasn’t going to be enough if they wanted to grow as a company. Instead, they needed to address a core offering that would attract a whole new audience of people.

In terms of our roles as church leaders, we need to recognize that whatever God used in the past isn’t necessarily what He’s going to use today or tomorrow. If our styles, approaches, or even ministry models are the same as they were twenty years ago, there’s a good chance that we’ve already plateaued or are in decline.

What are those things that worked at one point in time that aren’t working now?

What part of our regular “menu” do we need to refresh? What new options do we need to consider adding?

Systems are needed to support change.

If you study McDonald’s switch to all-day breakfast,...

In October 2015, McDonald’s made a significant change to its menu that made a huge difference to its bottom line and market reach. That month they added all-day breakfast to their offerings, and in many ways it ended up changing the course of history for this corporation.

For years, insiders had been saying that all-day breakfast, while a great addition to the menu, simply couldn’t be done. In fact, the turnover between the breakfast and the lunch menu kept stumping the logistics folks. It was almost a joke that you could get breakfast up until 10:29 a.m., but at 10:30 a.m. the entire kitchen had to turn over to lunch orders only.

People who follow this industry had been saying that offering an all-day breakfast menu was a potential way for McDonald’s to increase its reach and attract customers who normally wouldn’t return later in the day. I know for our little family this change meant a switch in our consumption habits. You see, my wife is the decision-maker when it comes to which restaurants we frequent. Now that she could order oatmeal or an egg McMuffin for dinner, it meant that McDonald’s was now on the list of restaurants that we could go to if we needed to make a quick stop for a meal!

The story of why McDonald’s began offering all-day breakfast is a fascinating one for church leaders to consider. For more than thirty consecutive years, the company had seen increases in its profits and stock value quarter after quarter. It was the darling of the Warren Buffet strategy to blue chip investing because of its consistent results.

However, for the first time, McDonald’s was experiencing a downturn with lower profits than the previous quarter; subsequently, their stock value fell. The company sprang into action and made a number of changes organization-wide. One of those outcomes included the introduction of the all-day breakfast menu. The rest is history: McDonald’s became wildly profitable again, their stock value increased [ref], and they essentially set the trend for all-day breakfast menus in the fast-food industry. A&W, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and the Canadian chain Tim Hortons all eventually made the switch. The impact of this trend was profound. In fact, there was such a significant increase in the demand for eggs that the price spiked in the year following McDonald’s introduction of this change. [ref]

How does this pertain to church leaders? It’s important that we try to glean lessons from an organization like McDonald’s as they discover the changing trends in their industry and ask ourselves if there’s anything we can learn as we lead our churches. When considering the all-day breakfast trend, I see at least five clear lessons that you and I can apply to our churches.

What got us here won’t get us there.

McDonald’s decided to offer all-day breakfast because they realized that offering more Big Macs or Quarter Pounders wasn’t going to be enough if they wanted to grow as a company. Instead, they needed to address a core offering that would attract a whole new audience of people.

In terms of our roles as church leaders, we need to recognize that whatever God used in the past isn’t necessarily what He’s going to use today or tomorrow. If our styles, approaches, or even ministry models are the same as they were twenty years ago, there’s a good chance that we’ve already plateaued or are in decline.

What are those things that worked at one point in time that aren’t working now?

What part of our regular “menu” do we need to refresh? What new options do we need to consider adding?

Systems are needed to support change.

If you study McDonald’s switch to all-day breakfast,...

Thanks so much for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We have a return guest this week: Lee Coate, executive pastor from The Crossing Church in Las Vegas.

Lee is with us today to talk about the The Crossing Church’s weekend services and how the creatives and teaching pastors work together to communicate the truth of the Gospel in impactful and creative ways each weekend. He gives advice on how you can take these strategies and apply them to the processes at your church as well.

* The weekend experience is the primary piston. // At the Crossing, they use a “Great Commission Engine,” which has become a part of their language over the last few years. It is the idea that there are four key components that drive them: what people will experience when the come in, getting people into the community, helping them discover where they can missionally serve and use their gifts, and focusing on the one who is not here yet. The weekend experience is the primary piston. This doesn’t mean it is more important than the other components, but if it is not performing at its best, the others won’t either.

* Draw people in with the weekend experience. // People will find your church because of what you do on the weekend. At the Crossing, they’ve made the decision to create a 65 minute experience each week that will resonate with people even after they leave the building. Create your weekend experience to be something that will stay with your visitors once they’re gone and make them want to come back again the next week.

* Find the process that fits. // When it comes to communicating creatively during the weekend service, every church has a different process based on the personality and interest of the communicator. Some churches may have a lead communicator who is all in and drives the creativity. The creative team then executes on the ideas that the leader wants. A second type of team has a lead communicator who is bought-in. They aren’t fully engaged in the process and don’t lead it, but they support it and expect to buy into it at some point. The third type is checked out, where the creative team and the lead communicator are happy to have each other around, but they each do their own thing. And then lastly there is all out, in which the lead communicator may not be happy to have an extra video or other elements taking up time in the service. At the Crossing, they work on a bought-in process where the lead pastor is not in the room with the creative programming team during their messy, chaotic planning process. Lee found early on that process was the best method for all of them involved. Your creative team needs to find a process that works best for you and your lead communicator.

* Ebb and flow. // The process you work with now doesn’t have to remain the same all year long. There can be an ebb and flow that may change with holidays, or the lead communicator may have an idea that he wants to develop for a certain series. That may lead to him working more closely with the creative team for a short while to see this idea come to fruition.

* 2-4-6 Programming. // Creative people can have a reputation of working without planning, throwing things together spontaneously at the last minute. But working in a structured format is what allows you to turn things around quickly or add in a new idea at the last minute. The creative team at the Crossing meets weekly to discuss creative elements for upcoming weekends (up to 6 weeks out) using a 2-4-6 Programming process. One and two weeks out are “green” weeks and they spend a small percentage of time talking about any tweaks that need to happen, the flow, or anything else they haven’t thought through. Three and four weeks out are considered “yellow” and they discuss the content here in more detail, beginning to nail down ideas. Five and six weeks out are “red” and there is some rough discussion about the...

Thanks so much for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We have a return guest this week: Lee Coate, executive pastor from The Crossing Church in Las Vegas.

Lee is with us today to talk about the The Crossing Church’s weekend services and how the creatives and teaching pastors work together to communicate the truth of the Gospel in impactful and creative ways each weekend. He gives advice on how you can take these strategies and apply them to the processes at your church as well.

* The weekend experience is the primary piston. // At the Crossing, they use a “Great Commission Engine,” which has become a part of their language over the last few years. It is the idea that there are four key components that drive them: what people will experience when the come in, getting people into the community, helping them discover where they can missionally serve and use their gifts, and focusing on the one who is not here yet. The weekend experience is the primary piston. This doesn’t mean it is more important than the other components, but if it is not performing at its best, the others won’t either.

* Draw people in with the weekend experience. // People will find your church because of what you do on the weekend. At the Crossing, they’ve made the decision to create a 65 minute experience each week that will resonate with people even after they leave the building. Create your weekend experience to be something that will stay with your visitors once they’re gone and make them want to come back again the next week.

* Find the process that fits. // When it comes to communicating creatively during the weekend service, every church has a different process based on the personality and interest of the communicator. Some churches may have a lead communicator who is all in and drives the creativity. The creative team then executes on the ideas that the leader wants. A second type of team has a lead communicator who is bought-in. They aren’t fully engaged in the process and don’t lead it, but they support it and expect to buy into it at some point. The third type is checked out, where the creative team and the lead communicator are happy to have each other around, but they each do their own thing. And then lastly there is all out, in which the lead communicator may not be happy to have an extra video or other elements taking up time in the service. At the Crossing, they work on a bought-in process where the lead pastor is not in the room with the creative programming team during their messy, chaotic planning process. Lee found early on that process was the best method for all of them involved. Your creative team needs to find a process that works best for you and your lead communicator.

* Ebb and flow. // The process you work with now doesn’t have to remain the same all year long. There can be an ebb and flow that may change with holidays, or the lead communicator may have an idea that he wants to develop for a certain series. That may lead to him working more closely with the creative team for a short while to see this idea come to fruition.

* 2-4-6 Programming. // Creative people can have a reputation of working without planning, throwing things together spontaneously at the last minute. But working in a structured format is what allows you to turn things around quickly or add in a new idea at the last minute. The creative team at the Crossing meets weekly to discuss creative elements for upcoming weekends (up to 6 weeks out) using a 2-4-6 Programming process. One and two weeks out are “green” weeks and they spend a small percentage of time talking about any tweaks that need to happen, the flow, or anything else they haven’t thought through. Three and four weeks out are considered “yellow” and they discuss the content here in more detail, beginning to nail down ideas. Five and six weeks out are “red” and there is some rough discussion about the...