Spent 24 hours in Charlotte, NC. Met with a staffer from elevationchurch.com last night and attended both of their campuses this morning. Few comments:
1. Their church seeks to 'seek and save the lost' and strategize church to that end.
2. Their guest service team: tearing it up! By far the most warm welcome I've ever received walking into a church!
3. Setup team: On location by 5am. 5AM!!! Earliest I've ever heard a church begin setup. And there are about 50 on site at that time! Not one person stood around wasting time. These guys and gals took their volunteer positions serious!
4. The staff is very intentional about casting vision. Every meeting is 50% vision/50% tactical. When a volunteer understands the connection of their role to the vision and you multiply that by 280 you get elevationchurch.org!
5. They keep it SIMPLE. 1. Worship experience. 2. Small Groups. That's all!
6. Two years old and about 4,000 attendees.
7. No youth ministry. 50% of the Sunday morning volunteers were youth. What's that saying?
8. Every volunteer is required to refer to Stephen Furtick as 'Pastor', 'Pastor Stephen' or 'Pastor Stephen Furtick'. Seriously, it's required! You'll hear things like, "Pastor said this..." or "Pastor does that..." That kind of weird's me out. I'm not saying it's wrong... it's just different. Every staff and volunteer I connected with is normal. They don't worship Stephen and I didn't sense any weird (sinful!) stuff like that at all but they want to follow the vision God has put on their leaders heart and follow it well. I respect that. I didn't meet Stephen, he was speaking at another church. ButI met his vision and passion for the unbeliever when I met his staff and volunteers.
Bed time! I'm running on a couple hours of sleep and vertigo is setting in...
No comments:
Post a Comment