WFX Charlotte Wrap-Up

I am just getting back from my trip to wfx charlotte where I had the privilege of participating in leading several of the conference sessions, meeting with many churches, and catching up with old friends while making an overwhelming amount of new ones.  I want to take the opportunity while this event is still fresh in my mind to share the 5 thoughts and reactions I walked away with.

WFX is a must. If for nothing else, to take a few days to connect with other people from around the nation and share what Jesus is doing in our churches.  There are so many brilliant men and women that join together at this event and anyone that thinks they are too good for this event is sorely mistaken.

Unity. The entire event had a vibe similar to a family reunion, from catching up with friends that I normally only talk with via twitter to meeting new people, and immediately having unity around our shared desire to see more people come to know Jesus through the use of technology.

The speakers were top notch. From what I am told there has been a shift in the speaker line-up methodology – less manufacture reps talking about their equipment and more people who are actually in the trenches of church ministry talking about their experiences.  All the speakers were accessible and simply there to love and serve other churches.  All the speakers that I engaged with were completely transparent about where they were at, the challenges they faced, the mistakes they have made.  I went away challenged in several areas and it’s nice to simply know that I am not the only person that doesn’t have everything figured out yet.

Technologists not into technology? This was kind of weird.  I met way too many people that just wanted the answer book.  People who simply wanted model numbers and clearly had no intention or desire to really learn our trade.  People who scoff at the idea of twitter and facebook?  It was clear that some people are trying to use technology as a means to an end in and of itself.  It is my prayer that people may see beyond the technology and get on mission, on mission to make disciples of Jesus.  If technology can help them do this then great, but if it is in the way, then throw technology in the garbage.

It is all about Jesus. Technology is worthless if it doesn’t point people to Jesus.  What does your church do really well and how are you seeing people come to know Jesus?  Let’s use technology to support those things.

Using SMS for live Q&A

One of the most often asked questions that I receive from other churches and ministries is in regards to how we technologically support the live SMS (text-messaging) question and answer sessions that we do here at Mars Hill Church.

There are a two main aspects to the live Q&A event – obtaining the questions and then filtering and communicating the questions to the presenter, speaker, or pastor that is fielding the questions on the spot.  The first step is to establish a short code with a SMS gateway provider, this will allow you to have everyone send questions from their phones to your email inbox or a web interface.  Secondly, someone must be sitting in the production booth filtering through all the questions, weeding out the jokes, and prioritizing the questions in some order.  Lastly, we input the questions into a graphics engine that pushes the content to the stage.

There are two avenues of obtaining a short code for texting the questions to.  You can lease your own dedicated short code costing $1000/mo for a specific one (i.e. PEPSI bought the short code 73774, or you could buy 53787 which is available and spells JESUS) or $500/mo for a random one.  Or you can set up an account with a gateway/service provider to utilize a shared short code.    Mobilestorm has a good article on the differences between the two options, but the big idea is that dedicated short codes are cooler because you don’t need to establish a KEYWORD, though they are significantly cost prohibitive for churches and small businesses.  I recommend the shared short code approach as it is affordable to most everyone.  There are many gateway/service providers (Mobivity, Mobilestorm, or clubtexting to name a few) in this growing market.  This is a regulated market so you can see all the players in the short codes business within the US by visiting the WHOIS directory online.

Once you have a short code and keyword, you’ll need to communicate out to your audience or congregation how to text in their questions.  I would recommend assembling a slide with pictures so that people can see an example of how to write out their questions.  For exeample, with a shared short code your audience would need to send a text to “95495″ that reads KEYWORD followed by the question (i.e. “JESUS How do I become a follower of Jesus?”).  Usually you can setup an auto-response for those that submit questions, assuring them that their question has been properly submitted.

As the questions are sorted out back stage, they will need to be manually entered into your graphics system.  We currently enter the questions into an Excel spreadsheet on a staff member’s laptop that our Chyron character generator automatically pulls data from over the network and generates new slides for.  One could just as easily utilize cheaper and simpler applications like Keynote, Powerpoint, or Propresenter and have the same outcome.  The questions are then pushed to the LCD screen that we have on stage for answering.

All in all this is a fairly simple and affordable way to engage a large group of people, allowing them to ask honest and hard questions without the classic operational issues of an open-mic.  People are no longer able to debate with the person on stage, nor are they put in an uncomfortable situation by talking in front of a crowd.  We have found this to pull out tough questions on hard issues, allowing the gospel to be presented in topics that may rarely be talked about from the pulpit in churches.

Burn Out

Recently we have heard a lot of people in the church production world talking about burnout and asking how to avoid it.  Quite frankly this has us very concerned, asking a lot of questions, and driving us to prayer.  Here are some of our thoughts on the subject:

What is burnout?  Is it simply the feeling of having to much to do and not enough time to do it?  Is it no longer having the desire to do… anything?  Tiredness?  Depression?  Emptiness?  To us this sounds like a person who never has, or takes, the time to unplug, relax, and spend time with Jesus.  Someone who is running constantly and never fully recharging.  We bet that someone claiming ‘burnout’ has lost perspective of how the overall mission and vision tie directly to the work they are doing every day.

Jesus calls us to have a day of sabbath – that is a day of rest.  Are those that are experiencing burnout doing this faithfully?  Are you taking the time to disconnect your mind from work in order to see the recent evidence’s of God’s grace in your life?  We know that when life gets busy for us, especially at work/church, we have a tendency to hunker down and plow through until the work is done.  Leaving no time to align our hearts with our maker’s heart.  When we do this, the work only piles up, and our lives at work gets more stressful – our entire life suffers, including the time with our friends and family.  Let’s call this what it is – sin.  We think we can do the work Jesus has called us to in our own strength, that we need to just pull ourselves up by the boot straps and get-r-done.  Just so you know – this approach to getting work done doesn’t glorify God. We glorify God by aligning our will with His perfect will.  And by working out of the reality of our complete need and dependence on Him, as without His work on the cross there is no purpose to our work in church production.  The only way to combat this popular sin of ours is to make sure we are spending time daily with Jesus, praying for His will to be done in everything, reading our bibles, and worshiping Him through our thoughts, actions, and attitudes.

Whether we spend 5 minutes or 2 hours each day with Jesus in silence and solitude, His expectation of us is clear.  We should be spending quality time each day reading His Word (the Bible), praying and worshiping.  We are also not supposed to be working seven days a week.  We are to take at least one day a week off and spend that time with God and family. [John 20:9, 2 Tim. 3:16, Deut. 5:12-14, 1 Thes. 5:16-19]

Also something else comes to mind.  God has given each of us the skills to be able to do the work that He needs done.  In Exodus 28 and 35, God is speaking to Moses about the construction of the first portable church in the dessert of Egypt:

Exodus 28:2-3 And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty.  You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood.

Exodus 35:30-36:2 Then Moses said to the people of Israel, “See, the LORD has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft.  And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan.  He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver—by any sort of workman or skilled designer.  “Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whom the LORD has put skill and intelligence to know how to do any work in the construction of the sanctuary shall work in accordance with all that the LORD has commanded.”  And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whose mind the LORD had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work

God has called each of us specifically to be able to do a specific job, or jobs, for him.  There are a number of areas in our lives in which Christ has called us.  Some of those big picture items include but aren’t limited to the following:

• Jesus – First and foremost, He has called us to Him, to follow and obey Him, spend time with Him. Think of the parable in John 4 of the Women and the Well, Christ referring to the living water instead of the water that can be drawn from the well.
• Family – God calls us to love our families and men are to be the Pastor of their families Eph. 5:22-33 Also see this e-book on the subject.
• Discipleship – Discipleship of those that are around us in everything, from work to the the rest of life Exodus 35:30-36:2 and Matthew 28:16-20. This makes us all a leader and puts every Christian into a leadership position.
• Vocation – Are we doing the job that God has called us to do? Exodus 35:30-36:2

We believe strongly that we should be living life within our calling and inside of God’s plan for our lives.  When we don’t we become much like the Israelites wondering around the desert for all those years – discouraged, hard hearted, unbelieving, burned out.  How many times in those forty years did the Isrealites want to turn back and go back to Egypt?  The average Isrealite probably never asked God about their place in His vision of life, but few had a very clear idea on what they were to do (Moses and Aaron for example).

Challenge yourself:

We want to challenge everyone to honestly ask yourself a few questions:

1. What is the vision/calling God has placed on your heart?
2. Are you following that calling?
3. If you are not following that calling, why not? And how can you change what you are doing, so that you are?
4. Do you take the time to spend quality time with your Lord and Savior?  If not, why not?
5. Do you take at least one day a week off? Totally and completely disconnected from work…

Ephesians 5:15-17 “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.  Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”