Had a great night tonight at the Innovate conference.  They had their second annual film festival where different churches submit videos they have put together in the categories of:  1) Event promotion; 2) Message Illustration; and 3) Series Trailer.  I REALLY wish we would have submitted a video now.  Anyhow…

 I brought my oldest son Isaac (11).  He is totally into making movies.  He can spend hours on the computer with his movie maker software putting together videos he’s made.  Here we are with our “movie critic” game faces on (or we are demonically possessed).

They handed out cracker jacks and water!  In addition they had little key pads that allowed the audience to digitally select which video we thought was the best.  I loved the interactive nature of the event.  Relevant Church picked up two out of the three categories.

Highlights of the day:

• First, they handed out Innovate t-shirts to all participants – immediate entry way into my heart.
• New Community worship was awesome.  Enjoyed the night.  It was packed.  Very impressive to watch how many people around me brought their Bibles and were taking notes during the message.  I think a lot of GCC-critique-rs would do well to show up once and see what actually happens.
• Guy Kawasaki spoke in the first session and gave eleven great points.  The one that I have ruminated on most of the day is his admonition that you need a mantra, not a mission statement (at least a typically mission statement that is way too long and rarely relevant).  A mantra is just a few words or a phrase.  I keep thinking something with the “south side” of South Bend.
• Mark Beeson talked about leaving a mark.  Loved the progression he illustrated in regards to a person’s journey into faith.  At one point he talked about 1st impressions and talked about space:  public, social, personal, and intimate space.  It triggered a good conversation for our team at lunch to think about our facility and the implications of those principles.
• I got to hear Kem Meyer talk about communication.  Her content I’m sure was good but I missed quite a bit because I was a little late to the session and it was packed out!  I had to sit on the floor by the door and was unable to see Kem or her media presentation.
• Tim Stevens gave a great presentation on planning message series and using pop culture for the sake of the gospel.  You can find the message notes at his website – www.leadingsmart.com.  Tim was the one I first heard the term “leveraging culture” from in regards to its use by the church.  When I first heard it, it was that moment of…”YES!  THAT’S IT!  THAT’S THE WORD.”  I loved it.  Every time I hear Tim I know that what he is saying is so controversial in regards to other churches and their critiques of GCC (or other innovative churches) but every time I hear him speak I think, how is that not simply accepted as THE TRUTH!!  I would like fundamental independent Baptist Churches (or other like-minded churches) to invite Tim to their conferences…if they have any…to explain this concept.  Then again…is that just asking for a good stoning?

Looking forward to tomorrow.  Good day today!