is this thing on?

well, yesterday was an absolutely remarkable day! for those of you that are just joining us… yesterday was the launch of Freedom Church in Acworth. we had 225 people in the house yesterday and the place was packed. we had to take down all of the pipe & drape in the auditorium that was blocking to the two side sections to let people sit there. that was great. and the best part… 2 people gave their lives to Christ yesterday!

we started a new series called “Change”. in this three week series, JR is going to be sharing the three parts of our vision statement. week 1 was “Love God”. week 2 will be “Love Others” followed by week 3 - “Serve Acworth and the World”. this series will give people a look into the heart of Freedom Church - who we are, and who we want to be. we’ve said all along, “we’re going to change the way you think about Church. we’re going to change the way you think about God.” get ready for the ride of Freedom Church…

song: “Alive” by Andy Hunter

Bumper made by Eric Crosby using Final Cut Express on his Apple MacBook. All Rights Reserved. You can check out more videos and bumpers from Freedom Church here.

here is an article published in the Marietta Daily Journal today. if i can, i would LOVE to remind you that this is the 2nd time Freedom Church has appeared in the MDJ - both times coming prior to our launch tomorrow morning! i just think that’s awesome. don’t our boys look cute?

so this morning some people from Freedom and some other churches came out to help us hang about 5,000 door hangers on houses in Acworth. now, 5,000 doesn’t sound like a whole lot until you’re actually out there hanging them individually on everyone’s door. plus, it was not a normal Georgia January day - it was cold. so, that made us want to go faster but, unfortunately, our bodies moved slower in the cold. there were three of us in my group - myself, Callie and Mackenna. we were given hangers for about 300 homes. again, not too daunting of a task until you’re actually out there doing it. we tried every variation of leaving hangers. we drove through the neighborhood and jumped out and hung them, then we parked and walked up one side of the street and came back down the other side of the street to get back to the truck. i felt that neither variation was very efficient. well, Mackenna had to leave early to go to band practice (lame excuse) so she left Callie and I to continue our task.

while we were in one particular neighborhood, we encountered a whole mess of animals. it seemed as if every home in this neighborhood was home to at least 4 dogs. it was ridiculous. AND to top it off, we saw the Bartow County Animal Control truck driving through the neighborhood. i found that pretty funny. and these people had stickers on their doors that looked like this. weird. anyway.

while Callie and i were using our newfound technique of distributing door hangers (one of us drove while the other rode on the outside step rail of my truck hanging on to the luggage rack on top - it was fun, and cold.), we encountered a lovely lady. Callie was driving and i had just put a door hanger on the house across the street from her when we heard, in a loud disturbing angry sounding voice, “You know this is a NO SOLICITING neighborhood!” to which we honestly did NOT know that. apparently, there were signs posted at the entrance to the neighborhood - which we saw as we left - that read “NO SOLICITING”. but here’s the way I saw it this morning. we weren’t soliciting. this is soliciting. we were inviting. inviting people to join us at Freedom Church. plus, everyone that we actually talked to was very welcoming. they were very open to us handing them a door hanger and inviting them to come to church. what if we had been handing out free money? would she have told us to go away? would she not have wanted to take our $100 or $500? i can understand the “no soliciting” rule but there’s a right way and a wrong way to handle such situations. i hope when i grow up and have a home of my own, i don’t spend Saturday mornings gazing out my window to try and track down and put a stop to practices of solicitors in my neighborhood. i hope i can find something better to do.

Freedom Church launches THIS Sunday! wow. i can’t believe it’s here already. we’ve had some really good training and set up days and the preview service two weeks ago was great. we had people that came to the preview service that were so pumped up about Freedom that they are already on the team! Mackenna came to the preview and this past Sunday, Blake had her up on stage singing! JR told us yesterday that he knows of about 10 church planters that will be there on Sunday to help us kick-off. i am so stinkin excited, it’s hard to contain myself. we’re starting a series this week called “Change”. it should be pretty good. we’ll have the podcasts up on iTunes as well as the Monday Morning Bump, right here, on Monday morning. i’m sure many of the freedom bloggers will document this monumental day on their blogs. this is like full-team coverage. i like it.

also, i told you guys i would let you know when the *new* freedomlive.net was up and running and, happily, after much frustration and uneasiness, the new freedomlive.net is up! go check it out. it’s pretty rockin. Jon did a great job with it and now it will be my job to keep it updated. pray i don’t slack off. or pray that i find someone else who would do about 100 times better than i could do that i can give that job to. there’s a lot going on this week so you might not hear from me until Sunday or Monday.

bummer.

i flippin’ love St. Arbucks. now, because i’m a young 20-something adult and have a truck and insurance payment and have to pay for a lot of other things that my dad could totally pay for me but i wouldn’t appreciate if i didn’t have to sacrifice for it, i can’t afford St. Arbucks every day. sometimes i go weeks without St. Arbucks. which is really spectacular considering that we meet at a sbux for staff meeting. however, sbux has done a lot of things right and i believe that the church can learn a lot from the model of starbucks.

you can read this entire article here, but i’m just highlighting my favorite points.

1. Perfect your core products.

we try to do this at Freedom. even though, technically, we haven’t launched yet (i hate saying that), we’re still striving for excellence. we think that God is excellent and He deserves nothing less than excellence. we only do three things at Freedom Church. we have a Sunday morning worship experience, a children’s experience, and soon we’ll have small groups. we’ve decided that we’re only doing three things, but those three things will be the most excellent that we can make them.

4. Build on your experience.

how does a church build on their experience? by carrying the experience on after Sunday morning. create environments that welcome people back week after week. be on the cutting edge of new ideas. i believe that churches should be some of the most creative places on the planet. i’m so thankful for my creative team (me and Ian). i’m thankful for the talents and abilities that God has gifted us with and the opportunity to do things we love and use our skills for Him and His glory.

5. You can charge more for quality.

Starbucks has a hierarchy of characteristics in their coffeeshops. quality is number 1 followed by service and price. they obviously are charging their customers for the quality of a product. they know this and they acknowledge it. as the Church (notice i said, “THE” Church) we should be in the business of creating quality experiences. both on Sunday morning (or whenever you do your worship time) and quality experiences for your people to minister to others. whether in the community or as a volunteer in the parking lot on Sunday.

when i interned in the student ministry when i was a student, people constantly asked our student pastor how he got a group of kids to come up to church and give of their time and muscle and abilities, for absolutely no profit at all? well, the answer was simple. make it a quality experience. we as students had so much fun hanging out with our friends, we didn’t even realize we were doing work. we were too busy having fun. when we all get together and talk about the “good ‘ole days” our conversations always come back to those summers as an intern and the times we shared lugging rocks or building a human-sized maze.

8. A strong consistent identity.

i think i have beat this one to almost near-death at Freedom. i think Todd is sick of hearing me say the word “consistency”. but i think we send a consistent message and identity at Freedom. all of our signs and publications have the same feel as our website and the people have a consistency about them too. i’m big on consistency. communication is not about how you send a message, but about how it is received. the more we can do to make sure the message we’re sending is not getting lost in translation, the better. consistency adds to that. consistency makes sure that the message being sent from multiple sources is the same. i can tell when i see a piece of media done by Granger or North Point - it just has a certain feel to it. that’s what i want for Freedom too…

well, there are a lot more things in that article that churches could learn from St. Arbucks. and honestly, i could probably rewrite the entire article and make it “10 things Churches can learn from Starbucks”, but not here. this is already too long…