Guest Blogger: Wade Joye, Worship Pastor

There is no way to adequately convey what we experienced at Time Warner Cable Arena this Easter. God has blown us away time and time again with the way He exceeds everything we pray for, but this took it to a new level.

Over 11,000 people in attendance. Over 700 salvation decisions. 18,000 items donated for our Community Outreach partners. Our church worshipping the risen Jesus and celebrating baptisms together under one roof. Elevation Church and our city will never be the same.

All glory to God for allowing us to experience such a powerful move of His Spirit.

Elevation is showing some serious love this week in the city of Charlotte. Love Week kicked off on Saturday, February 13 and ends Sunday, February 21. The call to action was simple – to see our church commit to serve 5,000 hours of community service in our city. 5,000 people serving just 1 hour of their time. Our volunteers responded to the vision and have stepped up in a big way.

As of Thursday morning, 4,917 hours have been served since Saturday!

Some of the outreach opportunities have included: sorting clothes at Crisis Assistance Ministry, making 11,558 sandwiches for Operation Sandwich, sorting over 5,300 pairs of shoes for Samaritan’s Feet, building a soccer field for Jackson Park Ministries, serving breakfast at the Charlotte Rescue Mission, reading to children at Piney Grove Elementary School, adopting a teen mom with Safe Journey, and the list continues.

Elevation, we are well on our way to breaking through the goal of 5,000 hours. There is still much to do, so find out more and register here. Let’s finish strong as we continue to transform our city with the love of Jesus.

Pastor Steven has asked a few of us this week to share some of the strategic things we’ve done this fall to create momentum.  In the connections world that I operate we overhauled two major processes that have produced considerable momentum, our First Time Guest process and our Connections process.

As a church we have consistently created a welcoming experience for our guests, but Pastor Steven challenged us to create an honoring experience.  So this summer we overhauled the First Time Guest process and created a new VIP team.  We changed the look through new black tents, red VIP volunteer t-shirts, tables and implemented new systems to ensure guests are honored.

The VIP process begins when guests drive onto the campus.  They are directed to the best parking spots where our VIP team is waiting to host them as their personal concierge.   We put a great gift in their hands, escort them through the children’s check-in process, by-pass the auditorium lines and put them in the best seats in the auditorium.  To create a personal touch every VIP team member gives their guest a personal Elevation VIP team business card.

The VIP follow-up processes also changed.  Volunteers come to the office on Monday night to make a follow-up phone call to each VIP that visited over the weekend and send them a thank you letter from Pastor Steven.  Each VIP that we speak with Monday night is given another touch on Tuesday night; we have a pizza delivered to their house, on us.

The results have been incredible.  We are not only increasing the number of guests we connect with, but they feel like they are being treated like a VIP.  This honoring process creates a personal connection that makes a big church feel very small.

The second system we overhauled was our Connections process, the system for people to sign up to join a community group or sign up to volunteer.  The overhaul wasn’t a process change, but rather a branding and accessibility change.   We operate with the principal that things should be “easy and obvious.”  We have great systems to connect people, but they were not obvious.  The Connection teams were in a poor location and it was branded as a “do you have questions” with an information feel rather than a “here’s the next step if you’re ready to jump in” feel.  With this overhaul, everything went orange.  We bought a big orange tent, put volunteers in orange t-shirts and put up orange signs that read “ready to start volunteering or join a community group.” We placed the tent right in the middle of the traffic flow.

The process was already easy; the changes just made it obvious…”go to the orange tent that you walk right by on your way out.” The results have been staggering, in the short time we’ve implemented the changes sign ups have more than tripled.  These principals of honor and easy and obvious have produced great results.  As we have grown as a church, we have not arbitrarily changed practices; rather we have gained a greater revelation of our guiding principals to build our practices upon.

Pastor Steven has given us the opportunity to share some of the things that we did this fall to harness and create momentum at Elevation Church.  I’m excited to share some of the details surrounding the launching of our first semi-permanent facility (The Matthews Campus).

On August 22nd and 23rd we opened The Matthews Campus as a way to create momentum moving into the fall.

It was an intense move on all fronts:

The construction time-line was insane; we didn’t actually get the certificate from the city to occupy the building until the Tuesday before our launch.

This “up-to-the-wire” move-in meant that we had 3 and ½ days to finish installing and dialing in all of our audio/visual equipment and we saw an “Old Testament caliber, Red Sea parting miracle” in making it happen.

We mobilized hundreds of people in coordinated prayer efforts over 24 hours, we signed up 300 new volunteers and, we witnessed hundreds of faithful, fired-up Elevators serve 3, 4 and 5 worship experiences throughout the weekend without missing a beat!

Some of you reading this post might be thinking, “Why put yourselves through all that craziness?”

Two reasons:

1) God will get ALL the glory for this one!  Though we worked hard, there is no way anyone will ever give us the credit for all that God did to pull off that weekend.

2) We knew that God had big plans for that weekend – and as a reward for our faith we watched God do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we could have asked for.

Since the opening Sunday of our Matthews facility we have seen over 500 people give their lives to Christ and over 1800 people visit our church for the first time.

We have had one of the most exhilarating rides of momentum we have ever been blessed with and it was all done in a new facility that just screams, “We’re going to reach our city, no matter what!”  I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

It’s not exactly what you think. Might be better.

We are opening another campus…an online campus. We’re going to launch elevationchurchlive.com September 27th at 7pm, and it’ll be the home of our new online experience.

Nothing can replace the local church. We’re not trying to. But we do want to provide another option for someone to hear the life-changing message of the Gospel. If it starts at an online experience, thank God for another person hearing about Jesus.

We know everyone knows someone they’d love to invite to church. Our online experience may be the best first step for some people. Many people love the thought of being a part of Elevation Church, but for whatever reason simply can’t attend one of our existing locations. Now they can.

The online experience will capture the entire worship experience–start to finish. From the opening worship song to the closing prayer of Pastor Steven’s message, you’ll get to experience it all. And, of course, it’ll all be customized for you to interact online.

Grab your neighbors, rally your college buddies or tune in on your own, whatever you do, it’s one more option to experience Elevation Church like you’ve never seen it before.

It’s less than a month away. We’ll be asking you to tap your social networks soon enough to spread the word. Stay tuned.

There is no marketing department at Elevation Church.  We are all the marketing department.  We are all marketing.  All the time.  We are marketing the greatest message in the history of mankind.  Everywhere. To everyone.

The whole team was nodding, and I felt like I was preaching pretty good, so I continued:

A lot of times, we think it’s the job of the creative department to make everything cool and attractive.  Like they have some sort of magical process where they can make everything shiny, slick, and exciting with the touch of a button.  In reality…

All of us are responsible for both the content and presentation of every message we send.  Every initiative we initiate.  Every communicative process we instigate.

Then came my favorite line.  I thought of it on the spot:

There is no phone booth where we put in crappy and it comes out cool.
(Please tell me you got the Superman reference.  It’s the best part!)

The way I stated this seemed to bring a lot of clarity to our staff.  I’d suggest you get in front of your team, read Matthew 5:13-16 and Acts 1:8 for foundation, and have this discussion:

In what areas are we putting in crappy ideas and expecting them to come out cool?  How can we be more strategic about the presentation of every message we send?  Especially considering that it’s the only message that will matter for eternity…

(My acknowledgments to the venerable Seth Godin for ingraining this idea into my mindset)