Big Idea
Dave Ferguson, pastor of Community Christian Church in Naperville, IL is writing a book titled What's the Big Idea. I just did an email interview with him. He's going to do a chapter on NCC. We are totally indebted to them for the idea! A Big Idea meeting is part of our weekly rhythm as a church. It's the way we prepare for our weekend gatherings.
I thought I'd share the interview. It's a "behind the scenes" look at the way we approach church.
1) When did you start using the Big Idea?
We implemented our Big Idea meetings in September of 2003 after a reconnaissance trip to Christian Community Church in Naperville, Illinois. Our creative team sat in on one of their Big Idea meetings. We picked up some great ideas. Then we custom-fitted the concept to our unique context.
2) How are you using Big Idea?
Each week we try to answer one question: what does God want to say to us this weekend? The answer to that question is the "big idea." We try to keep it short and sweet. I've always been a one-point preacher so the transition to Big Idea was pretty simple. Our goal is for people to remember that one "big idea" forever, but we're pretty happy if they still remember it on Wednesday of the next work week.
The "big idea" takes different shapes in different series.
Here are a few samples:
Our first "Big Idea" series was our Extreme Series in September of 2003. It was a four-part series that focused on four dimensions of discipleship:
Extreme Faith: Playing It Safe is Risky
Extreme Love: Love People When They Least Expect It and Least Deserve It
Extreme Passion: Christ Followers Ought to Be the Most Passionate People on the Planet
Extreme Devotion: Never a Dull Moment
We started producing series trailers with the Extreme series as a way of reinforcing the Big Idea. Most of the series trailers are viewable in the "ear and eye candy" section of http://www.theaterchurch.com/.
Another Big Idea series was ID: The True You. The series revolved around finding our identity in Christ. The four big ideas included:
There never has been and never will be anyone like you
It's never too late to be who you might have been
True Freedom is having nothing to prove
You become what you worship
We produced a video trailer for that series that reemphasized all four big ideas all four weeks.
Another recent series was The Game of Life.
We based the series off the board game. The video trailer was actually a moving car that moved around the game board and stopped at the appropriate square each week.
Graduation Day: Enjoy the Journey
Tour Europe: Get Out of the Boat
Night School: Keep Asking Questions
Win Marathon: Set God-sized Goals
Start a Career: Pursue Your Passions
Get Married: Fall in Love
Pay Day: Pay it Forward
Our most recent series titled Y: Why We Do What We Do took a slightly different approach. The individual topics doubled as big ideas:
Y Pray
Y Give
Y Serve
Y Church
3) Why did you decide to use Big Idea?
We felt like it was a stewardship issue. We've got hundreds of people giving us sixty minutes of their time each weekend. We want to maximize impact. I have a personal conviction: the most important truths ought to be communicated in the most unforgettable ways. Big Idea helps us accomplish that. Sometimes more is less and less is more. Most churches try to say too much each week. We've tried to say more by saying less. That's what the Big Idea is all about. We want to be laser-focused each week.
Our Big Idea meetings help us brand our sermon series. We try to creatively package every series in the best possible "wineskin" so it'll get a hearing with the unchurched and dechurched.
In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell makes a fascinating observation about packaging. He says that most consumers transfer their impression of the packaging to the product itself. He writes, "Most of us don't make a distinction--on an unconscious level--between the package and the product. The product is the package and the package combined."
Big Idea meetings have helped us package our sermon series more effectively. And the greatest truths ought to come in the best packages!
5) How pervasive is your use of Big Idea?
NCC is 80% single twenty-somethings so we don't have a large children's ministry or youth ministry. Our children's ministry is aware of our weekly big ideas, but they have their own curriculum.
Our small groups operate as a free market system. Leaders get a vision from God and go for it. But we occasionally try to coordinate across the board. Our most recent church-wide series was titled Journey. All of our small groups did a four-week study on four dimensions of discipleship: seeking, learning, influencing, and investing.
Most of our coordination for Big Idea is with our media, worship, and hospitality teams. We want all of our elements to communicate one message. For example, our media team puts together trailers and videos for all of our series. Our worship team designs worship sets that relate to the message--especially our closing songs. And hospitality will come up with unique ways of promoting different series. For example, during our God @ the Box Office series, they literally roll out the red carpet and treat every NCCer like an Oscar Nominee.
6) Challenge of using Big Idea?
For six years I prepared messages by myself without any input from anyone else. It was an adjustment involving our staff in the process, but there is a huge payoff. I haven't cut down on personal perparation, but the staff gives me peripheral vision. It's a both/and approach to sermon prep.
Another challenge is planning ahead. We tend to have lots of last minute ideas at NCC. We haven't been successful with eight week lead times. We tend to brainstorm by series so we're usually a few weeks out. That still gives us enough margin for creative elements.
We have a hyper-creative team. There is usually no shortage of ideas. Our challenge is keeping up with the crazy ideas we get during Big Idea. But I'd rather have too many ideas than too few.
7) If you had it to do all over again what would you do different?
I would have visited CCC sooner!
I think every church needs a mechanism that will help them coordinate everything that happens on the weekend. Call it Big Idea. Call it God idea. Call it staff meeting. Churches need creative margin in their weekly rhythm so they can exceed expectations on the weekend. I wish we had implemented Big Idea when we started out.
They key is making the Big Idea fit your church culture. Our vision is meeting in movie theaters @ metro stops throughout the DC area so doing a "trailer" for every series fit our locale. We have amazing movie screens at all of our locations so we use alot of multimedia to communicate our big idea.
Another key is having a programming person on the weekends who is responsible for implementing the Big Idea and making sure things go according to the run sheets.
8) What is the flow of finish lines for creating Big Idea?
We have a staff planning retreat every December where we come up with a strategy for everything we do--marketing strategy, discipleship strategy, staffing strategy, and sermon strategy. We plan out the next year of sermon series at that retreat.
In preparation for the retreat, we do a church-wide survey that asks a variety of questions. It's our annual check-up. Some of those questions are related to past and future sermon series. We pitch a dozen sermon series ideas. I pay particular attention to the series that get the highest and lowest response.
I try to plan our entire preaching calendar for the year, including the Sundays I take off. We sometimes have what we call "buffer Sundays" between series. It gives us a chance to catch our creative breath. We try to strategically plan our series based on time of year.
January is a great "back-to-basics" kind of series that focuses on stewardship. I also do vision casting the last Sunday in January. We call it our State of the Church message. February typically deals with relationships. We do God @ the Box Office in March or April. Our summer series vary. This year we'll do a series on our core values. We try to kick off every September with a faith-building series. We also do our annual God @ the Billboards series in the fall. We wrap things up with a Christmas series. We also schedule two reflection messages where I catch my breath and talk about the things God has been doing in me and NCC. I preach Summer Reflections after a summer sabbatical. And Live & Learn is an annual message the last Sunday of the year.
Planning those sermon series is determining the spiritual diet of the congregation so it's one of the most important things we do. We go into the year with a rough draft of what we want to accomplish the next twelve months. Historically, about two-thirds of those series make the cut with minor revisions. But we always make mid-course corrections during the year. Nothing is written in stone.
One of the advantages of planning a year in advance is that it allows me to buy books strategically. I can do my homework for every series. It also gives us time to plan retreats or outreaches or special events. One key to creativity is lead time. Short deadlines don't lend themselves toward creativity.
9) Examples of life-change
Nothing is more gratifying to a preacher than knowing that people remember what you say. I'm amazed at how often an NCCer will refer to a life-changing moment that was one of our big ideas!
I Corinthians 14:25 is our goal every weekend. Paul describes a church scenario where people fall down and worship God saying, "God is really here among you." We want people to have an experience with God. All of our planning is aimed at that one goal.
We have a core value: work like it depends on you and pray like it depends on God. Big idea is fulfilling the first half of that equation. Boring sermons are easy to prepare. Monotonous church services are easy to plan. Creativity is hard work. It takes a tremendous investment of time and energy. But souls are at stake. We want to give every weekend everything we've got. So we work hard and pray hard.
The end result is people becoming fully devoted followers of Christ.
I thought I'd share the interview. It's a "behind the scenes" look at the way we approach church.
1) When did you start using the Big Idea?
We implemented our Big Idea meetings in September of 2003 after a reconnaissance trip to Christian Community Church in Naperville, Illinois. Our creative team sat in on one of their Big Idea meetings. We picked up some great ideas. Then we custom-fitted the concept to our unique context.
2) How are you using Big Idea?
Each week we try to answer one question: what does God want to say to us this weekend? The answer to that question is the "big idea." We try to keep it short and sweet. I've always been a one-point preacher so the transition to Big Idea was pretty simple. Our goal is for people to remember that one "big idea" forever, but we're pretty happy if they still remember it on Wednesday of the next work week.
The "big idea" takes different shapes in different series.
Here are a few samples:
Our first "Big Idea" series was our Extreme Series in September of 2003. It was a four-part series that focused on four dimensions of discipleship:
Extreme Faith: Playing It Safe is Risky
Extreme Love: Love People When They Least Expect It and Least Deserve It
Extreme Passion: Christ Followers Ought to Be the Most Passionate People on the Planet
Extreme Devotion: Never a Dull Moment
We started producing series trailers with the Extreme series as a way of reinforcing the Big Idea. Most of the series trailers are viewable in the "ear and eye candy" section of http://www.theaterchurch.com/.
Another Big Idea series was ID: The True You. The series revolved around finding our identity in Christ. The four big ideas included:
There never has been and never will be anyone like you
It's never too late to be who you might have been
True Freedom is having nothing to prove
You become what you worship
We produced a video trailer for that series that reemphasized all four big ideas all four weeks.
Another recent series was The Game of Life.
We based the series off the board game. The video trailer was actually a moving car that moved around the game board and stopped at the appropriate square each week.
Graduation Day: Enjoy the Journey
Tour Europe: Get Out of the Boat
Night School: Keep Asking Questions
Win Marathon: Set God-sized Goals
Start a Career: Pursue Your Passions
Get Married: Fall in Love
Pay Day: Pay it Forward
Our most recent series titled Y: Why We Do What We Do took a slightly different approach. The individual topics doubled as big ideas:
Y Pray
Y Give
Y Serve
Y Church
3) Why did you decide to use Big Idea?
We felt like it was a stewardship issue. We've got hundreds of people giving us sixty minutes of their time each weekend. We want to maximize impact. I have a personal conviction: the most important truths ought to be communicated in the most unforgettable ways. Big Idea helps us accomplish that. Sometimes more is less and less is more. Most churches try to say too much each week. We've tried to say more by saying less. That's what the Big Idea is all about. We want to be laser-focused each week.
Our Big Idea meetings help us brand our sermon series. We try to creatively package every series in the best possible "wineskin" so it'll get a hearing with the unchurched and dechurched.
In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell makes a fascinating observation about packaging. He says that most consumers transfer their impression of the packaging to the product itself. He writes, "Most of us don't make a distinction--on an unconscious level--between the package and the product. The product is the package and the package combined."
Big Idea meetings have helped us package our sermon series more effectively. And the greatest truths ought to come in the best packages!
5) How pervasive is your use of Big Idea?
NCC is 80% single twenty-somethings so we don't have a large children's ministry or youth ministry. Our children's ministry is aware of our weekly big ideas, but they have their own curriculum.
Our small groups operate as a free market system. Leaders get a vision from God and go for it. But we occasionally try to coordinate across the board. Our most recent church-wide series was titled Journey. All of our small groups did a four-week study on four dimensions of discipleship: seeking, learning, influencing, and investing.
Most of our coordination for Big Idea is with our media, worship, and hospitality teams. We want all of our elements to communicate one message. For example, our media team puts together trailers and videos for all of our series. Our worship team designs worship sets that relate to the message--especially our closing songs. And hospitality will come up with unique ways of promoting different series. For example, during our God @ the Box Office series, they literally roll out the red carpet and treat every NCCer like an Oscar Nominee.
6) Challenge of using Big Idea?
For six years I prepared messages by myself without any input from anyone else. It was an adjustment involving our staff in the process, but there is a huge payoff. I haven't cut down on personal perparation, but the staff gives me peripheral vision. It's a both/and approach to sermon prep.
Another challenge is planning ahead. We tend to have lots of last minute ideas at NCC. We haven't been successful with eight week lead times. We tend to brainstorm by series so we're usually a few weeks out. That still gives us enough margin for creative elements.
We have a hyper-creative team. There is usually no shortage of ideas. Our challenge is keeping up with the crazy ideas we get during Big Idea. But I'd rather have too many ideas than too few.
7) If you had it to do all over again what would you do different?
I would have visited CCC sooner!
I think every church needs a mechanism that will help them coordinate everything that happens on the weekend. Call it Big Idea. Call it God idea. Call it staff meeting. Churches need creative margin in their weekly rhythm so they can exceed expectations on the weekend. I wish we had implemented Big Idea when we started out.
They key is making the Big Idea fit your church culture. Our vision is meeting in movie theaters @ metro stops throughout the DC area so doing a "trailer" for every series fit our locale. We have amazing movie screens at all of our locations so we use alot of multimedia to communicate our big idea.
Another key is having a programming person on the weekends who is responsible for implementing the Big Idea and making sure things go according to the run sheets.
8) What is the flow of finish lines for creating Big Idea?
We have a staff planning retreat every December where we come up with a strategy for everything we do--marketing strategy, discipleship strategy, staffing strategy, and sermon strategy. We plan out the next year of sermon series at that retreat.
In preparation for the retreat, we do a church-wide survey that asks a variety of questions. It's our annual check-up. Some of those questions are related to past and future sermon series. We pitch a dozen sermon series ideas. I pay particular attention to the series that get the highest and lowest response.
I try to plan our entire preaching calendar for the year, including the Sundays I take off. We sometimes have what we call "buffer Sundays" between series. It gives us a chance to catch our creative breath. We try to strategically plan our series based on time of year.
January is a great "back-to-basics" kind of series that focuses on stewardship. I also do vision casting the last Sunday in January. We call it our State of the Church message. February typically deals with relationships. We do God @ the Box Office in March or April. Our summer series vary. This year we'll do a series on our core values. We try to kick off every September with a faith-building series. We also do our annual God @ the Billboards series in the fall. We wrap things up with a Christmas series. We also schedule two reflection messages where I catch my breath and talk about the things God has been doing in me and NCC. I preach Summer Reflections after a summer sabbatical. And Live & Learn is an annual message the last Sunday of the year.
Planning those sermon series is determining the spiritual diet of the congregation so it's one of the most important things we do. We go into the year with a rough draft of what we want to accomplish the next twelve months. Historically, about two-thirds of those series make the cut with minor revisions. But we always make mid-course corrections during the year. Nothing is written in stone.
One of the advantages of planning a year in advance is that it allows me to buy books strategically. I can do my homework for every series. It also gives us time to plan retreats or outreaches or special events. One key to creativity is lead time. Short deadlines don't lend themselves toward creativity.
9) Examples of life-change
Nothing is more gratifying to a preacher than knowing that people remember what you say. I'm amazed at how often an NCCer will refer to a life-changing moment that was one of our big ideas!
I Corinthians 14:25 is our goal every weekend. Paul describes a church scenario where people fall down and worship God saying, "God is really here among you." We want people to have an experience with God. All of our planning is aimed at that one goal.
We have a core value: work like it depends on you and pray like it depends on God. Big idea is fulfilling the first half of that equation. Boring sermons are easy to prepare. Monotonous church services are easy to plan. Creativity is hard work. It takes a tremendous investment of time and energy. But souls are at stake. We want to give every weekend everything we've got. So we work hard and pray hard.
The end result is people becoming fully devoted followers of Christ.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home