A2 Session Two: Craig Groeschel

Topic: Exploring the Multi-Site Church Craig is the pastor of LifeChurch.tv in Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, & Tennessee. They have 8 sites that are connected via live satellite feed every week. They believe that with the same $$ that is spent on developing a church (staff, buildings, etc.) that can plant many more satellite sites. Now, don't think just a sermon via video -- it's a whole video package -- dramas, skits, humorous pieces, music videos -- basically high quality television programming pumped into every site. _________________________ Acts 2: they were together (they weren't blogging against each other) A few questions LifeChurch.tv asked What if every time we met we invited people to follow Christ? What if when the offering plate came by we allowed people to take back out if they had a need? What would happen if we had a weekend where we only promoted other churches? The multi-site strategy WASN'T CRAIG'S IDEA! A local church that they had promoted, asked them to do it. (My thought: it wasn't about promoting Craig...it was about following what God was doing! (This is huge for me, because my bad attitude about multi-site is they often seem like kingdom building on the part of senior pastors, not the kingdom of God.) Anyway they noticed that during "live" talks, people watched the screens far more than they watched the speaker. So Craig was with his wife in the hospital having one of their six children and they ran a video for church that weekend...AND THERE WAS NO DIFFERENCE -- people barely noticed he wasn't actually "there." While 40 & 50 year olds may not like church via video...people under 30 have SIGNIFICANT relationships with people via texting, video, blogging, YouTube, etc. THEY DO RELATIONSHIPS THIS WAY!! Do everything in your power to reach people with the message of the risen Son of God!!! They put everything online and just give it away!!! "It's not ours (he holds up his Bible)...may God get all the glory and praise for ever and ever." (What a kingdom-thinker!!!!! Huge respect from me!) Don't do multi-site, unless God calls you to do it! "I don't care about multisite. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Lift his name high, lift his name high, lift his name high, lift his name high, lift his name high, lift his name high." "As insulting as it is to me, the Spirit moves in places where I cannot be." (He just told an awesome story about lifechange in people in one of their sites -- where he wasn't "live.") Okay...that's it for the formal session...I'm going too blog the bullpen sessions separately.