The Lobby

Saturday

Questions you have about The Lobby


We had a great worship planning meeting for The Lobby preview gathering on 22 January 2006. Casey, Justin, Gwen, Chip & Julie all contributed about equally and effectively on the team. We're rolling ahead with plans for that first of 3 previews... we'll be going weekly thereafter at Easter-time (that week or the following week most likely).

Request for everyone that drops in: post a quick comment here with any question or wondering you have about "The Lobby" as the launch approaches. What question do you have about what it'll be like? Do you have a more rhetorical wondering about what may or may not happen? Do you have a suspicion you'd like to announce? Chime in and we'll discuss.

Wednesday

A Message From The King!



Well, Bob King from Ada Bible Church.


Here's an email from Bob King that he wrote responding to the question:

"Was there a resource that you found helpful when setting up your video venues, such as a mentor, website, or magazine?"

Bob's response:


There wasn't any one resource that we heavily utilized, rather we pulled bits and pieces from a ton of different sources. Here are a couple of places that might help you get started:

www.churchvideovenues.com - this is North Coast's website. We probably copied them more than any other ministry.

www.newthing.org - this site comes from Christian Community Church in Naperville, IL. The have more of a multi-site model than they do a venue model, but there is still great info on this page.

http://www.leadnet.org/multisiteChurches.asp - Leadership Network has what they call 'Leadership Communities' - small 'colloquiums' of churches that interact over a topic. They have developed several LC's around multi-site churches. In fact, they will be forming their final LC's within the next few months - we are thinking about jumping into this last one.

Also, check out the sites of the following churches. Some of these we've visited, others we just write for the brochure and t-shirt.

www.communitychristian.org - we stole their format for our venue website

www.lifechurch.tv - this place is way too cool for their britches, but a good place to explore venue stuff

www.seacoastchurch.org - these guys are really pioneers in the movement also. Fun note: they have a venue called 'The Annex'. We didn't know that until we'd already named ours. Hopefully, stuff will be out of court soon...

www.themeetinghouse.ca - this church in Toronto really intrigues us. They have determined to have venues all over the greater Toronto area so that no one has to commute more than 30 minutes in order to attend their church.

Preview Gatherings Announcements

ANNOUNCEMENT
2006 PREVIEW GATHERING DATES SET

The following dates have been set for the preview gatherings this Winter--we plan to go weekly around Easter or perhaps on Easter.

January 22 @ 6pm Sunday night
February 26 @ 6pm Sunday night
March 26 @ 6pm Sunday night

PS - The 2006 calendar "The Cat Lovers of SLWC" is shown here as well. This is a new project initiated by Pastor Dennis Jackson, who adores the little calico ones.

Monday

The Name

*** NOTE = if you've not read the post below on the Ada Trip report please do so and engage in the recap-discussion there. And now back to your previous program:

Okay, folks... we needed to choose a name and communicate it out to SLWC. After a month of dicussion and a few names that worked for some but not all we've landed with a name that I think really communicates who we are, where we're meeting and fits with the style of this new venue... and doesn't make us something we're not. A name isn't everything... but it's something we guess :-)

The Lobby is all about a "3rd place" for people (beyond home and work) to connect with people and be a part of a worshipping community doing church in a new way. We'll be meeting in the actual lobby at SLWC... so they'll be no confusion about location, and once we get that place decked out like a coffee shop it could be the must see destination around our campus.

Ada Trip Report

We had a wonderful trip to Ada Bible Church on Sunday. Bill, Marci, Casey, Gwen, Justin, Kathy, Dave & the Drury children made the trip to the other side of Grand Rapids to check out that church's 3 video venues on Sunday morning.

Key learnings we debriefed at a coffee shop afterwards:
  • The environment is key -- chairs, tables, couches create the ambience
  • The venue coordinator/pastor role is absolutely crucial (according to Ada)
  • We think we should do some pre-weekly gatherings social events with our launch team and potential key attendees (Kathy has agreed to be our "social coordinator" and is planning such events for the winter).
  • The set design seems important to the atmosphere too
  • It's important to "level the playing field" between the venues
  • The language we use is important -- watch calling the other services "the main" services or "the main" sanctuary (so we're not second class worshipppers)
  • Keeping it simple seems to work for Ada - we shouldn't over-complicate the launch
  • Ada appears to have 900+ people attending their additional video venues - it's really working for them. They also have 300+ people attending their Sunday night venue.
  • The video thing is a non-issue in many ways for thier church. They don't find themselves defending it at all.
  • Bob King wanted to stay in touch with us. His e-mail is bking@adabible.org
Other notes...
-Pastor Dennis shot a video for the team to view while on the trip. Thanks, Bishop Jackson: how thoughtful!
-We had a long discussion on the name of the new venue... more on that later.
-We thought we should continue to debrief the Ada Trip online here in the comments of this blog. So click the comment button to get in on the discussion.

PS: thanks for those of you that prayed for this trip -- the picture on this blog IS NOT from our trip... and we owe it to your prayers for a safe and successful trip (desipte the horrible weather we had).

Welcome to The Lobby

This is the online home of the new worship gathering of Spring Lake Wesleyan Church.

Go to http://newworshipgathering.blogspot.com to catch up on what's been happening so far. That blog will transfer to this one as of this week.

-David Drury
Venue Pastor of The Lobby