The Porn Event Begins

Yesterday we kicked off ThePornEvent.com, a 25-minute interactive experience designed to help people who are struggling with pornography. It features open discussions with people who’ve dealt with pornography addiction, as well as community chat, one-on-one prayer, and an invitation to accept Christ.

We’re really excited about the potential for an event like this to reach people who are looking for fulfillment all over the Internet. We’ve launched a global Google adwords campaign specifically targeted to people searching for pornography online. We’re offering the event throughout the week at multiple times to connect with people in different time zones.

It’s been great to see the response during the first day and a half. So far nearly 2,000 people have attended the event and nearly 100 of them have accepted Christ. People who’ve experienced the effects of pornography addiction are also showing up to offer support in the chat, like this woman from South Africa:

My husband was addicted to this and it nearly broke my marriage - we have been through hell and back. But, glory to God, He has become the number one in our lives, and no one can overcome this problem without Him.

We’re looking forward to what happens during the many experiences scheduled to take place during the week.

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Upcoming Series: Forgotten Virtues

Right now, we’re in the middle of a series at LifeChurch.tv called FAQ. It’s been great to answer the tough questions people wrestle with, both as believers and non-believers.

Next up, we’ll be doing a series on Forgotten Virtues. In it, we’ll be talking about:

1. Honor.
2. Purity.
3. Loyalty.
4. Integrity.
5. Gratitude.

Here’s the trailer our Media Design team created after a video shoot in a nearby abandoned town.

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The Code: Keeping it Brief

As we started to write out our values, we had more material than we could include. We wanted to keep The Code short enough that people could take it all in and remember relevant points during the course of ministry. Who says 13 is an unlucky number?

10)    We always bring our best. Excellence honors God and inspires people.

11)    The only constant in our ministry is change. God is always doing a new thing. Why we do what we do never changes. How we do it must change.

12)    We don’t recruit volunteers; we release leaders. Volunteers do good things but leaders change the world.

13)    We’re living in the “good old days.” We’re thankful for God’s blessings today and expect even more tomorrow.

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The Code: Writing the Unwritten

Instead of relying on unwritten rules to communicate our culture, we took the time to document them. None of these values are new. Bit by bit, they were woven into our conversations, meetings, and events. But having them written down allows us to communicate them effectively to new leaders and serves as a reminder and inspiration to our current leaders.

Here are a few more, and I’ll share the remaining ones tomorrow.

6)    We will do anything short of sin to reach people who don’t know Christ. To reach people no one is reaching, we’ll have to do things no one is doing.

7)    We will lead the way with irrational generosity. We truly believe it is more blessed to give than to receive.

8)    We will laugh hard, loud and often. Nothing is more fun than serving God with people you love!

9)    We will be known for what we are for, not what we’re against. There are already enough jerks in the world.

How do you communicate your church’s values?

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The Code: Reworking our Values

Pastor Steven Furtick sent me an interesting book called The Orange Code, How ING Direct Succeeded by Being a Rebel with a Cause.

The book shows clearly how to connect emotion and passion to your values. After visiting Elevation Church, I saw Pastor Steven’s version of the Code (or the values) for Elevation Church. He inspired me to rework our values and connect them more directly with our cause.

I’ll share with you a few of them a day throughout this week.

1)    We are faith-filled, big thinking, bet-the-farm risk takers. We’ll never insult God with small thinking and safe living.

2)    We are all about the “capital C” Church! The local church is the hope of the world and we know we can accomplish infinitely more together than apart.

3)    We are spiritual contributors not spiritual consumers. The church does not exist for us. We are the church and we exist for the world.

4)    We give up things we love for things we love even more. It’s an honor to sacrifice for Christ and His church.

5)    We wholeheartedly reject the label mega-church. We are a micro-church with a mega-vision.

How often do you revisit the values for your church?

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Campus Facebook Strategy

We’re in the process of overhauling our LifeChurch.tv website, and I’ll have plenty of details to share about that in the coming weeks. But for now I want to let you know how we’re employing Facebook at a campus level.

Currently, www.LifeChurch.tv has individual campus pages with specialized content management tools for each of our locations. To some extent, this solution met the need of sharing information about upcoming events and campus-specific information. But the tools were hard for our teams to use, and it relied on people visiting our site to keep up with the latest information.

Recently, we’ve been shifting much of our campus-specific content to Facebook. As Facebook has grown (currently over 400 million active users), it’s become a place where more and more people are connecting with each other in a meaningful way—keeping up with friends, uploading photos, sharing links and videos, and learning more about the people they meet.

We’re just starting to roll out custom Facebook pages for our campuses. Here’s a look at the page for our Oklahoma City campus, and some of our reasons behind this transition:

• Instead of forcing people to come to us (our site), Facebook allows us to go where they’re already active online. Instead of trying to be a separate destination, we get to integrate with their lives.
• The outreach potential is huge. Example: we post  a baptism photo and tag the person in the photo who is getting baptized. The photo shows up on that person’s Facebook wall, as well as in their friends’ feeds, giving them a simple way to share their new life in Christ with their Facebook friends.
• In addition to conveying information about events, classes, etc., Facebook creates the opportunity for community and connection. It serves as an online representation of the campus, where people can get to know each other, ask questions, and keep up with what’s happening in people’s lives and the life of the campus.
• It reduces bloat on our LifeChurch.tv site and allows us to be laser focused with our content there.
• We don’t have to re-create the wheel. Facebook is already accomplishing many of the goals we have for our campus communication. By leaning on their tools, it frees up time and development resources in the long run.
• It’s free!

We’re also providing our teams with some basic and advanced training so they are equipped to get the most out of their Facebook presence and interaction.

Is your church using Facebook? If so, what are some challenges and advantages you’ve experienced there?

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Easter at LifeChurch.tv

Yesterday was a phenomenal day to be in ministry, wasn’t it? I saw many of you posting tweets, updates, and pictures about packed out Easter services, baptisms, and salvations at your churches. It was awesome to see Kingdom wins all over the world!

To celebrate along with you, I want to share a bit about what God did at LifeChurch.tv yesterday. We launched a new campus in Yukon, Oklahoma, and it turned out to be our biggest yet. Even the overflow seating area was standing room only!

Our Network churches also experienced great momentum with huge numbers of baptisms, attendance doubling, and successful launches.

Across the board, our locations were seeing record-setting attendance numbers, and more than 1,000 people gave their lives to Christ—and that’s not  including the Easter services still continuing all week long at Church Online.

We’re so thankful to the servant leaders throughout the church who made this all possible by volunteering and inviting their friends. We’re humbled to see God moving like this and excited about the opportunities for ministry that will follow.

I’d love to hear more about what happened at your churches this Easter. What are you celebrating?

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Book Giveaway: The Christian Atheist

I’m very excited about tomorrow’s release of Craig’s new book, The Christian Atheist, so we’re having a little launch party on Swerve. We’ll be giving away 10 copies here and 10 copies on Facebook!

The Christian Atheist looks at the paradox of believing in God, but living as if He doesn’t exist. It’s a great challenge for all of us to push past surface level Christianity and truly seek to live the way Jesus lived. You can read more about it at http://christianatheist.com

Here’s how you can win a copy (you only need to do one of these to enter, but you can do all of them to increase your odds :) :

1. Comment below and let us know what you’d like to learn about Christian Atheism.
2. Tweet or retweet with this link: http://bit.ly/bgmsOa
3. Post on your blog and include this link: http://bit.ly/bgmsOa
4. Comment on The Christian Atheist giveaway post on the LifeChurch.tv Facebook page

We’ll be choosing the Swerve winners tomorrow at 3:00 CDT, and 2 winners per day on Facebook through March 27—stay tuned!

If you would like to purchase a copy of The Christian Atheist,  you can pre-order your copy through any of these booksellers:

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Christianbook.com, and Mardel.

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