Jason, David, and I just returned from the Buzz Conference in Washington, D.C. Kudos to Mark Batterson and his staff at National Community Church for putting on a great conference. I was blown away watching the people of NCC serve so enthusiastically. The highlight of the conference was the theater church forum on Thursday morning, where 75 church planters and pastors gathered to share new ideas and insights on doing church in a movie theater. This forum was held at Ebenezer's Coffeehouse, which is owned and operated by NCC just a block from Union Station in the Capitol Hill District. This property was a crack house just 3 years ago, and now is being used to share the love of Christ with Washingtonians. The basement of Ebenezer's houses NCC's Saturday worship gatherings, and the 3rd floor serves as the Administrative Wing of the church which also worships in Union Station and Ballston Commons Mall in Northern VA. This theater church gathering was the first of its kind. Surveys reveal that there are over 300 churches meeting in theaters across America. Exciting stuff...
Lessons learned from the Buzz:
- 1 "God" idea is better than 1000 good ideas
- we need to be the church on the corner, not the church on the cover
- theater aesthetics are important and we are falling short: 15 chapters in Exodus deal with aesthetics
- we MUST raise the bar of creativity: The church should be the most creative institution on the planet - Mark Batterson
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