...to everyday life

Let There Be Lights

Thanks to Chris Evans, Jonathan Haage and the most gracious Hudson 12 Theatre, we have permanent lights up in the theater. No more lugging those heavy lights for the logistics team. No more broken bulbs. No more insufficient light.

Hudson 12 has been incredible. We're using their sound system and they let us keep our projector in the projector booth! Most of our stuff is stored there so that we don't have to lug everything in and out of a trailer. I've never heard of anything like this kind of relationship for a church and theater management. We are blessed.

Multi-site Churches

Tony Morgan provides a summary of the findings of a new survey on multi-site churches.

• The number of multi-site churches now outnumber the megachurches. That, of course, means smaller churches are beginning to use the multi-site strategy. (By the way, the number of megachurches continues to grow as well.)
• Multi-sites have a 90% success rate.
• Most multi-site churches launch an on-campus venue first before starting at a new location.
• The new satellite campuses tend to show faster growth than the original campus. In fact, 2 out of 5 surveyed churches have experienced growth of 50% or more the first year of their new campus.
• One-third of new campuses happen as the result of a merger.
• The median size of a multi-site church is 1,300 people including the attendance of all campuses.
• 4 out of 5 churches said multi-site has increased leadership development and volunteer mobilization.
• In-person teaching is more widespread than using video teaching except in large churches. Among churches that use video, it’s usually delivered by DVD.
• Churches who use a multi-site strategy are actually more likely to plant churches as well.
• For the 10% of multi-sites that didn’t work, poor location or weak campus pastor were the two most cited reasons for closing the campus.

Hudson Visit

I really enjoyed my short visit to the Hudson campus on Sunday. We played the video from Sunday night at the 9:30am service at Woodbury, and we played it at Hudson, too. I wanted to see what Hudson sees each week. I did take some time during the announcements to share a bit from my heart.

The best part about the Hudson campus, by far, is the congregation. It's vibrant, growing and filled with new faces and many long time friends. The Children's area has expanded and going strong. A ministry to teens begins this fall, which we all know is critical to our future. 

There had been some key changes since I was there last, the most notable being the move to the larger theater. Everybody was telling me about how much better it is and I totally agree. Great move!

The new projector is great too. But the quality is not yet where I think it should be. Great improvements, but we're going to keep making it better with a better lighting package and by making some changes to how we focus. What looks great on a computer screen in the editing room doesn't look as sharp on the screen. We will be making some changes to improve the sharpness of the picture. I can't wait to go some day and be able to say, "Now that's what I'm talking about." We're so close. 

Some of you who have never been to the Hudson campus or haven't been for a while will really enjoy a trip out there to check it out to see what Five Oaks is doing. It will bless you.

Where'd He Go?

While with the Westurns in PA we visited their church service. When the pastor was done preaching, he asked us to bow our heads in prayer. He prayed. I opened my eyes when he was done, and he was gone. The campus pastor for the day was up on the platform. I'm looking around, wondering if the pastor had walked off stage and sat down while praying. I thought that was a little weird. I'm looking for him for a good five seconds before I remember I was at a video venue and he had been on screen!

Another Big Win for Hudson

I'm very happy to announce that Scott Kent has agreed to accept the position of Worship Leader for our Hudson campus. Scott has led there the past two weeks and many of you in Woodbury may recognize him from his playing electric guitar (quite well, I might add) most weeks at the Woodbury campus the last couple of months.

Scott is working on a degree is guitar performance at McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul. He and his wife Kerri come from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He has a passion for leading worship and would love to be in full-time vocational ministry some day. We're hoping he sticks around with us for a long time, but we're committed to helping him develop his passion for as long as we have him.

Scott and Kerri are involved in a small group at Five Oaks, the one that lays claim to the title "The Best Small Group Ever."

Check out his blog here.

Two Hudson Firsts

The first first this weekend was Keith Miraldi's first day as Campus Pastor. The second first was Steve Coffin playing bass at the Woodbury campus. The significance of that is that Steve came to Five Oaks via the Hudson campus. He was not a Woodbury campus transplant. And that's the first time a person new through Hudson has helped us fill the band at Woodbury for a weekend! That's pretty cool.

This Weekend at Hudson...

The big announcement went out yesterday to the Hudson congregation. It's going out to the regular attenders there, but also everyone who ever attended there (outside of Woodbury Campus people). Here's what's coming in the mail:

ANNOUCEMENT: NEW HUDSON CAMPUS PASTOR HIRED, STARTS DECEMBER 7

We are very happy to announce that Keith Miraldi has joined the Five Oaks staff team as Hudson Campus Pastor and as Small Groups Director for both campuses. Keith and his family will be introduced at this weekend’s Hudson service with a dessert reception following in the theater foyer.

Keith is a Five Oaks member and he will be transitioning from a career in higher education. Most recently he worked at Northwestern College in institutional research and as executive assistant to the Provost. Keith is currently consulting with Bethany International’s College of Missions, helping them with marketing and program development. Before coming to Minnesota, Keith served as Administrative Dean for Graduate Programs and Distance Learning at Liberty University.

Keith is married to Katherine and they have two boys, Isaac (three) and Benjamin (four months). Katherine works remotely as a graphic designer for a regional arts and entertainment magazine in Central Virginia.  Keith is passionate about athletics.  He played baseball for Liberty University and when he wasn’t drafted into the majors, he turned to a possible career in golf, eventually becoming a golf club pro. Along the way he felt lead to enter seminary and began working for Liberty University, where he still teaches in their distance learning program.

The search team, which included three Hudson Campus members, unanimously and enthusiastically agreed that Keith is our man to lead Hudson and the small groups ministry for Five Oaks. Please come and help us welcome him and his family this Sunday (November 16) at the Hudson campus. The worship service begins at 9:30 a.m. at the Hudson 12 Theatres.

Hudson Mo

I happened to mention the momentum the Hudson campus is feeling these days in a conversation with one of our leaders at the Woodbury campus and his, "Really? I didn't realize that," told me I have to get the word out. Here it is: Things are going very well at the Hudson campus. There are new faces everywhere and a very positive spirit.

I know we need to do a better job of telling the story of what's happening there, but the time will come for that. We'll do a full-court press at a future time. For one thing, I'm waiting for the Campus Pastor to help out with that, and I'd like to coincide it with the unveiling of our strategy for future campuses. This will take a while, so, in the meantime, I'll keep trickling information out.

If you've never attended, try it. If you live close by, try it again. It's our first campus and we're learning new things every week. The First Impressions set-up on the theater lobby looks great, the kids areas (three theaters and the party room) are brightly decorated (see picture below) and the service in the theater is starting to fill full.

The greatest sign of mo? Transitioning to a new interim team without a hitch. I think knowing that it's an "indigenous" team they all know and that Brian will still be around, since it's his home campus, helps a lot. I think the new Campus Pastor will be walking into a very healthy, upbeat situation. 

Fine China for Starving Children

"How can we multiply what we're doing if we haven't figured out yet how to get it right." Those are the words of one of my favorite pastors from one of the largest churches in America when he and his team sat around a table with the team from Community Christian Church to learn how to do multi-site. This is the church that put excellence on the radar screen for churches. The excellence of their services is so high, you can't help but marvel. Yet the senior pastor felt they hadn't yet grown up.

It reminds me of the realization I came to a couple of years ago. I would often talk about multiplying our church somewhere out there in the future. This is a high biblical value. What were we waiting for? Well, we needed to be fully staffed. We had a lot to learn. We hadn't figured it out yet. Sure, we would multiply...when we grew up.

Excellence is important. But sometimes it gets in the way of ministry. Yes, it's not excellence per se; it's perfectionism that gets in the way. But most of us can't really tell the difference. I know I had a blind spot on this and I saw it in one of the churches that came to the Hitchhiker's weekend. Several of them were struggling with how they could keep their value of excellence and multiply at the same time. That's not a bad desire or question, but as they talked I suspected something more than excellence driving their questions.

Reality is that if you multiply you have to give up your dreams of rock stardom in the kingdom. You have to hold things more lightly. You can't have a superstar band at every location or church plant. You have to believe that God can work through less than professional musicians and vocalists and teachers.

You can wait until you've got it together. You can wait for that day your services run like clockwork and you have a multi-million dollar monthly budget so that you can launch a new site with a paid band and full staff of pastors. But how many churches ever reach that level of "stardom?" There are a handful in the Twin Cities. If you wait for that day, 99 times out of a 100, it won't come!

That pastor (one of my heroes) got over his perspective, and their church multiplied several times and their sites are achieving excellence (in the good way we all should). But as long as we persist on perfectionism (on "getting it right"), it's like having a boatload of food and refusing to feed starving children because you can't find enough fine china to serve it on.

Our world needs more healthy churches everywhere doing the work of the kingdom--demonstrating the kingdom through acts of compassion and proclaiming the message of God's grace. Something is deeply wrong when we fail to do so because we can't afford to offer it unless we serve it on fine china or with the perfect ambiance.

Jury's in...

Our first Sunday at Hudson 12 Theatre for our Hudson campus was a great success! I'm getting reports and have made a few calls from CAm and there's a lot of excitement. Great words too about Steve Haines, our interim worship leader, and Brian Burquest's debut as interim campus pastor. Here's a excerpt from one email:

...Today was an absolute home run in my opinion. The venue is a huge upgrade for worship - great acousitcs, effective lighting, and super overall feel. Very energizing. Could also really hear people sing around me which wasn't the case in the school. Loved the music being played behind the announcements at the end - provided energy... A couple of weeks ago I would've never dreamed we'd actually build momentum over the summer... Feel completely different after today....

Here's another one:

...By the way, the first Sunday at the theatre was great!  It will certainly be a draw in Hudson for the majority of people – it’s different.