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Your True Identity - Romans 12:3
“As God’s messenger, I give each of you this warning: Be honest in your estimate of yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you.” — Romans 12:3
Today I’m teaching a message on ’seeing yourself as God sees you.’ I’m continuing our God on Film series with “Hancock: Discovering My True Identity.” I’ll be teaching live in Manhattan and via video in Jersey City and Brooklyn. We have canceled our evening Manhattan service today as a gift to our staff and volunteers on this holiday weekend. It’s rare for us to cancel a service but its nice to do from time to time, especially on weekends where attendance is already going to be low.
The Journey-San Francisco, our latest church plant, is also doing God on Film. God is really blessing them and using Pastor Chris Brady in big ways! Check them out here.
I hope you are as excited about Sunday as I am!
Nelson
P.S. We are currently praying about starting another Journey video venue in metro NYC - anyone interested in leading it?
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The Power of Sunday
Here’s what I read every Sunday morning:
The Power of Sunday
Sunday is . . . game day . . . impact time . . . evangelism hour . . .resurrection day
. . .prime time . . . focal point . . . the super bowl, world cup and world series all rolled in one! Sunday matters! THIS Sunday Matters!I love SUNDAY! I’m teaching live in the first three services in Manhattan this morning and then tagging Kerrick in to teach tonight. Elliott is teaching live in Brooklyn and I’ll be on the big screen in Jersey City. I can’t wait!
Hope you have a great Sunday!
Nelson
P.S. The quote above is from my latest church system seminar called The Worship Planning Seminar.
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God on Film Begins Today
I can’t wait to kick off our new series today at the Manhattan location of The Journey! This is the 7th Year in a row we have done this teaching series and I still love it! In fact, about 20% of our church says they first attended a Journey service during God on Film!
Off to the first service….I hope you have a great Sunday!
Nelson
P.S. Our church plant in San Francisco is also doing this series starting next week. If you know someone in the San Francisco area who needs a new church please direct the to www.JourneySF.com
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Attention Pastors and Worship Leaders - FREE Webinar
Tomorrow Jason is leading a FREE Webinar for Pastors and Worship Leaders called The Top 3 Worship Leader Challenges (its specifically for Worship Leaders but I suggest Pastors and Worship Leaders attend it together for maximum impact). Here’s all the details:
The Top 3 Worship Leader Challenges WEBINAR
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Noon-2:00pm (EST)
“Every Worship Leader faces the challenges of planning creative and impactful worship services, working seamlessly with the Lead Pastor, and developing the leadership skills to lead their ministries effectively both now and in the future.Join Jason Hatley, (Pastor of Worship Arts at The Journey Church in New York City) as he teaches proven lessons on how to overcome the Top 3 challenges that Worship Leaders face, including:
- How to develop a personal growth plan to ensure leadership and effectiveness at the highest level
- How to work with the Lead Pastor to produce a quality worship service every week
- How to plan life-transforming worship services each week
- Plus much more!The Top 3 Worship Leader Challenges WEBINAR
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Noon-2:00pm (EST)FREE! with RSVP. A reservation is required. To reserve your spot, simply add this item to your cart and check out.
After registering you will receive a confirmation of your registration and instructions to login to the webinar closer to the broadcast date. You’ll need a phone and a computer with Internet access.
About the Seminar Leader:
Jason Hatley
Pastor of Worship Arts, The Journey Church (NYC)In 2002, Jason was a part of the launch team of The Journey Church, overseeing the programming of their worship services. He serves as the pastor of worship arts and has built from scratch The Journey’s worship arts team, a group of over 200 artists and technicians who develop and implement the creative and technical elements at weekly Sunday services.
Jason has been a worship leader for over 10 years. He invests in worship pastors around the country through interactive coaching networks and worship planning resources. He has been a featured break-out speaker at the Willow Creek Arts Conference, The Purpose Drive Worship Conference, as well as seminars around the country. He has a B.M. in sacred music performance from Appalachian State University. “ -
Bring Everyone Together on Occassion
Today we are doing one big combined worship service at The Journey. When you have multiple services and especially when you have multiple locations, I think its important 2 or 3 times a year to bring everyone together for one big service. This does several things:
- It allows you to communicate vision to everyone at once
- It allows the attendees to see the ‘entire church.’
- It rewards your staff (one service is easier than six).
- It gives momentum
- It allows for extras (we offer an optional pre-service Worship Concert)
- It builds connectivity (some of the smaller services or new locations really feel like they are part of something big)
- It’s exciting to see everyone in one place
In addition to Memorial Day, I’ve found that the Sunday closest to July 4th is another good time for a combined service. We sometimes do one the first Sunday of the year too, depending on how the calendar falls. While we usually ‘take off’ the weekend after Christmas, many people tell me that’s a great time for a combined service. When would be a good time for you to bring everyone together?
Whatever services you are having today I hope they are great!
Nelson
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Free Worship Leader Webinar on June 4, 2008
Jas
on Hatley, The Journey’s Pastor of Worship Arts, is doing a free Webinar on Wednesday, June 4 on the Top 3 Worship Leader Challenges. I’ve heard him teach this live and I highly recommend it. You can sign up for The Top 3 Worship Leader Challenges Webinar here.Here’s how Jason describes it:
Join us in this live WEBINAR without ever having to leave your office or home! Webinar participants will need a phone and a computer with Internet access to participate.
Every Worship Leader faces the challenges of planning creative and impactful worship services, working seamlessly with the Lead Pastor, and developing the leadership skills to lead their ministries effectively both now and in the future.
Join Jason Hatley for this first-ever Worship Leader Insights Webinar, (Pastor of Worship Arts at The Journey Church in New York City) as he teaches proven lessons on how to overcome the Top 3 challenges that Worship Leaders face, including…
• How to develop a personal growth plan to ensure leadership effectiveness at the highest level
• How to Maximize the Pastor / Worship Pastor relationship
• How to plan life-transforming worship services each week
• Plus much more!You can sign up for The Top 3 Worship Leader Challenges Webinar here.
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Co-Teaching A Message
Today I am co-teaching Message # 3 of our Tongue Pierced series with Kerrick. This is the first time we have co-taught together in quite a while, although before we went multi-site we used to do it quite a bit.
The #1 question we get about co-teaching is ‘how does it work?‘. This Sunday it works this way: I’m doing the first 15min of the message, Kerrick will do the next 10min and I’ll come back and wrap it up. Sometimes we do half and half but in general its good to have the person who ’starts’ the message to ‘conclude’ the message, as it gives greater symmetry to the entire message.
Co-teaching a message with someone has its advantages:
- Multiple voices keep people more interested
- Multiple voices connect with a broader audience
- Less physically taxing that doing a message alone (especially when you are doing four in a row!)
- greater creativity
- more fun doing a message togetherI’ve found that you can’t just co-teach with one. In general their style has to be 65% similar to yours (I talk pretty fast so they have to be comfortable talking fast too).
Finally, co-teaching is a great way to raise up a new teacher or to introduce a new teacher to your congregation.
I’m sure I’ll address this issue again in the future, but if you have any questions just comment below.
Off to the 10am service.
Nelson
P.S. Another key to effective co-teaching is to have your preaching calendar done way in advance so you have plenty of time to prepare to teach together.
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Sunday Preparation
In about an hour I will deliver the 10am message at The Journey-Manhattan. The message is “The Art of Confrontation” and it’s part 2 in our Tongue Pierced series.
I tried something new this past week in preparing for this message. I came in early on Tuesday morning and the message was sorta burning in my head (you’ve been there, right?) so I went out into our conference area set-up my handy dandy portable recorder and delivered the sermon without a script - just let it flow out of my head. Afterwards, I had some of our staff listen to it and give me feedback.
Surprisingly, they (almost) all liked it.Encouraged by their feedback, I found a company online who would transcribe the MP3 in about 48 hours and send it back to me as a Word doc. I got it back on Thursday, we ran thru it again and I spent a couple of hours tweaking the message. It felt really good to have the message completed by Thursday night.
I wonder if it today’s message will be better than my last one? I hope so . . . that’s one of my goals as a communicator: to be better this week than I was last week.
Off to deliver the message. . .
Loving Sundays,
Nelson
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So Much to Say, So Little Time - Making the Message Stick
Most of you are probably familiar with the book Made To Stick, by Heath brothers Chip and Dan. I recently took a fresh look at one of the concepts that the brothers dive into in their “Simple” section…
How many of us struggle with having to fit all the things we want to say into the little bit of time we have on Sunday mornings? You know how it is – You want to communicate truths that are really going to impact people, but sometimes the clock paralyzes you and makes your message less effective than it could be. So how can you get important ideas to stick in such limited time? By making your core message simple, compact and meaningful.
As the Heath brothers say, “Compact ideas help people learn and remember a core message…. To make
a profound idea compact, you’ve got to pack a lot of meaning into a little bit of messaging.” Okay… but most of us church leaders love to pontificate. So where’s the sweet spot? How do we actually go about that goal of packing a lot of meaning into a little bit of messaging? Here are three quick ideas:- Tap into existing schemas. In other words, call on something that your audience already understands in order to help them grasp the new information you are giving them. Example – You may not know what a pomelo is, but as soon as I describe that it is basically an oversized grapefruit, you will. Why? Because you understand a grapefruit.
- Avoid the “Curse Of Knowledge.” Don’t get caught up in explaining any one thing so fully that you minimize its effectiveness. You don’t have to tell your people everything in one sitting. Find the balance between giving them an exegesis and making sure they understand how to apply core truth to their lives.
- Use good metaphors. A good metaphor can help people wrap their head around difficult to understand information. Think about the common metaphor of the brain as a computer. Since most of us have an understanding of how a computer works, the metaphor gives us some essential insight into our own brains.
The bottom line is to keep your message simple, without watering it down. Find your core and then figure out how to express it in the form of a compact, meaningful idea. When you do, your message will stick!
I hope your sermon goes great this weekend!
Nelson Searcy
P.S. Looking for examples of this concept, just check out the Book of Proverbs for some examples of powerful, compact ideas.
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Excited About Sunday and Tongue Pierced
In just about 90minutes we’ll be kicking off the first of our four services at our Manhattan Location (where I’m teaching today) and we are beginning a brand new series called “Tongue Pierced” that’s based on Proverbs 18:21:“The tongue has the power of life and death.”
Today’s message is called The Power of Words and its an intro to the entire series. I can’t wait! Here’s the rest of the titles:
The Art of Confrontation
The Art of @#!$%$!
The Art of Praise
Words That Last
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Worship Leader Intensive - May 14 -15 (and a Freebie)
On May 14 and 15 Jason Hatley, The Journey’s Worship Arts Pastor, is leading is premier event, a two day Worship Leader Intensive (Hint: Pastor, you may want to make sure your Worship Leader is at this event).
During this event he teaches you how to overcome the top “7 Challenges Every Worship Leader Will Face.” Here’s how Jason’s describes the event at www.WorshipLeaderInsights.com:
Specifically designed for the church’s main Worship Pastor and up to 2 additional staff members or key volunteers, the Two-Day Worship Leader Intensive is a fast paced, all you can take event that will help you overcome the challenges that you face as a worship leader.
You will learn proven principles and action steps on how to…
- Develop a personal leadership growth plan that will help you lead at an optimum level
- Work with the Lead Pastor to fulfill your role, and give him everything he needs
- Plan farther ahead than ever before, and create more impactful services than ever before
- Maximize the number of people serving on your worship arts team
- Make the most of the resources spent on the Sunday service for now and the future
- Create a culture of excellence for yourself and your volunteers
- Ensure that every Sunday service is successfully planned for and executed
- And much more!
Now let me ask: what Worship Pastor doesn’t want to lead at his or her best? Invest in your ministry in 2008, by investing in your leadership potential. And remember, the financial investment is PER CHURCH (one price for up to three people). Click here to learn more or register now.
Nelson Searcy
P.S. If you are committed to attending but you simply can’t afford it, email me and I’ll do all I can to get you a partial scholarship, just let me know the amount you can invest.
P.P.S. Whether you can make it to the event or not, I’d like to give you a free copy of Jason’s resource “Starting A Worship Arts Ministry From Scratch.” Click on this link and then use this coupon code when you check out: wacp (Note: this code will only be valid until May 15, 2008)
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What Pastors Dream About
I listen to my own sermons. It’s painful, but I do it. I do it because it helps me become a better speaker (late at night it also helps my insomnia).
Church Leader insights is about about to release a Sermon Series Kerrick Thomas (our Executive Pastor) and I did at The Journey Church entitled “Fully Engaged: The Power of a Committed Life,” and last week I was listening to the messages.
As I listened to the message “Fully Engaged in My Church,” I was reminded what I dream about. In this message we challenged the people at The Journey to be fully engaged in our church by taking five actions:
- To take responsibility daily for my spiritual growth.
- To practice contentment in all areas of my life.
- To serve one hour a week in my church.
- To invite one friend a month to church with me.
- To bring the full tithe to God each week.
That’s what I dream about. A church filled with people constantly becoming more and more engaged in our church because they are living out these five commitments. We can’t make people become more committed, but we can dream, and we can work, and we can challenge them in clear and specific way to take steps each week to become more fully engaged.
I like the way The Apostle Paul said it;“We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” - Colossians 1:28-29
Keep Dreaming…
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Servants Not Stars is the Goal
Jason has a great new podcast over at Worship Leader Insights.
It’s titled “Creating Servants, Not Superstars - How to Help Your Volunteers Embrace the Role of Servanthood”
Listen or Download online and its FREE!
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Worship Leader Insights Event in Tampa
On Friday (April 18) we had our first Worship Leader Insights event outside of NYC. It was a full house of almost 100 hundred worship leaders to hear Jason teach on “The Top 3 Challenges Every Worship Leader Faces.” It was a great free event that we offerred at no charge to Worship Leaders.
One of the “Top 3 Challenges” was “the Pastor Challenge” - what is that all about? OK, seriously, if anyone
knows how to work with a challenging pastor, its Jason! We’ve been doing church together in NYC since the beginning.I was so proud of him on Friday. He did a great job leading the event. And it was great to meet everyone who attending (including a few Senior Pastor types who snuck into the event).
In case you missed it, check out Worship Leader Insights and Jason’s monthly podcast here.
P.S. Jason’s doing this event again in Midland Park/Pasaaic, NJ on May 9 (Metro NYC) if you are in the area sign up today - its free.
Recent: Worship Planning
Church Leader Insights is a bi-weekly publication sent via email that focuses on effective leadership, church growth, church planting evangelism and much more.
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