In the past year since our grand opening of our new auditorium, we have grown over 800 people, which has been incredible. Yet, we have seen that while our attendance has increased, all other things (for the most part) was left unchanged (giving, serving, etc).  In response, our church’s leadership sensed it was time to have a vision Sunday to help people move from the sidelines, and into the journey with everyone else.  Creatively, we sought to help move people through two elements:

1.  Vision Video: – Inspired by North Point’s video (https://vimeo.com/109618785), we wanted to highlight a couple in our church that really understood The Crossing’s vision and showed that by the way they lived and served here… a couple that not only gave, but also served, invested into the lives of others, and were truly a part of the journey here at The Crossing. We decided to highlight the Yao’s… but with a twist… at first, Lee Coate interviewed them about their investment here in The Crossing, but within a couple of minutes a whole crowd of people appeared in the video, completely surprising the Yao’s. Then, one by one, people came up to the table to share with the Yao’s about how their investment was impacting their lives… See the video here: http://youtu.be/x3lBjS19N2Q

2.  Pavers: – We encouraged everyone as they left the service to go to a designated area to grab a paver and write their names on one side of it… on the bottom, we asked them to write out the names of people that they were investing in as well.  One by one, each person laid down their paver until we had thousands that together created a path.  All of this proved by be powerfully effective.  We took video of everyone writing on their pavers to create our next video bumper.

Today was REACH Sunday at The Crossing.  REACH represents our mission emphasis throughout the world as well as locally here in Las Vegas. Once a year, we devote a Sunday to share all that God has done in the past year through REACH as well as cast a bit of vision for the future. There were four key elements that we did creatively to drive our points home this year.

1.  At the end of his message, Shane took a moment to share the story of meeting Yuuki while on a mission trip to Osaka, Japan. Our team printed a large poster size print of what looks like an Instagram photo with the two of them together.  Shane introduced the phrase “One face. One story” at this time.

2.  We then rolled a very quick bumper, and during this bumper six easels were placed on stage while three people lined up stage right and three lined up stage left. Once the bumper had finished and the light came up, one by one each person shared their own “One face. One story” of someone that impacted them while on mission. Each person had their own pic with the person in the same format of Shane’s picture.

3.  Once these six were done, the band did a liver version of the song “Kings and Queens” by Audio Adrenaline. While the band played, there was a video montage of pictures with Ken Burns effect of all of the different trips in 2014.

4. Once the band had finished, Benji Zimmerman (our Missions Director) gave an appeal for those in the audience to discover their own “One face. One story,” and challenged them to return in the evening when we would reveal the places and dates of our 2015 trips.

Today’s challenge was how to set up our speaker (Lee Coate) for a win by effectively communicating the entire story of Esther in 30 minutes or less in an engaging and entertaining way.  We decided to use four playing cards as a teaching tool, each printed poster size.

King Xerxes was the King of Clubs

Queen Vashti was the Queen of Diamonds

Esther was the Queen of Hearts

Haman was The Joker.

During the bumper, our stage manager placed all of the cards on easels facing backwards.  Lee turned each card around to reveal the image when he was ready for it in his message.

These cards proved to be an effective way to communicate the entirety of the story in 30 minutes, as planned. Plus, it fit our Vegas crowd pretty well. 🙂

Today we covered Chapter 19 of The Story which covers the return to home from exile for the people of Israel.  We wanted to create a moment today that would resonate with people about returning home and hopefully help people get a taste of what it would be like to return home as the people of God did.

We decided to find an old abandoned home where we could shoot a video with a voice over.  We ended up finding a home off of I-15 just outside of Barstow, CA. We later added the following as our voice over:

Imagine what it would look like to return to your home after years away . . .    Who would be there? Would it still smell the same, feel the same or look the same?   Maybe that’s why they say, “You can’t go home again”  I remember returning home for the first time after years away, after my parents divorced.  Everything had changed. The memories I had of that place and what was real where strangely in conflict. What I remembered and what was real had changed.  The tension of where I had been and where I was now almost overwhelmed me.   Now, imagine being the Israelites.  Imagine returning home after a journey that took 70 years.  70 years.  Imagine leaving your home at the age of 10 and not returning until you were 80.   Everything had changed. Everything.   The place you once loved is now a hollow shell of what it used to be.  The walls you had built with your bare hands now stand burned and broken.  The remnants of prior lives now lay strewn about the yards and street The  The smells that were so familiar have been replaced by the stench of burnt wood and dust.   How many Israelites even remember what their home looked like? How many were born on the journey? How many arrived back at “home” and muttered, “This is it?  This is what we have been looking forward too for years? This is …Home.  We are all on a journey.  A journey through life.  A journey in relationships.  A journey with God.   The journey is long and winding, It climbs mountains and crosses deserts, It wanders and meanders, sometimes it takes us far from home…  Tim Keller says this,  “Home is a powerful but elusive concept. The strong feelings that surround it reveal some deep longing within us for a place that absolutely fits and absolutely suits us, a place where we can be or perhaps find our true selves.  Yet it seems that no real place or actual family actually totally satisfies these feelings or yearnings.”  And home rarely looks the same when we return, especially the longer we have been away.  But perhaps home is where we started and this long and winding journey we are on inevitably brings us back towards home…   Back to our true home… God, at Home in us. 

View the final product here:  https://youtu.be/GaZ9eYl391g

Our Creative Team decided to do a Beatles tune after the video called “The Long and Winding Road” – We made an arrangement of our own that was scaled back a bit from the original with it’s orchestral score. We had a female vocal lead, acoustic, bass, drums, and keys. No BGV.