The Granger Experience by Design

The ICC started out strong today with Butch Whitmire and Mark Waltz with a talk called The Granger Experience by Design. Some highlights from their talk...

• We want every person to have an experience from the moment they drive on the campus until the service is completed...an experience that will help them take steps toward Christ.
• The intentionality of our programming is so people will walk away with one theme, one thought, with practical next steps.
• VIDEO: Lucy in the candy shop represents the pace at which the weekends come.
• Butch walked through the process of planning a series...beginning with the concept about a year ahead, all the way to the execution of the service.
• It's crucial that we all agree on a "big idea" about 8 to 10 weeks ahead of time.
• Some might think this doesn't leave room for the Holy Spirit to show up because things are so programmed. We just ask the Holy Spirit to show up early--and be with us all along the way in the planning process.
• Do stuff you can do well. Don't do stuff because another church does it. Only add it to your "palette" if it is something you can pull off with excellence.

Butch and Mark continued to walk through various elements of a weekend experience with lots of examples:

• Preludes -- upbeat, get the energy up
• Set/Lighting/Ambience -- hitting every sense helps build anticipation.
• Flow -- it is about timing and energy continuuity.
• Congregational Singing -- we do a max of three songs. That's because of our focused audience. Songs are up in tone, high energy, not too heady.
• Drama -- look for the "stickiness" factor.
• Sometime stuff has to be pulled. It doesn't work. Don't hesitate to delete an element if it's not working.

After watching the edgy Viewmaster video--the team presented a drama called I am Lust followed by an Evanescence song.

Butch and Mark did a great job of presenting the details behind the weekend experience.