Life Church Michigan's very first monthly worship service is Sunday, September 16th, 11am at The Dow Event Center.
Since we're a start-from-scratch scrappy start-up, the biggest hurdle for our team is that no one knows we exist!
We want to cast a wide net in the Great Lakes Bay Region as we seek to reach people far from God.
When we read the Scriptures, Pentecost did not happen because of a direct mail campaign. It was a move of God.
We know that unless God's Spirit intervenes, all our efforts are doomed for failure. Starting a new church is all about Jesus showing up and building His church.
That said, we see over and over in the Bible that Jesus spreads Life through His church. His followers get a white-hot passion for Him and can't help but invite everyone they know to come meet Him. In today's world, those invites can happen via Facebook, on Twitter, through postcards, radio spots, and yes, television spots:
Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how we filmed our new tv spot:
- Wise Counsel. This wasn't my idea. Jeff Forester, pastor of Heritage Church in Sterling Heights and one of Life Church's board members, urged me early on to consider doing tv spots. I'm really glad he pushed the idea because it's turned out to be a great experience for us.
- Affordable. Since our church has no paid staff, we can be flexible with pointing our funds toward different projects. This one falls under the Missions umbrella. If tv spots are a good investment for Billy Graham, they're a good investment for us.
- Most Nearly All Church Commercials are Cheesy. They usually feature a guy with big purple hair talking about lambs and "Ah-Jeez-us." Cheesy like Cheeze Whiz. Hopefully we achieved something closer to anti-cheese.
- No Bells and Whistles. We didn't try to be cool or anything, just a single-camera shot of me talking about what I'm passionate about. It's the simplest tv commercial we could think of.
- Aimed at People Far From God. Andy Stanley says that the reason people don't go to church is because they've been to one. Ouch. So we scripted our tv spot as a conversation with someone who doesn't like going to church.
Side-Note: Life Church isn't here to compete with the Body of Christ; hopefully we're going to help COMPLETE the Body! There are tons of GREAT churches throughout our region with strong, godly leaders like my friend Phil Owen leading New Covenant Church to the south and my buddy Jason Raitz doing ministry to the west and Hopevale Church to the north...
There are many, many great churches out there. We know that it takes all different flavors of churches to reach all different flavors of people. Life brings another flavor to the mix; that's what we're trying to communicate in this tv spot.
- Great Film Company. We went with a trusted friend to film and edit our tv spot: Josh Phillips at Breaking Level Films in Caro, Michigan. I've worked with Josh many times over the years and trust his judgment and care. He's also extremely fast - - the time we filmed to having the finished tv spot in-hand was exactly 24 hours!
- Repetition. This tv spot will air many times over the next two weeks. The heaviest rotation comes next week when it airs in the mornings during the Today Show, in the afternoons during Ellen, local news, etc. We used nearly the same script as our radio spot to create continuity.
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