Creative Chaos--When A Series Makes A Lasting Impact

In reviewing some figures and history the other day, we began talking about some of the series that we've gone through in the past three years. It's funny that I can mark the time and history by which series we were in  (and most of them have a graphic to go with it).

This brought to mind the series that we did in Novebmer of 2005.  It was our first "Money" series after my arrival that July.  

We borrowed the title from Andy Stanley's talk of the same, but we took a different course.   We borrowed shopping baskets from a local retailer and placed them on stage for our props. (We lined them with red paper to make them pop).  They looked kind of funny up there at first--empty and lonely.  But along with this we emphasized to our folks that this series would be about STEWARDSHIP and not just money.  So we came up with a FOOD DRIVE at the same time.  This was around thanksgiving time--and we filled the baskets to overflowing by the weekend before the holiday.  It was a tangible visual for the people to see their stewardship of their food and gifts.    I wish I had pictures of that--but this was before I started documenting all of our visuals for our series.

The slogan for the series came from Andy. "It all comes from God; It's all dispursed by God; It's all belongs to God".  That mantra was said over and over and over and to this day (some three years later) I still here that slogan used around here.   And the most visible sign that this series and teaching were impactful is the reality that our giving here has grown significantly in the past three years.  Just last week our pastor reminded us that as of the half year (6/30/08) we were on pace to shatter our giving records here and give more to missons than ever before.  The interesting fact:  We haven't had a MONEY series since STEWARDS R US.  I think we shifted the focus from money to stewardship and that was the key.

Nothing much creative here---but wanted to share that what we do as creatives and artists to enhance the services of the church is making an impact in our world.  We're changing the culture of the church--and heading towards changing the culture that we live in.

This post is part of CREATIVE CHAOS on Ragamuffinsoul.com