Thinking Inside the Box
A WFX Charlotte church tour site, Elevation Church, gives us all a new perspective on working with less.
Posted 10/19/2009
In lean economic times, it may pay to learn to think inside the box. It's an interesting concept, and one that seems to be working out well for staff at WFM's Sept/Oct 09 issue feature church, Elevation Church in Charlotte, N.C., one of our WFX Charlotte tour churches.
What it means is simply this: the staff at Elevation Church has been charged from the top, by Pastor Steven Furtick, to learn to work inside the means of what they have, in terms of real estate, facilities, people, technology, equipment, and monetary resources, until they push the walls of their own personal box out even further -- or when God expands the level of their resources.
Here's how Elevation's lead producer, Wes Watson, described it when I interviewed him for the technology/equipment side of Elevation's story in the October issue of Church Production Magazine: "We've learned that as we think inside the box, it forces the box to get bigger. Let's be honest, the box is there (nothing is free), so quit thinking outside the box and get creative on what the inside of your box looks like."
And he adds, "Another reason we can do what we do at the cost we do it at [is] because of how much our volunteers are sold into the vision."
Staff at Elevation Church is proactive in looking for ways to push on the walls of their confines. On the design and construction side of their new multi-site production studio campus at the Matthews retail location, they used existing flooring throughout the Ashley Furniture Warehouse space that they transformed into a church. Garage doors that were there from the original tenant were worked into the design and used in conference room areas, cleverly named "The Garage." They turned the outdoor loading dock into a covered meeting and gathering space. And in terms of technology, they bring in video cameras from one of their other two Charlotte-area locations to make the six total needed at the Matthews site. And this is just a sampling of the money-saving measures taken by Elevation Church.
No matter the size of our churches, we can all look to Elevation's example and see how we can work inside our boxes. As Elevation's operations pastor, Josh Blackson, suggests, God steers and rewards resourcefulness and creativity in His own time. In Elevation's case, the church started with less than 125 attendees a little over three years ago and is now named the second fastest growing church in America.
Blessings,
Carol Badaracco Padgett
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