It’s been a while since a great story has totally sucked me in this way.

The over arching theme of these books is not for young kids, but there is much to be learned from the style of the storytelling.

We are in the midst of writing the spring content for our kids. Working through bottom lines, choosing Bible stories, and finding creative angles. Wanting to present the most amazing stories ever lived in an unforgettable way.

We are teaching our kids the most important stories they will ever hear. Many of them are jaw-dropping, action packed, and emotional. I wonder if they simply listen or if they are swept away by the wonder of it all.

A few challenges from the Hunger Games:

Bring the characters to life. They should feel pain, love their little sisters, be skilled hunters, sneak outside the fences, and miss their fathers.

Every week we teach our kids the stories from the Bible full of some of the most rich characters you will ever meet. Make them alive again in the imagination of the kids.

Create an adventure. They should sneak through the woods and lie in wait. They should break the law and scavenge for food for the whole village. They should wear magnificent costumes and battle for their life and the lives of those they love.

Want to make sure your kids never forget the stories you teach? Engage them in an epic adventure. Don’t just describe the details. Don’t just tell the facts of the story. Drive them right into the middle of the action and adventure and drop them off.

Build Tension. You should want them to win and yet be against the battle. You know they are a child and yet want to see them fight like a warrior. You should want them to be safe and yet hope they risk everything.

When there is a conflict then there is emotion. When there is emotion, then you engage. When you engage…you remember. You learn.

For those of you who write curriculum, create video, and communicate the Bible stories, what can you do to make the Bible come to life for our kids?

How can you make sure it’s the BEST book they ever read?

Read a sneak peek of chapter one from Andy’s newest release by clicking here.

When Work & Family Collide is updated content from the previously released title
Choosing to Cheat.

Publisher’s Description:

Let’s face it. With all the demands of the workplace and all the details of a family it’s only a matter of time before one bumps into the other. And many of us end up cheating our families when the commitments of both collide. In this practical book, Andy Stanley will help you. . .

• establish priorities and boundaries to protect what you value most.
• learn the difference between saying your family is your priority and actually making them your priority.
• discover tested strategies for easing tensions at home and at work.

Watch as this powerful book transforms your life from time-crunching craziness to life-changing success.

To purchase a copy of When Work & Family Collide, click here.

If you work at a church, though, Christmas can be downright insane. Especially if you do a living Christmas tree. Something about assembling a set that rivals Les Miserables out of 2×4s and phone books doesn’t seem so Christmas cheer-y.

Thankfully, we don’t do the living Christmas tree at North Point. In fact, it really is the season I look forward to the most every year. Over the last few years, we’ve been able to do some really fun stuff - and the process of making it happen is so much fun.

Typically we start sometime in late summer or early fall with a brainstorming session. We’ll bring in people from all over the church staff and just ask for as many random ideas as possible. Everything from baking turkeys in ovens to fill the room with the aroma to making the band wear footie pajamas, no idea is a bad idea. Then, all of those ideas get taken to another meeting with our Service Programming Team. We try to take those loose ideas and find some themes, some big picture ideas for what to tackle this Christmas.

From there things get really fun. I typically sit down with the people on the music team and we brainstorm anything and everything we could possibly do with music that could work at Christmas. This is where ideas like the iBand and “Santa Went Down to Georgia” were born. We get all excited and bring our half-baked ideas back to the SPD team. The SPD team listens patiently to our strange music ideas, and most of them end up on the cutting room floor. But some of them survive, and when they do they go back down to the music team with ideas for changes and new direction.

Then our team gets to work on creating demos for these ideas. We spend time with microphones and karaoke tracks, trying our best to piece together a reasonable idea of what our concepts would look and sound like as a finished product. After another round or two of edits, the SPD team signs off and we are all systems go. Then we bring in musicians and singers for rehearsals, some of which start months ahead of time depending on what we’re trying to accomplish. Finally, after some of the longest nights of rehearsal we have all year, we get to try these ideas out on Sunday mornings in front of people in their best Christmas sweaters.

The best part is, we never really know if it’s going to work. I was pretty convinced the iBand was going to flop until we stood on stage and heard the laughter after the first few notes. It’s always exhilarating and nerve-wracking, but at the end of the day it is incredibly satisfying to work so hard and see something come together like Christmas. I can’t wait to see it come together again this year…

How do you like to prepare for Christmas? What’s the idea you’re looking forward to this year?

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s time to deck the halls!

We just kicked off our annual holiday giving and serving campaign, Be Rich.

Check out the video above for the details of this year’s efforts.

Like the soundtrack? Visit NorthPointMusic.org to download a free MP3 of “Here And Now”
by Eddie Kirkland. ]]>

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s time to deck the halls!

We just kicked off our annual holiday giving and serving campaign, Be Rich.

Check out the video above for the details of this year’s efforts.

Like the soundtrack? Visit NorthPointMusic.org to download a free MP3 of “Here And Now”
by Eddie Kirkland. ]]> http://insidenorthpoint.org/blog/2011/11/01/tis-the-season-already/feed/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InsideNorthPoint/Media/~3/ehvFUj-A5w8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InsideNorthPoint/Media/~3/ehvFUj-A5w8/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:39:18 +0000 Wiggy http://insidenorthpoint.org/media/?p=4188 Click here to view the embedded video.
This past Sunday, North Point Ministries launched Be Rich, our annual giving and serving initiative, which urges each of us to be rich toward others by participating in giving and serving opportunities both locally and globally. The campaign is based around 1 Timothy 6:18: “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.” With 5 campuses and a broader platform than we’ve ever had before, our goals this year as a church are larger than they have ever been, and the beneficiaries more numerous.

Our team was tasked with a number of different creative elements, from branding and graphics, to web design, to informational videos, to a forthcoming highlight video, to the opener video that you see above. I had the privilege of creating the opener, which was a synced video that played simultaneously with a live band at each of our campuses to kick off the 7-week initiative.

We knew that the title track from Eddie Kirkland’s new album, “Here & Now”, would be the themesong for Be Rich and that we would open the service with it. Outside of that, the video was a pretty open-ended idea. In concepting, I dreamed about it through the lens of our service programming “funnel”, in which we basically define the beginning of the service as our time to ENGAGE the congregation. (That does not mean to inform, force, challenge, or otherwise overwhelm them with too many details or action items.) The rest of the service was designed around focusing that emotion and giving people vision about the various opportunities they could participate in. So in an effort to avoid giving away Andy’s message too early, or losing the audience with details, we took everything we wanted to say and condensed it into strong, short, emotional statements designed to engage, inspire, and set up the rest of the service.

The initial Creative Brief I put together is below, which was basically a way of visualizing the video before creating it. After taking the concept into a creative meeting with the rest of the team, I ended up scribbling a whole bunch of notes and coming away with a pretty clear picture of how the video would look. In our team we try to document and get everybody on board with our ideas before executing them, so that we don’t get too far down a road and find ourselves having to backtrack. If you do not write up creative briefs for every one of your videos, we highly recommend it. It may seem like a lot of work on the front end, but the clarity it provides during execution is HUGELY beneficial.

From there it was just a matter of Final Cut, After Effects, loads of archive footage, lots of trial & error, and a severe overuse of the Twitch plugin. The whole turn was about a week and a half, and it could not have been what it was without the brilliant and constructive feedback of our team. In the end, we synced 8 channels of audio (various track beds and a click) to the video using Discrete Channels in Final Cut, and the band played live in time with it - which is the only way we could nail the lyrics popping on at the right time. I could probably do a whole other post about the technical side of that, but this is already getting long! For more information about Be Rich and to participate, visit: HowToBeRich.org. And, if you missed it, be sure to check out Andy’s message here to find out how you can be a part: NorthPoint.org/Messages

Every once in a while I’ll hear a song and it really captivates me. There’s no logic to it, no formula or predictable pattern, but every once in a while something about a song - the melody, the musicality… something grabs my heart. Although I’ve never heard anything like it, I feel like it’s strangely familiar. It feels like someone expressed something that’s been inside me for a long time, but until then I never had the voice to say it.

In a way, that’s why I wanted to make this record. That’s why I want to make music, period. But it is specifically why I wanted to record the six songs on Here & Now. There’s always an artist part of me that wants to push the envelope a little bit and do things a little differently. I don’t want to just record another batch of worship songs that sound just like every other worship record out there, or that say the same things in the same way as every other worship song. I want to try and add something to the conversation - add something to the dialogue the church is having each week. I want to try and say something that’s been in my heart for a while, but to give it a voice for the first time.

This is a huge task, and if I’m not careful I get caught up in this and end up not writing “worship music” at all. I end up with a collection of artsy songs that most people don’t like or don’t listen to and no one can worship to but me. Instead, I wanted to take the music that we’ve been singing every week at North Point and take it one step further. My hope is that people will be able to relate to it, but also be challenged in a new way. That’s why you’ll hear songs that have different metaphors and even different instruments. I hope it can be a fresh collection of songs that express something people have wanted to express for a while.

For me, a lot of the ideas for this EP came together when I started reading a few books by NT Wright, specifically Simply Christian. I’m late to the NT Wright party, and the ideas he presents are not new at all, but for some reason they gripped me and I felt like my world began making sense. My view of God and the church suddenly became much clearer, and Scripture became much more invigorating. Over time, these ideas began to influence a few of the ideas in these songs. They became a way for me to express this newfound hope in the kingdom of God, a kingdom that is here, now, living and active in the world. A kingdom that will one day make everything new again.

I feel like these thoughts have been inside me all along. God sets eternity in the human heart (Ecc 3:11), and I think music specifically helps us tap into that. Music helps us realize tiny bits of what eternity truly means. These songs have done that for me, and hopefully they’ll do that for someone else as well.

Here & Now is available via iTunes and Eddie is available via Twitter (@EddieKirkland) or Facebook (/EddieKMusic).

What’s best for your organization is not always what’s easiest for you, the leader. Instead of making difficult changes, we often put them off or avoid them all together. One such change is a personnel change. It’s always easier to work around or hire around people than it is to remove them. Personnel changes can be messy and painful, but they are a necessary part of a healthy organization.

Any number of factors can lead to a personnel change:

· An individual fails morally or ethically.

· A financial downturn forces broad reevaluation of personnel.

· A position outgrows an employee.

· An individual doesn’t fit the culture of the organization.

· An individual demonstrates a poor work ethic.

Situations like these oftentimes make it easy to determine when a personnel change needs to happen. Although the change itself will present a challenge, it will be clear that a change needs to be made.

What about those not-so-clear situations? How do you determine when a personnel change needs to happen when the situation is not black and white? These gray situations often begin with an ongoing, nagging suspicion about a person. Pay attention to those feelings. In Good To Great, Jim Collins suggests asking two questions when these nagging suspicions begin:

· Would I hire this person again?

· If he or she quit, would I secretly be relieved?

Your honest answers to these questions can help you determine if a change is needed. Your answers will bring clarity. They may also help you realize a change is not needed. Maybe the person just needs coaching through a situation or there is just a difference in personalities.

Personnel changes are difficult. There is always tension leading up to the change and there is always an aftermath. But leaders who want to create a healthy work culture must deal with personnel changes from time to time. Knowing when to do so is critical.

In Part Two we will share a principle that will help you when it’s time to make a personnel change. It is very difficult to apply, but not applying it can prove deadly to your organization.