Greg Surratt

Coastal congregation grows inland

The Asheville newspaper did an article on our Seacoast campus there. You can read it here.

All I can say is wow...

We had the grand openning for the North Charleston Dream Center Free Clinic yesterday.  Here's what I know:

• It was one of the most emotionally satisfying events I've ever been a part of.  The fulfillment of a dream that was "more than we could ask or imagine".
• The local paper gave it front page coverage.  Great story...read it here.
• Every TV station was there.
• The mayors of North Charleston and Hanahan both spoke. (Both are better preachers than me.)
• Volunteers have worked round the clock to finish the clinic in the building.
• A foundation donated 3 big mobile medical units.
• Hundreds of medical people are volunteering.  We need more, call 843-225-1115.
• We served 20 patients before the doors opened officially.
• God is going to be glorified and people are going to be healed.

Let me show you some pictures (courtesy of Kelli Nixon).

 

If I'm there, we're going to have fun.  (The guy in the background is the head of the neighborhood association.)

 
N. Charleston Mayor Keith Summey, N. Charleston Counselman Bob King, Hannahan Mayor Minnie Blackwell.  (That's one of the mobile medical units in the background.)

Maybe he'll benefit from the Clinic someday...

 

Sam Lesky, the Campus Pastor, sharing the vision...

 

Let's cut the ribbon...

   

It was a very good day!!

Tearing up a church

Our Greenville campus will be moving into a new building later this summer, so some of our campus pastors and staff teams drove up to help them do a little demolition work on a very traditional church building.  Here's a few pics...way to go Chris and Jenny Surratt and team!

One Prayer Notes

If you are a church that is using my One Prayer message I wanted to give you the fill in the blank notes that you can use in your service.

Also, remember my offer to record a personalized intro for your weekend.  Just e-mail me at PastorGreg  AT seacoast DOT org.

Here are the notes:
Download one_prayer_lord_make_us_obedient_luke_5_111_notes_answers.doc

Multi-site criticisms: #1 Multi-site churches don't value teaching gifts

I thought it might be of interest to address some frequent criticisms of multi-site churches.  Questions are good...they force us to examine what we do in light of scripture and culture.  Over the next few posts I'll try to address them with what we're learning from our six years in this crazy way of doing church.

Criticism #1:  Multi-site churches don't produce preachers and teachers.

The concern stems from the concept that many multi-site churches leverage the teaching gift of one gifted teacher across various geographic locations...thereby not providing opportunities for young or new emerging teachers and preachers to develop their gifts.

Here's how we handle that at Seacoast Church:

• We have a primary teaching team
  Several years ago I decided that the only way for me to keep my sanity (the small portion that remains), stay healthy, and keep the church from relying too heavily on one voice, was to create a weekend teaching team.  We currently have 5 active members of the team.  The way it works for us is this; one person does the teaching at all the services on any given weekend at our Long Point location.  That in turn is videoed and viewed at our off-site locations the next weekend.  For us, this is one of the primary things that ties us together as a church - we are all hearing the same message...discussing it in groups, responding to what God is saying to us as a church.  I do between 55-60% of the weekends.
• We have secondary teaching teams
  In addition to the weekends, we have secondary teaching opportunities that include: student ministries, young adult ministries, retreats, and special events.  Each of these have teaching teams that function similar to our weekend experience.  A newer teacher can cut their teach in an environment smaller than a weekend gathering.
• We do initial message planning together
  For our weekend experience we do initial message planning together every Monday at 10:00am.  Some pastors are scheduled by nature and plan their messages out months in advance (Andy Stanley, Bill Hybels, etc).  Others are normal like me and have little of the organizational gift, work better on a tight deadline (a procrastinators motivator), and can only see what is coming in the current week...so I show up Monday morning with a clean sheet of paper, a preachers hangover, and a hope that the Holy Spirit will breath on the assigned scriptures that week...and with a faint (actually a very real) fear that I have exhausted all ability to say anything helpful the previous weekend.  We invite our primary teaching team, some of our secondary teams, and selected others to the meeting to help whoever is on that weekend think through the passage.  Occasionally visiting pastors or interested church goers ask if they can be a part of the process...which ratchets up the pressure to produce...but we almost always open the meeting to people who ask...with the requirement that they contribute, not just watch.  Actually its a lot of fun and God usually gives us insite that we couldn't get on our own.  Just the process helps speakers in training get the hang of how you put a message together.
• We have our primary teachers do a practice run through on Thursday afternoon
  After the message planning session, who ever is up to bat that week locks away to prepare the message.  Our deadline is Thursday noon (so notes can be printed, bulletins stuffed, and there has to be a deadline...so it might as well be Thursday so we can at least a couple of days of sanity before the weekend).  On Thursday afternoon, the teacher of the week does a practice run through for the teaching team.  This is not fun...but does make the message better.  It's a tough crowd.  "What am I supposed to do as a result of that?"..."That wasn't funny"..."I don't have a clue what you were talking about"..."Does the Bible really say that?"  Definitely makes you sharpen your delivery before the weekend.
• We have Starbucks coaching sessions throughout the week
  Several times I have received calls on Saturday morning..."You got time for a coffee?  I need help with an idea or two."  I love it...I just wish we would have had this type of environment when I was learning to preach.  My first attempts to speak were in youth services and nursing homes.  The youth services didn't work out too well (I was fired from my first three youth pastor jobs).  Nursing homes were great because most of the people couldn't hear, but they were happy I was there.
• We have feedback sessions after our Saturday night service
  Sometimes the Saturday night message is really, really good.  Most of the time...not so much...so, we gather in the "bull pen" immediately after the service and see what we can salvage.  Usually it's just a touch up...sometimes a major overhaul...but it's great to know that the team is fully invested in making the message successful.
• We intentionally teach prospective teachers weekly
  Every week, Mac Lake, one of our guys that loves developing leaders, gathers some of the newer teachers and others that we think may have the gift in embryo form.  They listen too and learn from some of the better preachers in the world.  Recently they have listened too and watched Andy Stanley, Bill Hybels, Mark Driscoll and others...then Mac leads them through a discussion on techniques, structure, delivery, and what made it work.  I walked in recently and they grilled me on one of my recent messages.  They'll learn over time not to question the supreme leader so harshly...
• We give new, emerging teachers an occasional swing at the plate
  We have very few outside speakers at Seacoast.  I don't know if that is good or bad, but it does allow more opportunities for upcoming, in house speakers to learn their craft.  Our campus pastors have quarterly turns at the plate as well.

I'm not sure multi-site has anything to do with whether you do a good job of training teachers and preachers.  It all depends on the vision of the house. 

What do you think?

One Prayer

I'm happy to announce that Seacoast will be participating in the "One Prayer" series this June.  Craig Groeschel from LifeChurch called and asked if we would be involved and if I would contribute a message.  The premise is to gather hundreds of churches (over 700 so far) from all over the world to do a series at the same time based on the statement - "If I could ask God to answer one prayer it would be..."  You can find out more about the series here.  There is an interview with me on the Swerve blog about why I think the series is important and a little bit about what I'm going to be teaching on.

Manning campus

We opened the Manning campus this past weekend.  This is a new experience for us in that it is in a smaller community.  We are using some video elements for worship as well as the teaching...if it goes well we think that it may be a model that will help us reach smaller communities throughout the state.  Way to go Manning team!

You can read about it on page 3 of the local Manning paper.  Download manning_startup.pdf

Monster weekend

What a great weekend!  A few highlights and things to come:

• We opened the North Charleston Campus (the Dream Center).  Sam & Joan Lesky, Kenny Gerald and the team were awesome.  We had almost 600 people show up and the services were electric with the presence and power of God.  For those who don't know, North Charleston has been called one of the most dangerous cities in America because of the crime and murder rates.  Sam told them on Sunday that he grew up in Camden, NJ, so this was small potatoes when it comes to tough.  He is the perfect guy for the job!  Pray for them... God loves North Charleston and so do we!  Here's a few pictures from the weekend:
• 

• We had another record attendance weekend at all of our campuses.  A total of 8,745 people gathered for worship!
• This weekend we will be opening the Asheville, NC campus.  Craig and Jeanette Snook, Robert Williams, and the team are gearing up for a great debut.  The Asheville paper ran an article last week on an outreach project that they are doing.  You can read it here.  We also gave out movie tickets along with an invitation to return to the Cinema on Sunday to experience Seacoast Church.  Pray for a great turnout and for lives to be challenge by the gospel.
• We launched 4 new churches through the ARC, which is our church planting arm.  Churches were planted this past weekend in Washington DC, Decatur AL, Huntsville AL, and San Diego CA.  The total attendance at all four churches was over 800 people.  We are now opening a new church every 23 days.  Way to go Billy Hornsby, John Bolin, Ben Mayer, and the ARC team.

Seacoast Plays of the Week

Play #1 originated in the Student Ministries Department. Last weekend we had three of our campuses, Long Point, West and Summerville, attend this year's Elevation Retreat. They had a total of 270 people and one student said, "I have been to many Elevation Retreats and they have all been good, but if you take all the Elevations I have been to and times it by 10, then that is how good this one was."  Way to go Seacoast Student Ministries, you guys rock!

Play #2 came from Greensboro, NC with the grand opening of our Greensboro campus. Brett Thompson, campus pastor, led a great team of volunteers to make it a huge success.We had 256 people for the first service. Can’t wait to see what happens with this campus. Go God!

Play #3 was the "beta testing" of our internet campus.  More on that later...

It was a good week.

Influential churches

Seacoast was recently listed among the 50 most influential churches in America.  The article can be read here.

It's an honor to know that a lot of other churches are learning from our mistakes!