details for an all-church study

I'm excited to be close to finishing my part of the project that will become our next "all-church" campaign for small groups. Last time we did this we studied "The call" and around 2,300 people from our church participated in a six week small group/video study that accompanied each week's sermons. We're going to do it again in January 2011 and hope for over 3,000 people in 300 small groups! Curious as to what goes in to this? Read on. Not curious? You're gonna be bored with this blog.

We talked about this particular study in May of 2009. It was an idea and we liked it - high fives all 'round - thank you Holy Spirit for putting this in our minds..and then our team did some individual reading, research, Bible study on the topic (this really means that it became a back-burner item because it was over a year away).

In December of 2009 the writers took a one-day retreat to plan out the course of study along with the preaching themes that will go with it. About 12 hours of figuring out, debating, etc...which scriptures were the best ones (I love this process).

Shortly after we came up with a project timeline and my job was clear - write the script for the teaching video by mid-June 2010. So I've been writing on and off (and now JK is joining in the writing) for about five months and the rough draft is done - six lessons. We'll finalize this next week and then Scott (our staff video guy) will set up his gear in a local coffee house and we'll shoot this thing (two days of intense talking into a camera - my biggest worry - what six shirts to change into for each of the six lessons :-). It's really not as easy talking into a camera as you'd think. Camera's are expressionless, don't give feed back, don't make eye contact, and don't miss mistakes. Even though the teaching is similar it's a totally different gig than preaching. So by the end of June we'll have this thing on video.

Then mega-hours of editing. Then graphic designs that will go with it. A book written by JK (editing, publishing, etc...). Then a small group study guide. Then the dvd goes to publication. Then we'll start getting people to sign up for this important study. Then it will be Christmas and then two weeks into January we'll start. All this for six weeks out of 52 to help our church become more intensely dedicated to Jesus. That's our goal and my prayer - and it wouldn't hurt if you offered some prayers for this too. We really think God is going to do something great in our hearts through this teaching.

Then we'll probably be in the middle of the next big writing project.