When people met Jesus for the very first time, Jesus challenged them with one BIG IDEA: "Follow me." A BIG IDEA that was simple but not easy. If Peter and Andrew were asked, "What did Jesus teach you today?" there is no way that they would respond with, "Ummm? uhhh? ummm." And if they did, it would not be because they were confused and didn't understand, but because they were stunned at the boldness of Jesus' request. Jesus' BIG IDEA was very clear and the call to action could not be misunderstood. The simplicity and clarity of that BIG IDEA, "follow me," was what catalyzed a movement of Christ-followers into action. And these Christ-followers knew what was expected of them and would do anything and everything, including trade their very lives, to accomplish the mission of Jesus.
So, why does the Church in the United States have 247 million "Christians" and not nearly enough "Christ-followers"? And why is it that we have access to the best and most thoroughly thought-through theology in all of history, and we still aren't gaining ground in accomplishing the mission of Jesus? Is it because the Church of Jesus Christ has not challenged people the way that Jesus challenged people - with one BIG IDEA, simple and clear, to "follow me"?
What would happen if we challenged people in the same way? What if we gave people one clear and simple BIG IDEA and asked them to put it into action? That is exactly what we have been attempting to do at Community Christian Church (CCC) and the NewThing Network for the last several years. Every week, we give all our people of every age, at every location, and at every church one BIG IDEA and ask them to put it into action. The challenge is simple and clear - but never easy. That's the BIG IDEA!
Thinking about communicating one BIG IDEA to all your children, students, and adults in every experience can be overwhelming. The scope of the BIG IDEA can be daunting and many of you may feel as though your church staff or leaders will suffer from "forest for the trees" syndrome if you pitch such a big idea at the next meeting. So, let's back up from the forest and take a look at ways to plant seeds for implementing the BIG IDEA at your church.
Open Source
The BIG IDEA as a concept is an open source program. The process we have implemented of communicating one BIG IDEA each week is available to all and designed to be shaped by the end user. Mark Batterson and his team at National Community Church in Washington, D.C. visited CCC and attended several BIG IDEA meetings before implementing their own version of the BIG IDEA in September 2003. Here's what Mark has to say about their decision to implement the BIG IDEA process:
We felt like it was a stewardship issue. We've got hundreds of people giving us sixty minutes of their time each weekend. We want to maximize impact. I have a personal conviction: the most important truths ought to be communicated in the most unforgettable ways. The BIG IDEA helps us accomplish that. Sometimes more is less and less is more. Most churches try to say too much each week. We've tried to say more by saying less. That's what the BIG IDEA is all about. We want to be laser-focused each week. BIG IDEA meetings have helped us package our sermon series more effectively. And the greatest truths ought to come in the best packages!
The leaders of National Community Church plan in advance based on the series and then coordinate efforts between teaching, arts, music, hospitality, and environment for each series as a whole. Planning series to series puts them a month or so in advance of each weekend. While on occasion they have created a small group curriculum that links to the BIG IDEA, in most cases they do not yet have any other BIG IDEA links.
If you would like to become a BIG IDEA church, it is not an all-or-nothing decision where you must communicate the same BIG IDEA to children, youth, and adults. Just like National Community Church, you can begin to apply what works best for your church starting today. In becoming a BIG IDEA church, you can go through at least three stages.
BIG: B Is for Basic
National Community Church did not try to adapt the BIG IDEA instantly in every facet of their current organization. Their step toward the BIG IDEA was simple - a basic move that involved the decision to link whatever happens in its weekend services to one major idea and to link the environments surrounding those services as well.
For those of us who can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to implementing change, the first step is to think Basic. What is the first, definitive way in which your environment can take what are currently several little ideas and craft them into one BIG IDEA? For National and many others, the Basic move has occurred within the hour or so each weekend that constitutes their adult large group celebration experience. This becomes the seed from which one tree is grown. Will it become a forest? Only God knows, but you have to start somewhere, and it might as well be there.
When the leaders at Coastal Community Church in Virginia Beach first began using the BIG IDEA process to plan their weekend services, their main goal was to switch from planning one week out to planning eight weeks out. Hank Brooks, Lead Pastor at Coastal, describes the process:
When we came across the BIG IDEA strategy at Community Christian Church, we were planning only one week in advance. It took nearly two months to get our planning eight weeks out. During that two-month work-up phase, we committed to planning relatively simple services so that we had time in our meetings to advance to an eight-week planning window. We sacrificed a short-term decrease in quality (not a major decrease) that now allows us to experience significantly better quality on a week-to-week basis.
The leaders at Coastal are now in the process of implementing their version of the BIG IDEA within their children's and support/recovery ministries. Coastal is moving from Basic to Integrated.
BIG: I Is for Integrated
Without underestimating the significance of the first step of creating one BIG IDEA per service, what comes next is to become Integrated. We call this the Integrated stage because you will integrate the BIG IDEA into more than one branch of your ministry.
When CCC integrated the children's and students' ministries with the BIG IDEA, we invited the children's and students' staff to the existing BIG IDEA meeting. Many of these staff members, while on the staff team for some time, had never attended this particular meeting. The first several weeks became a training ground for us and for them as we got used to each other. The brainstorming was a bit forced at first, but after a while, we were able to get into a great groove and discovered the benefits of the integration.
The first benefit was a synergy that emerged when teammates who play different positions are in the same room, working on the same project. The best ideas often come from the most unlikely of sources. Many times at CCC, the best Kids' City ideas have come from someone in the Student Community and vice versa. Many times in the early phases we would intentionally mix up the teams to get the creative juices flowing even more.
A second benefit from this integration was the ability to share creative content between ministries. There have been many times in CCC's BIG IDEA history when the same video feature has been used in two or more of our venues and with different age groups. This is one of the great benefits of reaching the Integrated stage. The video that worked for the adults may work for Student Community or even Kids' City, but you'll never know if you plan in a vacuum. So plan together and take advantage of the opportunity to share creative content.
BIG: G Is for Global
Are you ready to go Global? When your church is buzzing with the BIG IDEA, rocking with topics that work for the whole church and humming with age groups that receive the BIG IDEA in their language, you'll soon be ready to take that BIG IDEA and go Global. You should consider creating a network that is able to do together that which you and others cannot do alone.
More and more churches are coming to realize that the best way to reach people far from God is to become a reproducing church that plants new churches. CCC believes strongly in the importance of reproducing and has a church-planting strategy in place through our NewThing Network (www.newthing.org). Many well-intentioned churches have a strategy that includes staffing, funding, and praying for the successful launch of church plants. But after the launch, the strategy becomes one big, "Good luck out there, cowboy!"
It doesn't have to be that way! If the church plant has a similar culture, why not collaborate with its leaders to develop each week's BIG IDEA? A young church can benefit from such a relationship with an established congregation and the established church will benefit from the "on fire" vibe of the church planters. At CCC, the NewThing Network was formed to do exactly that: be a catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches. Through the network we have now launched many new churches in Denver, Detroit, Manhattan-NYC, Boston, and beyond. All of these churches work together with CCC to craft each week's BIG IDEA. The BIG IDEA not only creates great creative content, but through collaborating it creates space for a church planter to "do what needs to be done" in the early phases of a church's life.
Dave Richa of Jacob's Well Community Church in suburban Denver also speaks of the collaboration and the way in which his church plant has benefited from the BIG IDEA:
As a lead pastor, I have a lot of things competing for my time and energy. To have confidence in a process that will put together an excellent message and a compelling program takes a lot off of my mind on a weekly basis. I also believe being in close proximity with other gifted leaders has matured me as a leader and has helped mature me as a follower of Christ.
So, how do you go Global? Well, I would love to tell you about the fancy, integrated national and international intranet systems that CCC employs in order to make collaboration happen around the world. That would help. But all you need is strong relationships and the basic technology of a conference call and e-mail - that's all it will take for you to go Global. The bottom line is that when there is commitment, communication, and collaboration among teams, even teams from churches from differing parts of the world can work together to develop the same BIG IDEA.
This is how CCC and NewThing Network look at not just imparting lots of information, but creating community transformation through one BIG IDEA.
Listen to the Dave Ferguson's interview on the Catalyst Podcast