Greg Atkinson

What could God accomplish through us if we were all pulling together? What kind of change could we see in the world? What if we were…

UNSTOPPABLE

That’s what we’ll be exploring as this year’s One Prayer teaching theme:

When the Church unites, it’s unstoppable.

Think about it… unstoppable grace, unstoppable compassion, unstoppable evangelism, unstoppable love, unstoppable generosity
, unstoppable truth
, unstoppable hope…

“Unstoppable” will be the common thread that runs through this year’s teaching. If you’re thinking about contributing a message this year (and you should), now is a great time to gather your creative team and see where God leads your teaching. You’ll have until early May to submit your messages. Video resources and important deadlines will be added to www.oneprayer.com soon.

And while you’re thinking of One Prayer, don’t forget to sign up your church if you haven’t already. Registration only takes a few minutes, and is your key to resources and updates: http://2010.oneprayer.com/join

During One Prayer, we get to learn about Jesus in unison with thousands of people around the globe—thanks for making that possible!

Thanks,

The One Prayer Team

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/oneprayer

Questions? Email: info@oneprayer.com

Today and tomorrow, I’ll be attending the Velocity ChurchPlanters.com conference in Cumming, GA at Mountain Lake Church. Speakers include Rick Warren, Steven Furtick and Dave Gibbons! If you’re there, I’d love to meet you. Should be fun. You can follow the action on Twitter.

I met with a church leader yesterday and we were discussing ideas for this year’s Easter service at his church. I’m curious about you and your church. Please share what you guys are working on for Easter.

In July of 2008 I was speaking to a group of Church leaders in Santa Cruz, California. I held my phone (this was just before I got my iPhone) up in my hand and I said, “This is the future.”

It’s been a year and a half and mobile technology is the “now”, not the future. My friend, Bobby Gruenwald, Innovation Pastor at LifeChurch.tv, constantly encourages his staff to think global and mobile – global and mobile.

I’m currently working with churches and organizations on helping them to create, dream and plan strategies around mobile technology. Your people are constantly becoming one with their phone (for good or bad) and it’s a reality that we need to be intentional about speaking their language. Again, as I’ve said before: we are digital missionaries.

As you know, I work often as a Secret Shopper/Mystery Worshiper. The first thing I check is the church’s website. The second thing I do is pull up their website on my iPhone. I have recommended several times that church’s follow the lead of Seacoast Church and get a mobile version of their website. I applaud and praise Seacoast for blazing a trail in this area. My hat’s off to my friend Shawn Wood and his team. Well done! If you have your phone handy (and I know you do) – pull up Seacoast’s website on it.

My church (and many others) send out text messages to attenders and members that opt in. My church also encourages you to text in questions and decisions that you may make as a response to the message. Many churches are utilizing text and SMS during services as an interactive piece. As I’ve blogged about before, many churches are using the free service from YouVersion Live.

I’ll be talking more in the near future about other mobile strategies and tools. In the meantime, if you and your church would like to strategize and put together a comprehensive plan that includes Web 2.0 tools, mobile technology, social media and social networking – give me a shout. My only goal is to help and equip you to speak the language of the people you’re trying to reach (digital missionaries).

I’m currently booking secret shopper visits for January, February and March. I’ve got one scheduled (at a secret location) for January 24th, but all my other Sundays are free so far. I hope you’ll budget to bring me in this new year and let me help you do what you do better.

Tomorrow I leave for San Diego. I’ll be speaking for the first time at the National Outreach Convention. I’m really looking forward to it as I’ll be able to see many great friends, leaders I respect and hopefully meet some people for the first time. I’ll be speaking four times. Here’s where you can catch me if you’re attending:

• Innovation in the Church – Wed. at 3pm
• Church Next: A Panel of Innovators – Thurs. at 10:30 am featuring: Greg Ligon, Greg Surratt, Larry Osborne, Dave Ferguson, Dino Rizzo, Hugh Halter and myself.
• Church Planting – Fri. at 1pm (with Charles Hill)
• The Birth of Innovation – Fri. at 2:30pm

In the last couple of months I’ve talked with several churches that are interested in bringing me in for a secret shopper/mystery worshiper visit, but don’t have it in this year’s budget. They are setting aside money in their 2010 budget to bring me in.

I bring this up for you to consider. Maybe you’d like to arrange a secret shopper visit. I’d encourage you to budget/plan for it now and you’re working on next year’s budget. Plan on $2000 or less for the visit (that includes all my travel expenses).

If you’d like to schedule a 2010 visit, contact me and let’s begin to look at the calendar. It’s a wise investment. You can go here for more information and to read endorsements of my ministry.

In the last 4 visits of doing my secret shopper/mystery worshiper service for churches I’ve done it for:

• A new church plant of 60 people
• A small town church that reaches 1600 people on a Sunday
• A church that reaches 3000 on a Sunday
• A church that reaches over 13,000 on a weekend

From 60 people to 13,000, there are similarities and huge differences. One thing remains the same: the people I help care about reaching more people for Christ. They know that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression and they take action steps to improve their first impression.

People will determine whether or not they will return to your church within the first 10 minutes of arriving. What are you doing to reach them?

As you know, I’m in the air (traveling) a lot. Lately I’ve been bringing some magazines with me to read during the flight. Magazines that I’m reading currently are:

• Outreach (I’ll talk more about articles from this tomorrow)
• Worship Leader (I was interviewed for a series called Worship 2.0)
• Church Production
• Wired
• Fast Company

What magazines are you reading?

The following is an announcement from Kent Shaffer’s blog that I thought was worth you knowing about and keeping an eye on:

LifeChurch.tv’s interactive online Bible, YouVersion, is about to take the interactivity up a notch and to congregations around the world.

It’s called YouVersion Live (October 2009 launch). And it allows pastors, conference speakers, teachers, and group leaders to share content and real-time feedback on mobile devices during live events. Essentially, YouVersion Live is interactive digital message notes that allow the audience to:

• take notes and save them online
• read the Bible
• ask questions and get answers during the message
• do surveys anonymously via a YouVersion Live poll
• get extra content via blog links, YouTube videos, and other resources
• share the message with a friend
• request prayer
• give online

It is easy to create a YouVersion Live message guide. All a speaker has to do is drag and drop the features he wants to use into his template on a super-simple YouVersion Live admin area. All an audience member needs is a web-enabled phone, netbook, or laptop.

Already over 1.8 million iPhone users have YouVersion on their phone, which is equivalent to 1 in 27 iPhones. YouVersion’s rapid growth means your user base already exists. All you need to do is use YouVersion Live’s super-simple admin panel, and you can take your audience engagement to incredible new places.

YouVersion Live launches in October 2009. Until then, you can sign up for updates atYouVersion.com/live.