When our church was smaller I did a message on the soils and you could show the seeds, and I remember bringing plants up there. I think the smaller church sometimes has the creative advantage.
Now the bigger church deals on a bigger scale. For example, I did a series on spiritual warfare and a friend of mine has a tank — a real tank, a British scorpion tank — and we drove the tank on the stage. To do that we had engineers to measure how much weight our stage could take — just being able to pull that off and the turret and how to do that and how I can get in the tank and climb up on the tank. It's a great visual — it's just more difficult to pull off. I just like the advantage of a smaller venue. Does that make sense? You can just do things quicker — faster. Like the night before or two days before you can just get an idea and carry it out. Here it's more difficult.
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Preaching: How far out do you plan your worship services?
Young: We have our series planned out, generally speaking, within a year — I kind of know where I'm going. At least every six months it changes! Like the series I just ended called "Who's Kidding Who? Parenting is No Joke." We had that planned like three or four months out — that topic. The one I just finished — I just finished a two-week series on questions — asking the right people the right question to get the right answers — that just came up out of the blue.
This one I'm doing next called "The Table" is a series on vision. This series on "The Table" is going to be about communication — in John 6 Jesus said, "I'm the bread of life," and that's the ultimate complex carbohydrate. We're talking about who is around your table — who are you inviting to the table — and then we're talking about bringing a high chair out, talking about sometimes Christians cry and throw food and how do you deal with that, and we're talking about evangelism and putting a leaf in the table and expanding the table when we grow and all that. Those are just some things we're brain storming.
Preaching: Will you have a table out on the platform?
Young: A table and we'll have chairs.
Preaching: What are some other series you've done that you think made a real impact?