Wow! Recap of Our Power of ONE Event!

Man!  I have so much to say about our “Power of ONE” event that I really don’t know where to begin. Before I say anything, I wanna give BIG SHOUT OUTS to everyone that made last night such a great success.  We are getting powerful testimonies and feedback and could not have done it without you!

BIG SHOUT OUTS! (Scroll down for our recap)

• From the crack of dawn until nearly 11pm a group of staff & volunteers from The Courageous Church showed up in a major way!   I love y’all and love serving God alongside you!
• Jinean – most of this event spun off of your creative vision and hard work! Bless you!  You are the bomb!
• I am so humbled and thankful for the generosity and hard work from my good friends @ Revolution Church in Canton!  They provided ALL of our audio & video equipment, set it all up, tested it over and over and over again, and ran the service like it was one of their own.
• Thanks to my friend Stephen @ Integrity Music & Traci @ Mariner’s Church in Irvine, CA for making our video of our friend Israel Houghton possible on very short notice during a crazy busy time in all of their lives! Technology is so amazing!
• I asked hundreds of you all across the world to pray for the success of our event and you shot me messages all night letting me know you were praying!  Means the world to me!
• A huge shout out to The Remnant, Funk Lordz, Gina Loring, our graffiti crew, DJ Dust, Deacon & The Courageous Church worship team, and all of the creative wonders that took our service to a whole nutha level!  You all were AMAZING!
• Thank you to all of you that came out and experienced God in a fresh, new way!
• Scott Hodge & crew sent us a ton of glow sticks, but UPS messed up the order and we couldn’t use them!  We are thankful anyways!
• Dean Carter, Roy Craft, my main man Sam the sound tech, and the entire Morehouse College family was very gracious the entire night and allowed us to really push the envelope in a major way.
• A big personal shout-out to my wife for holding it down with all 5 kids by herself last night!  You are amazing (and hot)!
• If I left anybody out, you know I’m a thankful dude!

PRE-EVENT RECAP of Power of ONE @ Morehouse College

• We arrived @ Morehouse @ 9am to begin setting up and preparing for our event @ 7pm.  I was in a pretty serious mood most of the day because our production for our event was pretty stinking elaborate and were really only going to have about 2 hours to rehearse as one big team.  I would not advise this!
• We ordered 5,000 flyers that were supposed to be in on Friday, then on Saturday, then Sunday, and they never showed up yesterday!  We got a refund, but I will probably never use MiamiFlyers.com again if I’m in any type of hurry.  Our team winged a last minute marketing blitz with homemade flyers and free pizza that helped create a lot of buzz and boosted our attendance at the last minute.
• We also promoted the heck out of our event on Facebook with ads, etc. and anticipate that half of our crowd learned about the event online.
• Chad, Thad, Preston, Kevin, Swift, Ricky, and Gary (did I leave somebody out…that sounds like a rock group) from Revolution Church showed up early and BIG with a rocking sound system, projectors, screens, and all of that stuff!  They are were awesome! (See my shout out above)
• Let me say a bit more about the work that God is building together with Revolution Church & Courageous Church……
• After the event was over last night, the Dean of the Chapel @ Morehouse College was very curious how “a church like mine” and a “church like Gary’s” had gotten together to do an event on the campus of Morehouse College – the only college for Black men in the country.  I discussed this with Gary and our teams for a few minutes and I think it warrants a blog post very soon.

THE EVENT!!!

• I connected so much with a new song that Israel Houghton has out called “The Power of ONE” that we decided to shape our event after this theme.
• Morehouse College basically gave us complete freedom to do WHATEVER we wanted to do and we ran with it.
• To help generate BUZZ and attention and to give people a sneak peek of what we would be doing once we opened the doors to the event, we set up a HUGE GRAFFITI mural outside of King Chapel that we would start outside, break down, and finish inside.  It was amazing!  Pictures are coming soon, but it was BEAUTIFUL and shocking that this art was done live in just a few hours.
• Our b-boy crew, FunkLordz, also performed outside of King Chapel and they were the bomb!  They were super talented, a ton of fun, and gave people a glimpse of what our event would look like.
• The Dean of the Chapel thought what we were doing was a ton of fun and I was pleased with this because I really didn’t know what he’d think!
• People kept asking outside, “This is going to be a church service?” We smiled and said YES!
• We started the event with a comedic hip-hop voiceover of the story of creation that really got people loose and laughing.
• Then the Funk Lordz came out for a dance set that was THE BOMB!  Everybody there seemed to really enjoy them.  Our event was supposed to have a hip-hop theme and we really wanted to incorporate all of the different elements into our time.
• After the Funk Lordz did their thing, DJ Dust used Serrato technology to really mix & chop up a very simple intro video he filmed of me on Sunday after our service.  I LOVED IT! LOVED IT I TELL YOU!
• Gina Loring – poet/rapper/singer extraordinaire performed an awesome piece that immediately set the tone for where we planned on taking the night.  When I tell you that this sister is BAD I am making a major understatement.  She was amazing!
• The Courageous Church worship team then came with 2 really awesome songs (Hero & Lions, Tigers, and Bears and DJ Dust used Serrato to mix up some videos during the songs.
• During all of this, our graffiti artists were finishing up on stage the mural they started outside!
• We played an awesome video that Israel Houghton filmed just for us on the Power of ONE followed by his track of the same name.  We’re uploading the video for you to see now…
• The Remnant then came with some amazing tracks that they customized just for our event!  These guys are the bomb! My wife (who is very picky) loved them and thought they may have been the highlight of the night.
• After this I preached a message on how ONE person can change the world and shared some common reasons we all use to not do what God has called us to do!  People were very engaged and received the message very well.
• I have spoken @ Morehouse nearly 10 times and chose to tone down my style of preaching tonight to be very conversational and easy to follow.  This doesn’t happen much @ Morehouse and folk seemed to appreciate it.
• After my message I did an altar call and prayed person by person for everyone that came forward.  This exposed my Pentecostal roots, but I still believe in this :-)
• During the altar call we did a remake of the Beyonce song “Flaws & All”
• We closed out the night with an awesome track from Deacon & Marquan and some dancing by Funk Lordz

Sounds like a lot, right?  We did all of this in about an hour and a half (and I didn’t even mention the offering and announcements)!

Some Amazing Feedback!

• The Dean of the Chapel said we had the largest number of students in a chapel service in a very long time.  I was pleased with this.
• The Dean had a big smile on his face and was very complimentary afterwards.  I was glad for this because I still get the feeling that The Courageous Church might eventually hold a Sunday night service there @ Morehouse on a weekly basis.
• Gary Lamb said our church “might have the most unique and creative worship elements I’ve ever seen. Very impressed!” and that our DJ, DJ Dust was “Best I’ve ever heard…Amazing”
• A college student wrote me on Facebook right after the event and said that the sermon was “one of the best I’ve ever heard.”
• Another college student wrote and said, “I have never seen a church use so many different skills and gifts and talents in one service.”
• Several senior pastors and youth pastors in attendance said, “Can I steal your ideas?” or “I am taking this stuff back to our church right away.”  I love that! Steal away!
• Nearly a dozen people came up to me after the service and commented on the very first point that I made on how it seems that God chooses and uses the “wrong” people.  They have felt like the “wrong” people their entire lives and now see that God loves using people that don’t quite fit the status quo.

I’ve written all I can stand to write!  I wish we had video of the service, but we’re just 2.5 months old and we’re just not there yet!

If you were there, I’d love to get your feedback!

Also, if you are an AUC student, what do you think about us hosting a weekly Sunday night service there sometime in the next year or so?