by Brett Eastman | May 24, 2018 | Main Blog
On the Road is our recurring series where we follow Brett Eastman, founder of Lifetogether, âon the roadâ as he travels across the country and gives us an exclusive look into who weâre meeting, what weâre doing, and how weâre living life together.
We’ve always thought of Lifetogether as a learning community discovering the new and next, exploring the breakthroughs and innovative ideas around the country. We’ve found that in each of the larger tribes or denominations or ministry networks there are some key learnings that help to shape and accomplish our mission even better – our mission to catalyze spiritual conversations that lead to a change in the community.
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The primary vehicle for accomplishing this mission of catalyzing spiritual conversations has always been a small group setting, but we are discovering additional opportunities as we work with some of these large churches. Over the past week, we’ve spent time out in Texas at a couple of amazing churches – Jeff Jone’s Chase Oaks and Ted Kitchen’s Christ Chapel Bible Church.Â
Here are more details on each of these churches and a little behind the scenes on the discoveries and insights we gained with each church.Â
Chase Oaks Church
Watch the video below of Brett Eastman taking us behind the scenes of our latest partnership with Chase Oaks Church out in Texas. We spent the past week filming a Town Hall production, our breakthrough interactive conversational format, with a stellar team!
Christ Chapel Bible Church
We also spent some time with Christ Chapel working on an amazing production for their Fall series and campaign. Scroll through the gallery below for a behind the scenes look, featuring a stunning set, engaging worship band, and dedicated staff.
by Brett Eastman | May 8, 2017 | Programs
After producing over 500 video curriculum productions for local churches of all stages and sizes, we discovered a growing need that we finally decided to address â the need for professionally published curriculum that have exponential results. Churches tend to produce weekly discussion questions for small group study guides that align with their weekend services, but this model tends to be effective with the existing groups in a congregation, not as much at launching new groups.
As a result, we are launching the Curriculum Subscription Program, which is based on our new models of producing video curriculum that has proven to launch new small groups 52 weeks a year and to connect people in a matter of weeks versus months. We combine the strengths of the number one resource in any church – the weekend service – with the number one influential voice – the senior pastor – in order to coach churches into producing a weekly video curriculum that is even more aligned with your weekend sermons.
Watch this video of Brett introducing the exciting new Curriculum Subscription Program!
Lifetogether is now offering this as a weekly service for those churches that want to invest in their congregation by producing a professionally published resource. We are introducing this subscription program on a limited basis with a handful of churches that recognize the limitations of their in-house resources but desire to produce quality and professional publications. In addition, our goal would be to do a âtrain-the-trainerâ and help you develop a team of qualified staff and a handful of volunteers that could continue this model for years to come.
The bread and butter of this model is that at the end of any given sermon series, we can help compile all the content by creating a finished video curriculum complete with full color design and layout. You could potentially produce up to five different series over the course of the single year!
Again, the benefits of this new program far outweigh the cost of outsourcing this type of service. If youâre interested in learning more, we would love to host a free consultation or on-site assessment to review partnering with us in this exciting program.
Browse through some of our award winning color curriculum publications!
by Brett Eastman | May 1, 2017 | On the Road
On the Road is our recurring series where we follow Brett Eastman, founder and CEO of Lifetogether, âon the roadâ as he travels across the country and gives us an exclusive look into who weâre meeting, what weâre doing, and how weâre living life together.
The Lifetogether team traveled East this week to attend the Exponential East 2017 Conference in Orlando. This is the third time we have attended the Exponential Conference and it continues to be a growing force in not just church planting, but how church is going to be done in the future, especially as it relates to a spiritually reproducing church planting model.
This year’s theme was “Dream Big”, and featured incredible guest speakers, including Francis Chan, Matt Chandler, Albert Tate, and many more esteemed church leaders.
“Exponential is a growing community of leaders committed to accelerating the multiplication of healthy, reproducing faith communities. We champion church multiplication and equip church planters and multipliers as we seek to help move the needle on multiplication from less than 4% of churches actively reproducing to greater than 10%!
Jesus. Leaders. Multiplication.”
Exponential
This year’s conference included 200 unique keynote breakout and pre-conference workshops and tracks asking us as Christ followers to dream BIG for the Kingdom! Tracks included multiplication, church planting, discipleship, and ministry, marriage and family, and so many more. Not only was the Lifetogether team there to learn and be encouraged, but also to dream big for our own ministry and work.
âYou will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earthâ
(Acts 1:8).
Hereâs a quick video from Brett introducing what the Lifetogether team is doing and what theyâre most excited for at Exponential.
We’ve learned so much being at Exponential East this year and being alongside a ton of other big dreamers. But it goes without saying, here at Lifetogether we’re always looking forward. Our production team put together this fantastic trailer, featuring friends, church partners, and Kingdom influencers, promoting next year’s Exponential theme – “Hero Maker”.
We were asked by Todd Wilson, president of the Exponential Conference, to capture footage from the 180 speakers, sharing their hero makers story to help catalyze the campaign that will serve as their 2018 Exponential Conference Series. It was both a privilege and an honor to be able to help take both the strategy and conference to the next level.
So we posed the question, “What is a Hero Maker to you?” and the responses were just phenomenal. Many cited their own Hero Makers and disciplers who have made a Kingdom impact on their lives. Some remembered the ways in which others poured out selflessly and laid down their life as Jesus modeled. Lastly, others encouraged and exhorted how any one of us has the potential to be a Hero Maker and have that spirit to speak truth, pray ceaselessly, and provoke the love and good deeds of Christ.
To our readers, our friends, family, church partners, and on…
God is going to use you to be a Hero Maker in someone’s life.
If you are interested in learning more or even attending next year’s conference, feel free to check out the Exponential website.
We love connecting with you while we’re at these conferences, so if you are thinking of going, let us know using the contact button below!
by Brett Eastman | Apr 25, 2017 | Programs
At Lifetogether, we are always exploring new ways to partner with local churches to help them leverage the power of community to reach their community for Christ. Over the years, we have produced professionally published video curriculum for hundreds of the largest and the fastest growing churches in America. In many of those cases, these churches may already have extensive production and creative services at their disposal. Understandably, many of our partnering churches have a deep desire to connect their interior congregation by producing professional video-based curriculum and churchwide alignment campaigns, but sometimes budget or staffing interfere with making this vision happen.
As a result, we are introducing TWO new publishing partnerships that share the cost for both staffing and securing necessary equipment for such a production, without losing any quality and expertise. Essentially, we are seeking to scale both the equipment and the team necessary to produce a series for more moderate size churches that have limited budget and resources. We will work with you and your team to help produce a project, with our expert direction and proven strategies, to develop far-reaching and community-oriented curriculum just for your congregation.
An additional bonus feature to these programs is that they can serve as the perfect first step, or even next step, in developing more and better curriculum in your church. They’re designed in a train-the-trainer format, which makes for a more sustainable and discipleship-centric timeline.
Here’s Brett introducing the new Lifetogether Publishing Program!
We are partnering with a handful of local churches this next season, offering a special price and package for churches to produce, for the first time or for the next time, their own curriculum production. This will be done as an in-house, forty day-like curriculum that is based off of your Senior pastor’s existing teaching ministry. These curriculum are proven to be and bring the “Wow factor” to any congregation. Our past partnerships with some of the largest and fastest growing churches in the country have shown exponential results, getting north of 75% of a congregation connected through these campaigns. We understand that the cost and resources required can be exorbitant at times, and not every church feels that they are at the right stage to pursue this type of production and curriculum.
This is why we are introducing the Lifetogether Publishing Program, where we bring in our Lifetogether team of experts writers, producers, designers, etc to partner with your team in producing your own curriculum. By utilizing our equipment and staffing, the burden of cost and resources does not fall entirely on your ministry. Other great features of this program is that we would help you develop a full color curriculum study guide, promotional clips for the weekend service, strategies on effective staffing models, and coaching on how to produce video curriculum on a weekly basis. Spots are limited as we launch this next phase of the new publishing model, so be sure to contact us today to learn more on how your church can get involved.
Here’s Brett introducing the new Small Group Publishing Offer!
Who doesn’t love going 50/50? Whether the occasion is sharing food, sharing ideas, or sharing places, we always enjoy partnering with others in some way or another.
That’s why, for a limited time, we are rolling out a Small Group Publishing Offer for churches and ministries. This offer is another great, affordable way in which we would partner together, 50/50, to share the cost of producing, publishing, and distributing your curriculum. Instead of having to go to a third-party publisher or purchasing curriculum directly from them, you can have your own!
As you well know, Lifetogether Ministries has partnered with many of the largest and fastest growing churches across the nation. Our team of experts has worked together with diverse ministries in leveraging the life and leadership of a church’s Senior pastor, in order to reach the local community for Christ.
Our team will come alongside churches of any stage or size to produce your first video curriculum at a significantly less cost or even no cost. After production, your congregation can purchase the published materials from us and even make it available to other churches in your network on our platform. We’ll produce them in both physical and online formats for you as well.
There is no time like the present to produce your own in-house video curriculum series, instead of purchasing curriculum from other publishers and authors. Your congregation wants to hear your pastor, over any other pastor, and will respond to your church’s calls to both lead, serve and participate in your custom in-house campaign. Again, spots are limited for when we launch this offer, so contact us below today!
Here are a few samples of how we’ve helped to expand ministries using these publishing models!
These new programs are great for churches looking to jumpstart campaigns this Fall, but also would like to explore new ways to navigate and manage their limited resources. We do have a limited number of openings, so contact us today if you are interested!
by Brett Eastman | Apr 19, 2017 | Main Blog
Finally, a turn-key strategy to produce professionally published video curriculum based off the weekend sermon series that launches groups 52 weeks a year!
For the last two decades, we have published over 500 professionally published video-curriculum series for every major Christian publisher, para-church ministry and hundreds of the largest and fastest growing churches in America. We have learned the science and art of writing award-winning curriculum series with fully integrated color and high quality video production. Weâve produced curriculum in over a dozen unique formats in some of the most creative settings, and have designed for almost every type of Bible study or weekend service campaign. The beauty of this model is that over the course of a single year, you could publish up to five different video curriculum productions based off of any small group curriculum or sermon series, that could even be sold even beyond your partnership with Lifetogether.
Here’s a brief, four-step process that we have developed that will help you produce curriculum on your own or at least take your first steps in producing video curriculum.
The first strategy is conversation starters. Our recommendation is that your pastor produces a single, video segment that is between 7 and 12 minutes long, serving as a great small group addition of their weekend sermon. Simply, write your weekend discussion questions based on this content and create a simple design template. You could shoot this in the back of the room with the worship center stage behind him, you could have him sit on a barstool on the stage, or shoot it outside near a grassy area in an outdoor setting.
The second is conversation interviews. Have your pastor sit down for a short interview with a senior staff member using a simple one or two camera production. They’ll simply reflect on some of the big ideas and critical application points, based off a past or future sermon. Again, any edited version of this interview can be used to catalyze small groups and create a small group discussion. The short video clip can be a backbone to a simple weekly small group study guide, developed as a companion to the video interview. This will only take a Senior Pastor a total of 15 to 20 minutes, done anytime on the weekend or in the week.
The third is conversation group. If your pastor is willing to join you in a small group of people on a Thursday or Friday preceding the weekend service, you could create a âmodelâ or âsmall group experienceâ hosted by none other than your senior pastor. This can be produced using Facebook Live, where people could watch it anytime and anywhere, and subsequently launch groups after the Sr. Pastor preaches the weekend service. This format is what we call the “Town Hall” and can be shot with any type of camera, GoPro, etc. or could be something far more professionally published.
The fourth is a conversation service. This is an emerging, breakthrough idea that is not only launching groups 52 weeks a year, but will quickly become the next generation of weekend services. Moving from a traditional service to a contemporary service, now it’s time to have a conversation service.
This format is a little more complex in its production, but can be one of most powerful new ways to reach younger people and engage with people who are not as interested in the current form of weekend services. It is designed to be a more engaging, interactive church service, that launches groups not just locally, but regionally nationally, and globally. Contact us for more details about how to launch your very first conversation service!
For a brief description about the conversation service, watch the video below:
Hopefully this gives you some clean takeaways on how you can begin the process of producing your own in-house video curriculum and even church-wide campaigns.
No longer do you need to wait for an upcoming fall campaign, Fall or New Year campaign, or even the launch of a new semester. You can now produce video curriculum on a weekly basis and catalyze groups 52 weeks a year. Â This is a breakthrough, and for some of you this could be your first step, but for others, you may be interested in one of the Five Unique Offerings from Lifetogether:
Fall Curriculum & Campaign Package, The Lifetogether Publishing Partnership, Curriculum Subscription Program, Small Group Publishing Program, & The Lifetogether Curriculum and Production Coaching Program.
Descriptions of each are available in our previous blog post, so check it out!
https://lifetogether.com/1404-2/
Hopefully this gives you a little taste of some of the insights and offerings that Lifetogether is delivering to churches, seeking to not only connect their congregation into community but reach their community through community. For churches that are wanting to disciple and reach the people who are no longer attending weekend services, this allows us to be able to move & bring church to where the people are, as well as use the weekend services as a catalyst not a container for next step spiritual growth.
We’d love to talk with you about producing a fully published video curriculum, so contact us today!