Posted by Warren Bird
One of the most fun aspects of writing a book is the conversations and discoveries that come out of it, many of them after publication. We're delighted to report that the book’s first printing sold out in six weeks, which affirms to us that a lot of people are interested in multi-site.
In one recent conversation about the book Steve Sjogren told me the following. If you don't know him, back in 1983 he was founding pastor of the Cincinnati Vineyard church (www.cincyvineyard.com), he's the author of many books on servant evangelism and most recently "The Day I Died" (Regal, www.dayidied.com), and he is currently a church planter in Florida (www.CoastlandTampa.com) slated for a February 2008 launch.
He's a great person to use technology for the Kingdom. He's actually the first person I knew who created a webpage (this was back in the early 1990s).
When I first visited the church, the Cincinatti Vineyard was holding 8 services a week in an old Baptist church that was built to seat a maximum of 500 people, but they figured out how to fit over 1,000 people (including children) in each service, if necessary, praying that the local fire marshal wouldn't make a surprise visit one weekend (he never did in the 9 years they were there).
One way they made it meaningful for all their worshipers was something they called a "Video Cafe." They put a high powered LCD projector in their basement which held about 300 people, and they provided fresh bagels, freshly squeezed orange juice, a variety of cream cheeses and other extras not available in the main sanctuary. Many actually preferred to go to the video service instead of coming upstairs where the speaker was in-person.
That was in about 1994, which means the video venue idea has been around for longer than we realized. Maybe we'll learn of even more examples of early video venues as people contact us!
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