Tag Archives: Gateway Church
Leadership Weekend Review
Posted on31. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.
This weekend was Gateway’s annual Leadership Weekend. Every year it’s a Friday night and most of the day Saturday event where the core of the church comes to worship together, pray, be challenged and hear the vision for the upcoming year and engage in how God is leading us. This was my third such event at Gateway, and it was absolutely phenomenal. This year we laid out some pretty major challenges for the leaders of Gateway. The staff has been in an organizational restructuring for the last 6 months and the full plan of why we restructured and what the new structure is setting us up to do was revealed. It was met with excitement and zeal. The energy surrounding this weekend was absolutely contagious.
What’s really exciting is to see all the progress. I remember sitting in an off site meeting with our directional team a little over a year ago as we got stuck while talking through some issues. It was during this frustrating meeting where some ideas were brought up for the first time that led to where we’re headed right now. I also remember sitting in another overnight off site last Fall when early ideas were presented to the group, ideas that might address problems we were facing as an organization. Many people have prayed, fasted, discussed and strategized for thousands of hours to come up with what was presented this weekend. I’m totally excited about where we are heading as a body and it was thrilling to see the buy in.
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Summer camp video
Posted on30. Jun, 2010 by Kenny.
After this week I don’t plan to publish any more camp posts. My production director was on a post-camp vacation last week, so I just got the final day of camp video. It’s a great video that shows a snapshot of all the best parts of camp. It’s about 10 minutes long, so feel free to skim. 
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Dealing with Crisis
Posted on28. Jun, 2010 by Kenny.
Today was the last day of the series, Never Waste a Good Crisis. It was an incredible service, a great conclusion to a great series. The service led up to a key point… when the video below came on. Powerful! There were very few dry eyes around the auditorium. Nothing like the power of a story to drive a point home.
The link to the service wasn’t online when I wrote this post, so I’ll add the link when it’s up.
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Father’s Day @ Gateway
Posted on22. Jun, 2010 by Kenny.
Sunday was Father’s Day and we were right in the middle of a series called, “Never Waste a Good Crisis.” It’s been a phenomenal series. This week one of the leaders from High School and College shared his story. It’s a powerful story for men to hear and it tied into our series so perfectly. If you want to see more, I attached the video of the entire service below. Enjoy!
Full service:
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Free Ugly Towel Sunday
Posted on17. May, 2010 by Kenny.
Yesterday Gateway held it’s first baptism service of the year. What a great start to the year with 167 baptisms. Woo hoo! Going into this weekend, we had a little over 100 people registered, more than 30 of them being kids. Baptism Sunday’s are already a great day at Gateway. We understand that upwards of 30% of adults in our services are not yet Christ followers. Week after week, relevant messages challenge them to consider who God is, what he’s done for them and what a relationship with him would look like. We find that most people who come to faith at Gateway do so after wrestling with it for a while. Salvation isn’t always a split decision, sometimes it is a process. On Baptism Sunday, Gatewayers are challenged to take that final step. If they’ve recently made a decision, this is the day to make it public. If they need to take that final leap and make a decision, then there’s no day like this day. Every Baptism Sunday, we see people come out of the auditorium and get baptized totally unprepared as the Holy Spirit prompts them to do the deed. We also see a lot of groups get into the pool. We believe that life change happens best in relationships, so often times entire small groups jump in the pool to support the person getting baptized. It’s a beautiful celebration. Below is the video from yesterday’s message which consists of several interviews of people’s lives being changed who were also baptized yesterday as well.
There are so many great stories from yesterday that I got to witness.
I had one family that didn’t hear about the baptism class in time. A dad called me over the weekend to find out what they needed to do. Both of his kids, a 12 and 14 year old filled out the adult baptism packet and they really wanted to get baptized becasue their mom was coming up from Corpus Christi. I arranged to meet them during one of the services and walk through what it means to have a relationship with God and be baptized. I met with the whole family for close to 45 minutes and we had a great conversation. Because we met during the service, the 14 year old was insistent that they get baptized after the service but then stay for the 12:30 service. She really wanted her mom to experience Gateway. It was an honor to baptize these kids who truly had made Jesus their Lord; however, something peculiar happened. After the 12:30 service, I saw them at the pool again. I joked, “you back for more already?” In some way, the mom visiting from Corpus Christi was visibly touched by the service and felt prompted to be baptized as well. I don’t know her spiritual condition other than the fact that she does go to church and that she did sit through the discussion I had with her kids. It was obvious that something significant was happening in her life. What a beautiful thing for her kids to witness!
I met another guy right after one of the services. He was the first in line to be baptized. I asked him what prompted him to be baptized today. He said that he’d been attending Gateway for over a year, but didn’t come in today. He was watching the service online (woo who web campus) and felt like he was supposed to be baptized. So, he jumped in his car and drove up to the church to take this next step in his faith.
I could go on an on telling you other stories I heard or things that I saw, but I’ll spare you the details. If you’re having one of those days and want to read more, feel free to click here and here. Great stories from those who pre-registered for the baptism.
However, my favorite part is seeing others empowered to baptize. I love nothing more than seeing moms and dads in the pool baptizing their children. I saw husbands baptizing their wives and wives baptizing their husbands. It was very exciting to see my wife baptize her friend that she’s been walking with relationally and spiritually this year and had the distinct pleasure of leading her to Christ. She did great! We also have an 19 year-old intern serving in our Student Ministry. He’s overseeing a lot of the programming and teaching in Middle School and this kid is FIRED UP! He’s been in church his whole life and he’s been one of the lead teachers for five year-olds for many years. He’s had a significant impact on so many of these little kids. One of the kids being baptized this Sunday had been in his class all this year and requested him. Justin (the intern) was so excited. Probably one of my favorite parts of the baptism yesterday was seeing how excited Justin was to baptize a child he’d had so much influence over and to know that this is only the first of hundreds if not thousands of people Justin will baptize.
Enjoy some of the photos below.
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State of the Gate 2.0
Posted on26. Mar, 2010 by Kenny.
Every year my church has a “State of the Gate.” It’s really a gathering one evening of the week, usually at the beginning of the year where we share great stories from the previous year, share any exciting news and then cast vision for the coming year. This year we tried something new. Since we’ve recently launched our internet campus, we broadcast the State of the Gate over the interwebs. What a cool experience!
I still don’t know how many actually participated, but a pretty large group of people logged in with their facebook and twitter accounts and interacted with each other during the broadcast and asked questions during the Q & A. It was a totally unique environment. The people who watched live had a much more engaging experience than any State of the Gate in the past. In addition, the video content will remain online for people to watch later. In a tech savvy, DVR and overwhelmingly busy culture we live in, this format for special services like this seems the way of the future.
Click here to check the live site, you can read the chat dialogue until Sunday when it will be replaced by Sunday’s chat log. Feel free to watch the videos below, they illustrate our church’s current restructure to better engage our body in serving the community.
State of the Gate 2010
State of the Gate 2010 | Intro from Gateway Church on Vimeo.
State of the Gate: Attend, Grow and Serve
State of the Gate 2010 | Attend Grow Serve from Gateway Church on Vimeo.
State of the Gate: Q & A
State of the Gate 2010 | Q&A from Gateway Church on Vimeo.
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Kidmin in Portables: Final Details
Posted on11. Mar, 2010 by Kenny.
I’ve written all of this to be a resource for those who are either in portable buildings or are heading in that direction. Mostly, I want to encourage you that moving to portables doesn’t have to suck. I highly encourage you to pass these pictures and content to your pastors or decision makers. We spent a little extra money than we had to, but be got a much bigger bang for our buck. There’s no way getting around it, portables are less than ideal. However, you don’t want parents or kids to feel like they’re getting a second-class experience. I highly encourage you to make a few minor upgrades and make your portable space a place where both kids and volunteers want to spend their Sundays.
Here’s where we got the stuff for the insides:
- 12 inch plastic chairs for preschool kids: $18.99 from ECMD
- 12′ x 18′ carpets for story time and worship: $371.98 from Bizchair (these are durable and high quality carpet. You can get cheaper carpets elsewhere, but you’ll be replacing them much sooner.
- 30″ x 72″ Plastic folding tables” $150.34 from ECMD (These are very lightweight which makes them fantastic for a mobile campus)
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Kidmin in Portables: Interiors
Posted on10. Mar, 2010 by Kenny.
So we have two buildings which each have two rooms. Each room has a capacity for 30 children bringing our Backyard capacity to 120 children. On average, we probably have 85-95 kids in these four environments. They consist of:
- Beach Boulevard: Four year olds
- Amazon Avenue: Four year olds
- Treehouse Trail: Fives and Kindergarten
- City Circle: Fives and Kindergarten
As you probably saw in the first post, we had some ugliness to overcome. Nasty brown carpet with ugly brown wood panel walls. Thankfully the powers that be made the decision to spend just a little more and hang drywall over the wood paneling and put down some bright white tile flooring. The rooms went from dark and dreary to instant brightness. Originally we talked to a big church decor company we’ve all heard of to mural two wall in each classroom. I can’t remember the quote, but I remember our response… “heck no!” We decided to paint three walls a bright (not primary bright though) color and hire a muralist paint the remaining wall. I’m really not a fan for murals, but these walls are fantastic. Honestly, I like them way better than what the decor company was going to do and the muralist was a fraction of the cost.
To give us some storage space and make the rooms a little bit more versatile, we added a closet and some cabinets. The cabinets are absolutely beautiful in the rooms and give us more than enough storage space. The closets give us room to store 20-30 folding chairs for other meetings making it pretty easy to turn the classroom around into a great meeting spot for other purposes.
We hung a 42 inch TV in every classroom so the primary lesson can be taught via video in each classroom. We usually combine the two classrooms in each building for the teaching time and it seems to work great. Oh, that was something we did as well. We added a door between the two classrooms so kids and adults could go between rooms without having to go outside.
Last of all, we purchased some new tables and chairs for snacks and crafts and a over-sized carpet for the Bible Story. I love just about everything in these rooms and once you’re inside, you don’t “feel” like you’re in a less important classroom just because you aren’t in the main building. Our Backyard leaders love where they serve and the kids love where they attend church.
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Kidmin in Portables: Exteriors
Posted on09. Mar, 2010 by Kenny.
In truth, there are only one or two things I don’t like about our portables.
- They’re outside. When you have a nice building that’s all finished out, it’s just great to all be under one roof. With the portables being outside, it’s like having a section of your ministry that’s completely disconnected. We do have phones out there, but it’s just not as natural to visit those classrooms like it is with our other classrooms. Also when it’s cold or when it rains, the portables are kind of a bummer. Since it rarely rains and is only cold for a few weeks, it’s really not that big of a deal.
- The crushed granite pathway. Actually I have a love/hate relationship with the path. I love it because it really looks nice. It feels more natural and seems to fit with Austin and our church. However, I’m sometimes irritated with this pathway. Weeds like to grow through the path at certain spots (it’s not over run by any means, but at times a pesky weed will poke through) and when it does rain, it gets tracked into our portables (although, it doesn’t really rain that often).
Other than my two little complains, I love what we’ve done with these portable buildings. The stairs, ramps and walkways are beautiful. Too often I’ve seen churches that just add a janky and rickety set of metal/wood steps up to the doorway. Because we painted the portables different colors, it’s really easy to describe which building to go to. I don’t know that anyone loves the thought of portables, but if you’ve got to have them, I totally recommend doing them like we did. We call the area “The Backyard” and don’t describe them as portables, but additional environments outside the main building. I then usually like to say they’re some of my favorite environments because of the interiors, but that’s in the next post.
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A little spoken word, a little bass and a little tap
Posted on01. Mar, 2010 by Kenny.
One of the things I do really love about Gateway is that it’s smack dab in the middle of Austin, TX, a powerhouse of performance creativity. Since our church exists to raise up the church out of the culture, we often see some unique artistic elements in our services. Sometimes I simply take it all in just wondering where they find these people.
So today they opened the message with a little piece called, “I’ve got your back.” I can’t really describe it, you just have to see it.
I Got Your Back from Gateway Church on Vimeo.
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