Weekend Teaching Series: The Refinery Grand Opening (stand alone message)
Message Title: The Power of Baby-Steps
Sermon in a Sentence: The grand opening of The Refinery calls for a landmark message on the vision and dream for students’ lives.

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 9 out of 10. Challenging learning everything in a few hours in the new building. We had some good creative moments, cameras to deal with, and a few sound and video glitches during the service. There were some microphone problems as well.

Attendance: up 99% from the previous weekend, 109% from the same weekend last year
Service Length: 71 minutes
Understandable Message: A+ Fields delivered a fantastic talk on his vision and dream for the Refinery, connecting it with his own spiritual walk, as he described the 5 stages: interest, invitation, inspiration (investigation), involvement, incredible journey. He encouraged students to make a commitment today to invite friends, serve in a ministry, or accept Christ, relating it to his decision 30 years ago to become a Christian. Very powerful!

Volunteer/Student Involvement: A/A+ Student band, students on cameras, students on the sound board, students on lights. We’re off to a great start using students in the new building. Volunteers did a solid job getting in the right spots and spending time in relationship with students. Smiles from ear to ear.

Element of Fun: A A character named Uncle Zed read a children’s story to the incoming freshman. Zack and Ryanne picked some students out of the crowd and played a Refinery trivia game. The best question was how many rolls of toilet paper would students use in The Refinery each weekend. The answer 38. We made that up, but it made for a good game. As students walked out, we gave them a pin that said “I put the FINE in REFINERY.”

Positive Environment: A- The worship songs kicked the energy in the room over the top. It peaked on the third song. Super positive!

Music Playlist: “Hallelujah” (Paramore Cover), “Cannons,” “Take it All”

Favorite Moment: The packed house at the 6:30pm Saturday service. The energy was amazing, and students kept piling in. Seeing the dream fulfilled with full capacity in our brand new high school room was an incredible moment.

Notes: We pushed this weekend really hard. We texted our students every day. Students brought their friends, and students who haven’t been to HSM in a while came back.

Overall grade: A+