Collide Magazine

Church Spotlight: Central Christian Church

Scott McClellan - Originally posted Thursday, November 1, 2007 -

You know the slogan. You’re sick of it by now. What happens in Vegas (sigh) stays in Vegas. Be that as it may, about 10 miles outside Las Vegas, NV—a place where churches are known more for Elvis-officiated, drive-thru weddings—sits Central Christian Church. If a church of more than 10,000 people perched on the edge of Sin City seems out of place to you, you’re not alone. The leadership of CCC, however, believes they’re exactly where they should be.

Although you may not have heard about the church before now, you may be familiar with “God Pie,” the humorous and penetrating video produced in-house, and now made available to other churches through church media reseller sites. You also may have seen CCC’s “The Family Survival Kit” video, which was featured by YouTube and subsequently eclipsed one million views. In the past, Willow Creek frequently showed “Anatomy of a Church Scandal,” another CCC production (see several CCC videos at www.youtube.com/centralvideos). Here is what a few staffers had to say about mission and media at Central Christian Church:

Justin Jackson, Creative Director

COLLIDE: From the outside looking in, Las Vegas seems like a pretty media-intensive place. Is that accurate? If so, what is your approach to using media at CCC in response to that?

JACKSON: Las Vegas is not only a media-intensive place, it’s an entertainment-intensive place. We have maximum exposure to concerts, shows, movies, and television. Just walk down the Las Vegas Strip and you see an erupting volcano, a choreographed water fountain show, and countless state-of-the-art video marquees. That’s why Central uses really engaging music, stage design, and lighting. It’s also why we’ve made video a big part of our worship experience. When we use media, we’re speaking the language of our culture.

When a video makes people laugh, cry, think, or feel, it has just accomplished one of the most important things any church can do—it has said, “We understand you.” It has built a connection that others can now cross. We use media to build those connections as much as possible.

COLLIDE: “God Pie” and several of your other videos have been very successful. Can you think of a project that didn’t go over the way you planned? What did you learn from that experience?

JACKSON: During a financial series we did a video called “CCNB” about a bank that takes your money and gives you old, useless stuff in return. It was meant to be a funny satire piece on credit cards, but no one really laughed when we showed it. I think there were two reasons for that: One, it hit too close to home to be funny and, two, it was a concept that required too much explanation.

Since then, I’ve adopted a policy that if we can’t state the premise of a video in one sentence, we don’t do it. And if people don’t laugh or “get it” in one sentence, we don’t do it. It can be hard to find those ideas, but it’s harder to see all your effort miss its mark. “CCNB” has been pretty popular in the financial world, it’s even been shown at a couple of secular seminars where the crowd gets all the irony and wit, but our job isn’t to reach experts, it’s to reach Vegas, and that means simple truths, well told.

For Brian Glassford, Communications Director

COLLIDE: How does CCC use media and technology to communicate its overall message?

GLASSFORD: Central uses media similar to how most mega-churches use video. We create it, capture it, project it, and distribute it.

One of our purpose statements says, “It’s OK to not be OK.” That statement is targeted toward our main audience, the seekers in Las Vegas who never attend church, and our video content for weekends is created to reach them. Great production value takes a lot of time and talent (creative and production), and some treasure to reach its audience and impact lives.

In The Message, Mark 4:11 says: “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom—you know how it works. But to those who can’t see it yet, everything comes in stories, creating readiness, nudging them toward receptive insight.” We are a story-driven culture, so we focus our attention in highlighting life stories that people can relate to. We have a position dedicated to telling Central stories in our Associate Director of Storytelling, Bill Taaffe. He finds and writes many of the stories we create in both Communications and Media.

We create comedic vignettes for weekends, which make people laugh and engage on featured message topics. Often, our special music on weekends is more mainstream, so we create lyric videos that highlight the message of the song. Because we have only a once a month midweek gathering, we have created a publishing arm that develops and produces video curriculum for our small groups.

We capture the weekend message on high-definition video and then project it at our Summerlin Campus. Our weekend messages also are captured, encoded, and streamed on our website, and of course podcasts are available. In the fall of 2008 we’ll be rolling out a new MEDIA PLAYER that will expand our video messages on the web.

For Michael Murphy, Executive Pastor of Worship

COLLIDE: You’ve been described as constantly keeping an eye on culture and trends. Why do that, and what is the result on how things work at CCC?

MURPHY: One of our core values is cultural relevance, and the initial step in our strategy is to help people plug in to God by attending a weekend service. As we strategically plan the content and experiences for a weekend service, it is very important for us to connect with people authentically and effectively, utilizing creative elements and experiences that Las Vegans can relate to.

People in Las Vegas don’t understand the Christian subculture. We are very intentional about not being relevant to the Christian subculture, but rather the culture to which the people of Las Vegas relate. So, it is very important for us to constantly be on the edge of where our culture is moving toward—music, television, movies, recreation, work environments, home life, creativity, etc.

We strategically create culturally relevant experiences through worship, music, video, creative interactive elements, and our senior pastor’s message to communicate God’s uncensored grace. Culture connection keeps us fresh and on our toes creatively, because changed lives is what it’s all about! As a result, we have seen more than 1,100 people accept Christ in the past eight months—God has been moving in a powerful way!

COLLIDE: As the worship pastor and supervisor of the creative team, do you strive for continuity across things such as music, message, and media, or do they each have their own direction on a given Sunday?

MURPHY: Everything is strategic in our weekend services. From the experience driving onto the property to the worship experience to the featured song (mainstream music such as John Mayer’s “Something’s Missing” and Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”) to the original video to the pastor’s message. We all work together as one team.

Visit Central Christian Church online at www.centralchristian.com.