These days I’m always on the lookout for what’s Christ-like, pure and true — and it encourages me whenever I find it. Right now, I’m writing this in the lobby of our two-year-old auditorium at Willow Creek Community Church, and there’s a sort of parade of Christ-likeness walking by, in the form of several of our Production Team staff ers. (I’m sure they might not be keen on that description — particularly the parade word!) Each of them goes by with a huge smile and a warm greeting as they head to the next challenge.
My mind tracks back to my impressionable high school years, when a friend dragged me to a meeting of a youth group in Park Ridge, Illinois. It was called “Son City”, and this youth phenomenon would later morph into Willow Creek Community Church.
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Greg Ferguson is a singer, songwriter and idea guy on the Arts Team at Willow Creek Community Church, in South Barrington, Illinois. |
Few of these highschoolers had much of an idea what they were doing technically. They were leading with their hearts, making it up as they went along. But they had one thing in common: they were head-over-heels for God and stoked by what He was doing among them. They wanted to reach their friends by every creative means they could think of, even if they had to blow up the place to do it!
Six years later, my wife Corinne and I were fresh out of college, young professionals in the Chicago music scene on an intense spiritual search. Once again we were invited by a friend — this time to come visit the “vibey” new church that Son City had become. We walked into the substantial new brick auditorium, and saw how far things had come from those youth group days. This was a real church for grown-ups, with a facility all its own. And they had definitely learned more about technical production.
But we could tell the original Spirit was there. Just like at Son City, they were vibrant, fully alive, absolutely on fire for reaching their friends. They wanted to bring us into the presence of God with abandon.
Corinne and I crossed the line of faith and started to serve on the Arts Team. The army of production volunteers amazed us. They were hauling props around backstage, hanging fabric to create stage looks, and calling out rehearsal cues. There were faders flying in the sound booth, complex lighting cues being clicked into pre-Mac computers, and people overhead crawling around aiming lights on precarious catwalks. It was like a humming Volunteer Planet. They were everywhere. Yet they were all committed to leaving a very light footprint during the service. Their goal was to be eff ective but invisible.
Corinne and I have now been a part of Willow’s Arts Team for more than twenty years, and that same beautiful Christ-like heartbeat that has always been the mark of this amazing team has remained fully alive. As the church continues to grow, this Invisible Army and its energy, humility, warmth, creativity and enthusiasm, lights the way for thousands, and draws people to the Jesus we love.
All of you who read this, who serve in the invisible Production Army in your own church, wherever you are, doing what you can with what you have, and leaving a light footprint...
Thank you!
