C is for CHURCH.com – A Visual Conversation for the Church by Chris Capehart & Micah Davis

Over the past several years some friends and I have found ourselves striving to find ways to enhance community in the church. It’s a passion that we all share and we have given everything we have to it. We’ve had the chance to make friends with people and churches across the country who are creating community in some phenomenal ways. About a year ago a close friend, who is on staff at a church, invited us to help conduct a study on community. The goal being to uncover needs and ideas that might have slipped through the cracks. We jumped at the opportunity.

We were able to spend one on one time interviewing senior pastors, support staff, administrative staff, and church members. We were able to spend time with people involved in church at all levels. We simply asked questions and then listened. Our questions concentrated on three areas: Community externally as church, Community Internally as a Staff, and Technology influencing community. Once our time came to an end we had spent over 100 hours in conversations. These conversations were personal and vulnerable. People talked to us about their lives and their needs. They shared how community at church had meant everything to them. Some who you would have thought had the most community talked about their need for more. After all of these conversations were finished we found ourselves with pages of notes. As we talked through these notes we were able to find several themes that really stuck out to us.

We wanted to share this information in a unique way, so instead of writing our findings in the traditional way we used art. We created a “report” that highlighted the themes we saw through our interviews in typography based art. Information can be dull when presented the same way over and over, but it doesn’t make it any less important. C is for Church.com is what we called it and now we want to release it to anyone that’s interested.

Our goal with this project is to provoke thoughts instead of providing answers, although you might like some of the ideas presented.   We can all do better and C is for church is a tool that you can use with your staff or group of volunteers to provoke discussions that can lead to ideas. We don’t want anyone to misunderstand, we are not saying that our report is indicative of the church at large, however, maybe some of them could be applicable to your church.

You can get the report at C is for Church.com. You can download the pdf for free or pay what you would like. You can even view it online or find it on Facebook. We’ve tried to make it easy for anyone to see. For those who choose to pay, your money is going to pay for the pro-bono time that was put into this project.

As you view this project think of it as a chance to listen to the voices you usually can’t hear.

AUTHORS:

Chris Capehart & Micah Davis – We’re a couple of guys passionate about making the Big C church better. We’ll do it however we can. We’ve done everything from building technology to hosting dinner parties. We love God. We love people. We love community. Follow Chris Capehart via Twitter HERE and friend him on Facebook HERE. Follow Micah Davis via Twitter HERE and friend him on Facebook HERE.