I had the opportunity to have lunch with some of the service programming team at Elevation Church. And although our time together was short, it was fully beneficial; one of the most helpful tools I left there with was the series brief.
Since that visit, I have taken that idea and reworked it to fit our context and creative planning process at Central – and have found it to be an extremely beneficial and useful part of our service planning process.
Here’s why.
1. Heightens the Level of Communication
We have found that series brief allows our creative design team to get a better handle on the sometimes unspoken thoughts and expectations of the main communicator of the series – in our case at Central – the Lead Pastor, Bill Markham. This brief asks questions and then allow him to clearly lay out all his thoughts, suggestions and expectations.
2. Streamlines the Process
Once the series brief is completed, it gets sent out to each contributed in the creative process for them to read through and come ready with ideas, creative elements and thought through questions that help streamline the brainstorming and implementation process.
3. Unifies the Team
As a creative team, there is no question as to what the ‘so what’ is for each week. We all know one thing we want our church community to walk away with knowing and we work collectively within our specific assignments to communicate that unified goal. The series brief clearly defines that for us from there very beginning.
Like everything, there are flexible points with the process and not every month flows as smooth as one would hope, but we have found that step is intentional what to get us all working not he same page – would couldn’t do what we do without it.
Here is a copy of the template we use, feel free to use it, reshape and give it away.
