Powerful Moments

One of the questions I always ask pastors, is what books they are reading or what their favorite three books are.  Recently talking to Pastor Phil over at CrossRoads church in Woodbury, he turned me onto the book The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  He explained to me, he was using it to figure out how to make worship more memorable.  I thought this was pretty telling coming from Pastor Phil because each week they have between 3 to 5 thousand people come to their five church campuses.  This book he suggested isn't a church book.  It is a book for business.  How do you make your busy and customer experience really memorable.  There was an example of a hotel in LA that has been reviewed to be one of the top hotels in all of LA.  Looking at the hotel it doesn't seem to be anything special, it doens't have a bigger pool than anybody else and their rooms are not very fancy at all.  So why are people flocking to come there?  It is the experience.  For one thing they have a popsicle hotline.  So when you call the special red phone in the pool area a staff person asks you want kind of popsicles you want and then brings them to you on a silver platter.  Guess how much it costs?  It is free!!! It is touches like this that people remember and it is why people come to this hotel in droves and why they rate it so high.  So it got me thinking about church.  How do we make each worship a good memorable experience for folks.  This June we did an experiement where we blocked off the back pews so that people wouldn't sit underneath the balcony.  This was good not because they would be closer to service but because underneath the balcony it is hard to hear.  I haven't hear too much back from anybody yet as to whether people like it or hate it.  So what make worship memorable for you?   Leave a comment and let me know.  Also on a related note, what was a power moment for you?  Why was it powerful?  Leave that in the comment as well.