Almost every Thursday night, we gather together as the creative community of Hillsong Church. It is one of my favourite nights of the week. Here are a few things that have helped us to run amazing team nights.

SEE ALSO: WHAT DO WE DO AT TEAM NIGHT?

ONE… Mix it up

I like the idea that people can walk into the room and be surprised with the way the room is set up. This year we launched our first Team Night with a scrim that some of some our team built. It is about three metres high and four metres wide and we project different images onto the screen to create a new look each week. This brings something fresh to our Thursday night gatherings and gives the night a visual point of difference.

TWO… Team Night is for everyone
Over the last couple of years, we have worked at trying to represent a broad range of creative expressions at Team Night. Team Night is for dancers, baristas, graphic designers, skaters, writers, singers, buskers, film makers, actors, producers, drawers, animators, costume designers, make up artists… the list goes on. At Team Night we have started running a variety of masterclasses e.g. Skate boarding 101, How to make your own guitar pedal, latte art, gospel choir, how to start busking, cooking on a budget. Expanding our masterclasses has helped us to increase our reach as a creative team. We serve a God who is limitless in creativity so we want to creative an environment where all types of creative people have a place to connect and be inspired.

THREE… Connection, conversation and community
We have a relatively large team and one of our biggest challenges has been creating an atmosphere where people feel welcomed and included. It takes a brave person to show up to any event when you don’t know anyone. Every week we talk with our leaders about connecting with people. Don’t leave anyone standing alone. Say “Hi”. Save them a seat. Sometimes these little things make the world of difference and help make it easy for people to feel at home within our church.

FOUR… Coffee makes everything better

FIVE… Have fun
We love to laugh and have fun. Our team spends so much time together and faithfully serving in the house of God…so why not have some fun along the way? The picture below is from a team night where we ran a cronut competition. We picked three people from the crowd who had never eaten a cronut before and each of them had to sing to the cronut…haha. It sounds weird but it was fun and we all laughed a lot. It’s good to have fun.

SIX… Worship
This is my favourite point. There is truly nothing like being in the presence of God and there is something so special about when we worship together as a creative team. It is that moment we put any distractions aside and focus our hearts on Jesus. This is the heart of everything we do as a creative team.

Psalm 16:8 (NIV)
“I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”

Hannah Hobbs

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