The Buzz Conference: PreConference Session - 6/27 NCC Undercover - Mark Batterson

Today, Buzz offered pre-conference sessions before the primary sessions begin tomorrow. I went to the afternoon NCC Undercover session, which drilled down into the history and inner workings of National Community Church in Washington, DC. Speakers were

• Mark Batterson - Lead Pastor
  
  
• Heather Zempel - Discipleship Pastor
  
  
• Dave Clark - Media Pastor
  
  
• David Russell - Digital Pastor
  
  
• Joel Schmidgall - Pastor of Point Pastors
  
  
• Warren Bird - Warren is Leadership Network's Director of Intellectual Resources
  

Todd Rhoades and I were asked to participate during the Q&A session after Warren spoke on social networking tools and the church.

Here are some of the points that struck me from what Mark Batterson shared:

• from Mark:
  
  
• NCC has a budget of $2 million per year, yet they give $300,000 every year to missions.
  
  
• 73% of their folks are single 20somethings and because so many are Capitol Hill interns, they're typically there only 2 years. NCC has to gauge their discipleship strategy accordingly
  
  
• NCC has a coffee house - Ebenezers - that's in a bldg that was built in 1908. Mark prayed that God would give NCC that building, a former crack house, for 8 years.
  
  
• It's right beside Union Station which is one of the NCC sites. They finally were able to buy the site - over superior competing offers - for the very low price of $325,000. It was worth at least $1,000,000.
  
  
• Mark comments, "We grossly underestimate our spiritual authority in prayer." Mark also says that we should not be afraid to pray ridiculous prayers. He says that we need to believe in something bigger than us so that we can grow into that vision.
  
  
• 54% of folks who go to the church site that meets on the floor below Ebenezer's had never gone to any other NCC site.
  
  
  

- Metapost to all Buzz Conference posts