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The Orchard's New Logo

Six years ago, our 85 year-old church community changed it's name from "Aurora First Assembly of God Church" to "Orchard Valley Community Church."  As you can imagine, it was a tremendous move for us.  At the time we also created a logo and website that has served us well over these past few years. Here's the logo we've had up until today:

About 18 months ago, we started feeling it was time for another change.  Way overdue actually!  What was needed was a complete rebrand.  So with the amazing and generous (pro-bono) help of our good friends, Keith and Dawn Baldwin (fellow Orchard tribe, creative geniuses, and Aspire One pioneers), we began the process of designing a new logo and website that we are excited to share with you today!

Our goal was to create a logo that would reflect the artistic, missional, and organic culture of what The Orchard has become over these past few years.  While we certainly wanted something that looked "excellent" and "professional", we also didn't want to lean too far into a "corporate" or "trendy" look.  It was also important to us that the logo would look original and unique.  And I'm super proud and excited to say that I think we've accomplished it!  Here it is: We've also launched a new website that went LIVE today.  We've also changed our domain to: theorchardcommunity.com.  (Note: Our previous domain "orchardvalleyonline.com" will point to the new site today or tomorrow.  Emails are still "@orchardvalleyonline.com" for now.)

You can visit the new site by clicking here.

Here's a screenshot:

 

There are so many people to thank and I'll do that in a separate post.  I'm also hoping to get Dawn, Keith, and a couple people from our team to share more of what went into the creation of the logo and site as well.  Stay tuned for that.

Thanks for letting us share an exciting next step for us at The Orchard!

Woops.

TXT Weekend at The Orchard

Interviewed by Cynthia Ware

While at The Idea Camp, I was honored to be interviewed by my new friend, Cynthia Ware from The Digital Sanctuary. We talked about Twittering, church leadership, transition, etc... 

Side note: the audio is a little bit off from the video - looks kinda like a cheap kung fu movie.  :)

The Idea Camp - Scott Hodge Interview from The Idea Camp on Vimeo.

Watch other videos from The Idea Camp here.

Korean Tacos 2.0

PS - I want one. NOW.

We Are Becoming!

As most of you know, several weeks ago we began what I think has become one of The Orchard's most unique and impacting series in a long time.  Each week, we have journeyed through different spiritual practices such as: silence, solitude, scripture meditation, daily prayer rhythms, generosity, and others.

The big idea of the series is basically this:

God is at work in us.  Spiritual practices are some of the ways that we cooperate with that work as God helps us to become the people He created us to be. 

There's a couple of reasons why I think this has been such an impacting series for us:

1. It's been unplanned.  At the beginning of the series, I really felt impressed to forgo all long term planning for this series.  Usually, we try to plan topics, etc... WEEKS out in advance.  But with this series I really felt like we needed to be completely flexible with where God wanted to take our church community throughout this series.  So we have literally planned out each weekend gathering one week at at a time. 

2. It has stretched us and pulled us out of our comfort zone.  We're comfortable with our long-range planning.  But starting with a blank canvas every single week throughout this series has stretched us and challenged us - in fresh and much needed ways. 

Has it been challenging in the area of creative planning each week?  Yeah, sort of.  But at the same time, I have to say that this has probably been one of our most creative and artistic series ever.  Watching it all come together each week has been amazing.

2. It's been very personal.  For both me and our community.  Each week has been planned in response to what it seems God did in hearts the week before.  It's almost hard to put into words - but it feels like a journey that God is taking us all on to prepare us for a shift from 3rd to 4th gear.  

3. It's been experiential.  Each week of the series we have tried to creatively provide ways for people to not only learn, but also experience and taste the spiritual practices we've been teaching on.  For example, one week we led everyone through several minutes of silent scripture meditation.  Another week, we utilized the technology of Twitter to guide people through a week of daily prayer rhythms.

When it's all said and done, my hope and prayer is that our community has had small, bite-sized, appetizer-type tastes that will only make them hungrier for the ways in which these spiritual practices can truly impact our lives. 

So with all that said....

I'm thankful.  God seems to be doing something really great at The Orchard right now.  And I'm even more excited what's to come these next couple of weeks as I teach on a few missional practices.  Which ultimately, is what all the other practices eventually point to.

On a side note.....We've been really honored by the influx of requests for our artwork, sermon transcripts, video pieces, and other creative elements from this series.  Typically, we are more than happy to share whatever we come up with.  We're all about that.  However, because of the uniqueness of this series and what it is that God seems to be doing through it, we've decided to hold off on sharing any of our creative or teaching elements for at least three months. 

And to be honest, I can't even tell you why I feel so strongly about that, but it just feels right, so I'm going to follow my gut.  Who knows, maybe there's something else that God wants to do with this series that we're not aware of yet.  Or maybe it's just that this thing feels very personal for us at The Orchard.  Or both.  :)  Either way, thanks for understanding....

Art + Technology = WOW.

 

This is just amazing....  It's projection art by Ross Ashton.  Check out his work here.

And you also have to see this. 

A lot of great stuff coming out of the UK...

Don't forget to also take a look at some urban light graffiti. 

And.....while you're at it, check this out. 

Be inspired. 

All via the visualworshipper who is blowing minds down at Irving Bible Church.

Boingo Brings It!

So....  I'm in the OKC airport today waiting to board my flight back to Chicago.  My inbox is screaming out to me for attention....  But the WiFi charge is crazy for the hour that I need it. 

So what do I do? 

I harness the POWER of Twitter and post this:

And so within a minute or two, I've got about a dozen offers (my twitter friends are amazing btw...). 

And get this....... 

One of the offers comes from someone at Boingo's official Twitter!
No lie!

And so the guy who responds from Boingo, Jeremy Pepper, tells me to email him for some help.  And the next thing I know, the dude has HOOKED ME UP with a login AND......a few extras for future use! 

(Insert Clapping Here)

And so of course I shoot him back an email to say thanks and he replies with this:

Not a problem – I did get a laugh out of the two pastors sharing log-in information. Tsk, Tsk. ;)

Uh hmmm.....  Wow. 

But still...  That was pretty awesome.

Thank you Boingo!  You guys rocked my face off today.

404

Yes, it's a different picture than the original one.  I just couldn't take it anymore....

Trying to access a webpage that's no longer there?  Welcome to the 404 Error Page! 

And the creative folks at FrancescoMugnai.com posted the "best of" 404 Error Pages about a month ago. 

Check them out here.

Plasticky, Produced....and the most AMAZING, OFF THE CHARTS blog post EVERRR!

Craig Groeschel touches on something in his book, It, that's been on my mind quite a bit lately.  It has to do with finding the balance between doing things with "excellence" and still keeping things feeling raw, authentic, and real.

Over this past year at The Orchard we have added some pretty significant elements to our weekend gatherings in terms of media and technology.  Yet as we've taken those steps, we've also worked hard at being very intentional about not coming across "over produced" or inauthentic in any way. 

And honestly, it helps that most of us involved in the creative process hates anything that feels too produced or plasticky.  So our radars are always up when it comes to things feeling too canned. 

So anyway...  This got me thinking about some of the things we try to be intentional about in order to keep things feeling fresh and authentic.  Here are a few off the top of my head:

We are intentional about avoiding "churchy" and cliche-ish sounding words and phrases during worship and teaching.  Our communication style is very conversational in approach - across the board.  Still passionate and full of life....but mostly conversational.  We don't go from sounding like "regular people" to Southern Baptist radio preachers once we hit the stage. 

We are very careful not to over-hype everything we do.  What's great about this is that when we do show excitement or buzz about something, people really do believe and expect that something unique is getting ready to occur.  Avoiding over-hyping everything builds excitement equity with people.  I intentionally shy away from overusing words like "awesome", "off the hook", "amazing", etc... because using these types of words too liberally cheapens them, and over time, causes them to lose effect.  (Plus, the phrase "off the hook" just bothers the crap out of me.)

We don't try to hide or overcompensate for production mistakes.  Not that we encourage them, but we do play them off pretty well!  We've learned to laugh and make light about slip-ups during our gatherings. 

Our style of music lends itself to feeling raw.  Don't get me wrong, it sounds and feels AMAZING, but it doesn't sound like an overproduced band like this one.  (Ok, that was a horrible example!  That's not over-produced, that's just downright FRIGHTENING!) 

We stay away from anything that looks, feel, or sounds scripted or canned.  We try to say things in a way that feels fresh every time. 

Moving video backgrounds and cool lights are fun, but they need to be used strategically.  Same thing with lights and video pieces.  Too much motion can get old FAST! 

We are intentional about dressing in a way that communicates to people, "Hey!  We're normal!  Just like you!"  And then after a few weeks, everyone realizes that there's nothing normal about us whatsoever!  :)

So I'm curious....  Is this a challenge for you?  If so, what types of things do you do to help keep things feeling real and authentic?