CAPSTONE . CULMINATION . CELEBRATION Sunday

CATALYTIC EVENTS: 
CAPSTONE: CELEBRATION SUNDAY


HAVE CELEBRATION SUNDAY TEAM

PURPOSE:

• He gave a big party to celebrate. Genesis 21:8
• The whole community must celebrate. Exodus 12:47
• Let’s celebrate together. Matthew 25:21
• So the party began. Luke 15:24

Those statements, and hundreds more like them come straight out of the Bible, because God seems to love a celebration.  Whether it’s a lost coin that was found or Jesus being born, somebody is always celebrating in the Bible. In fact, we even owe it to God to celebrate who he is and what he lets us be part of. Although we don’t have to have a big reason to celebrate, whenever God does something that is beyond what we could do, we ought to celebrate!

As you wrap up an HLM SERIES, you are going to have a lot to celebrate.
Effective leaders know the value of celebrating the great things God does in and through their organization. When the task is finished, when the results have been achieved, when people have been served, take time to celebrate!

That’s what Celebration Sunday is all about – God’s people celebrating God’s work.
WE CALL THIS CULMINATION or CAPSTONE SUNDAY and FRIENDSHIP SUNDAY!


PRINCIPLES:

When Israel had finished rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem, Nehemiah scheduled a celebration. There are some principles right out of Nehemiah 8 that can help you put together a great Celebration Sunday.

• Assemble Everyone: The first thing Nehemiah did was to get everybody together. “All the people of Israel gathered together in the square….” (Nehemiah 8:1). So, if it’s possible, find a way to gather everyone together at once for your celebration. Depending on how many people could be involved, you might need to do this somewhere other than your church; maybe a park, a local high school, an “open square” in your city.
• Tell The Story: Next, Ezra was asked to read from the Bible – that was what had motivated Nehemiah’s mission in the first place. During your celebration, tell the story of how God worked during THE SERIES. Tell your story using the principles of Read, Review, Recall.
• Read the scriptures that played a key role in the changed lives you experienced.
• Review the principles from the week-by-week teaching that everyone went through.
• Recall God’s truths that moved in people’s hearts to do the acts of service that transformed your people and your community during the past WEEKS of the SERIES or CAMPAIGN.
• Amen Chorus: The third thing that took place in Nehemiah’s celebration was that “All the people held up their hands and said, “Amen! Amen!” (Nehemiah 8:6). During Celebration Sunday, give the people in your church a chance to say “Amen!” You can do that with a series of brief testimonies about the life-change they experienced. Sing songs of praise and rejoicing. Include some time during the service where you invite the church to gather on their knees for prayer, thanking God for what he’s done and committing to be open to what he wants to do next. One great visual piece to use during your celebration would be a video montage covering the sweep of your entire SERIES in review. Provide a time where your people can respond to the story of the SERIES with their own “amen”.
• Share a Feast: This next part of Nehemiah’s celebration is food. He says, “Go and enjoy good food and sweet drinks.  Send some to people who have none….” (Nehemiah 8:10). This is the Biblical mandate to have church potlucks!  Note that the food wasn’t supposed to be just for them. Israel is told to “send some to people who have none…”  Whatever you do for your Celebration Sunday, whether there’s food involved or not, share it with your community!

PEOPLE:
The team of people you assemble to plan the Celebration Sunday is crucial to the success of this event. It is important for every person on your team to love a good party and be willing to help throw a great party! This is not the place for people like David’s wife, Michal, who when she saw David celebrating in the streets was definitely what the Bible calls in the original Hebrew, a “party-pooper.”

This team is the place for the people in your church who can put together a creative, energetic, significant celebration.
Look for people who can think big, plan big, and party big! They need to understand your church, its history, and its future. They’ll need to be able to capture the essence of your campaign, communicate its significance, and then help cast the vision for the next big dream of your church.
Another thought is to augment your team with a group of “roving reporters”, ready at any moment to capture the God-moments of the campaign as they occur. They will need to be in place before the campaign begins so you can have snapshots of what happens throughout the WEEKS OF THE SERIES - from LIFE GROUPS to CELEBRATION SUNDAYS including our LAMBS CHURCH and PROJECTS. 
You need people who can see the supernatural in the planned and unplanned events of the campaign, and then find ways to tell the stories during Celebration Sunday.


PLAN:
When you plan your Celebration Sunday, you will need to work with the rest of your 5Ws Team (SOON 6Ws, including "WILL GO Team") to strategize the theme you should select for your Celebration. Your Celebration Sunday is the culmination of WEEKS in the SERIES of spiritual growth, and you want to commemorate what actually took place in your church. For some churches, that will be restoration and renewal. For others it will be increased membership and deeper unity. Other churches will be celebrating
a greater connection with their community. The goals and results of your campaign should drive your theme. Here are some ideas to help you celebrate what God did, and ideas to help you anticipate what God is going to do:

• Celebrate what God did: Connect people with the God-moments of the campaign – the small glimpses of God, and the big miracles of God.
• Feature answers to prayer as a way of highlighting the centrality of prayer and your                church-wide focus on prayer as the foundation of this campaign. (
• Invite people to share their ending to the sentence, “I love this church because…”
• Have entire small groups go to a microphone together to share their story of their missions project. 
• Invite children and youth to share stories from their SERIES experiences.
• Invite local agencies, para-church organizations, or community leaders you worked with on local missions projects to report on what was accomplished through the efforts of your church and bring their thanks to your people. 
• Have some of the families or individuals who were the recipients of your missions projects tell the story of what the acts of kindness meant to them.
• Plan a party where you celebrate or include the group(s) of people you served in your local missions project, such as children on a cancer ward, or residents in a senior citizens’ home, or people from the homeless shelter, SSSS Project and the like.
• Some other one-word ideas for your Celebration could include thanksgiving, sharing, dancing, singing, commemoration, milestones.
• Anticipate what God is going to do: Make sure that this Celebration Sunday event is not an ending, or a big build-up for a let-down after all the excitement is over. Instead, try to see it as a bridge event between a great work of God in people’s hearts, and a great movement of God in the future of your church. Here are some ways to incorporate that thinking into your Celebration:
• As a follow-up to the Week 6 sermon, have a Celebration offering!  Use this offering in a tangible way. You could start a program to address an area of need in your city, or launch a new building program for your church.
• To keep building your community relations, invite your mayor to your Celebration, and honor him or her and commit that your church will continue to pray for them.
• Have a community-based event where you take your celebration outside the church walls and include your community in your party. Maybe several churches who participated in the SERIES could sponsor a family picnic together.
• In the end, this celebration itself is a way of worshiping God, because He is the source of all good gifts.

PRACTICAL TIPS:
Here are a few practical tips to help you get started in your planning.

• Pray together regularly as a team. Pray that God will show you ways to make this event significant, not splashy.
• Arrange ahead of time for a few impacting testimonies from people who have been directly affected and changed by the SERIES or the CAMPAIGN.
• Have people write down their God-moments during the campaign, and collect them throughout the SERIES so that they can be compiled. Do this on a weekly basis and you’ll have a lot of variety for the celebration. Read selected ones on Celebration Sunday.
• Commit some extra resources to this event to enable your team to create the type of event that will be a gift to your congregation.
• Show photos and/or videos of special events that signify growth, like baptisms or small groups doing their missions project together.  
• Depending on the current vision and plan of your church, this Celebration could generate the energy and inspiration for the next step or Big Dream. Tell your church’s story and talk about where you’re going from here.

You know, God’s very first act in the Bible ends with a Celebration.
After God created the world, he set aside an entire day to celebrate what He had done.
God loves a party! Your TEACHING and PREACHING SERIES is a great work, and whenever we finish a major undertaking, we should follow God’s example and party!

1. Rest, and celebrate the results of your labors.
2. Make your Celebration Sunday a significant, God-honoring event in the life of your church. Your Celebration could actually be a connection point, rallying everyone to a unified vision or turning the hearts of your people toward God in a fresh way. 
3. Use this Celebration not as an end to a Campaign, but as a springboard to a healthy future for your church. And, like the people of Israel in the book of Nehemiah, let’s hear a rich chorus from the whole church – “Amen, and amen.”