I had the opportunity to visit Buckhead Church in Atlanta this morning. Buckhead is a campus of North Point Ministries–Andy Stanley is the senior pastor. Buckhead is one of three North Point campuses in the Atlanta area. Here are some of the observations from my visit this morning:

  • Though the church has been around since 2001, they just moved into this new location off of Lenox Road at Tower Place in May. It’s an amazing campus. If I understood correctly, they have 200,000 square feet in four stories crammed onto 2 1/2 acres of land.
  • Within that facility, there’s an auditorium that has seating for 3,000 people. Currently, there are about 4,500 people attending the three Sunday services. Did you catch that? This is a campus where the teaching is primarily delivered via video, and there’s 4,500 people showing up. Multi-site works.
  • The video, by the way, is very cool. I’ve seen Andy preaching live at the Alpharetta campus. I think I actually prefer watching him preach on the video screen.
  • Everything besides the teaching is like a normal service experience. There’s a band, kid’s programming, host teams, etc. I’m sure it takes several hundred volunteers to pull off everything that happens at that campus.
  • The worship leader was named "Moxie." That’s a really cool name. It’s better than "Tony."
  • I really appreciated how the campus pastor opened the service. He didn’t assume that people had been there before. In fact, he took a few moments to update guests on what had happened in the the series in prior weeks. I loved the intentionality of communicating as if people were going to show up for the first time.
  • I’ve attended services at all three of North Point’s campuses. As a late-thirty-something, I really prefer the "edge" of the Buckhead experience. If I lived in Atlanta, I’d probably connect at that campus.
  • I enjoyed hearing a little bit of Jeff and Bob’s stories. They’re on the staff leadership team now. Before that, though, both were fully-engaged in high-profile marketplace positions. They gave up their careers to transition into full-time ministry. It makes me wonder who God may be preparing to make similar transitions at NewSpring.