By Allen White 
Pastor Wayne Cordeiro leads New Hope Oahu, which is certainly the largest church in Hawaii as well as one of the largest churches in America. Wayne came to us with two objectives in mind. He wanted to create a small group curriculum based on his recently released book, The Seven Rules of Success, and he wanted to connect his congregation into groups for the series and beyond.
New Hope Oahu already had a strong production crew, so they didn’t need the work done for them, but they knew that while the expertly produced weekend services, video-based group curriculum was a new genre for them. NHO partnered with us to coach their production team, to provide on-site direction for their video shoot, and to coach their small group team in launching new groups and sustaining those groups past the seven week series. Our team rolled up our sleeves to help them masterfully produce the curriculum for the book.
We provided guidance through the pre-production process from what equipment to have on hand to determining what elements to shoot and which on-camera personnel to use to help with turning a tradebook into a teaching script for the teleprompter. While this was new for the NHO team, this was not new to our team. Prior to this project, we worked with a variety of pastors to create small group curriculum based on a tradebook including Rick Warren’s The Daniel Plan, Chris Hodges’ Fresh Air, Wilfredo (Choco) de Jesus’ Amazing Faith and In the Gap titles, and Pastor Kerri Weems’ Rhythms of Grace. By repurposing great content, these pastors developed additional tools to help their congregations and many others to apply the principles to their lives in a group.
Before you get jealous, the video shoot took place in Oregon, not Hawaii. As you can see from this beautiful outdoor setting, Wayne and his team shot on a horse farm in both indoor and outdoor settings. The Lifetogether team provided on-site coaching to lead their team through every step of the process, every element on the DVD, and every promotional video to recruit leaders and launch their church-wide initiative.
The end result was both a beautiful small group tool and seeing 6,000 people connected into groups at New Hope Oahu in their first video teaching series. There is work ahead to continue support their small group team with the structures and training necessary to sustain groups for 6,000 people, but this isn’t new to us either. Best of all, New Hope Oahu now has the ability to continue producing curriculum for their groups with or better yet, without our help well into the future.