There is now keyword searching for blogs and other uploaded items.  Also, bulletins will now expire after 30 days.

The word "is" has been removed from Statuses.  In the past, it has always appeared and there was not an option to remove it.  Also, under the You menu, there is a "Your Pages" option which allows you to keep track of the pages you create.

Living Hope has a new campus in Gresham, Oregon which you can check out at this address:  http://www.livinghopechurch.com/group/lhc_gresham

• On the Home page in the Messages panel, you can now select the number of messages you want to show. 
• On the Home page in the Bulletins panel, you can choose your own title for the panel and the number of bulletins you want to show. 
• The event calendar on the footer of every page works better.
• Added more video information to the video player page.

A Joyful Noise

Monday, April 09, 2007
By Jose Paul Corona

Clark County church makes a splash with its Easter service at the Rose Garden

PORTLAND - You don't often see people getting baptized at the Rose Garden arena, but that's what happened Sunday.

Clark County-based Living Hope Church rented the home of the Portland Trail Blazers for an Easter service. Church officials said Sunday was the first time such an event had been held at the venue, which usually hosts sporting events and concerts.

Estimates indicated nearly 14,000 people attended the service. More than 700 of them were baptized in four pools, said the Rev. Missy Hannon, co-executive pastor at the church.

"It surpassed our expectations," Hannon said of the turnout. It also caused a traffic jam on Interstate 5.

Most who decided to get baptized did so spontaneously, said the Rev. John �Bishop.

More than 7,500 people attended last year's Easter services, Bishop said.

The church, which has five campuses, decided to hold an Easter Sunday service at the arena about seven weeks ago, Hannon said.

During a weekend in February, �Bishop announced that a special collection would be taken. The money brought in �during the 21 services at five campuses would be used for Easter.

Bishop, who thought the total would be about $20,000, said the amount would determine where and how the holiday would be celebrated.

The collection ended up �being $100,000, enough to rent the Rose Garden, a venue that holds more than 19,000.

By renting the arena, Bishop said, he hoped to double the attendance at last year's service. He at least came close, and may have accomplished the goal - he said that many people didn't want to sit in the 300-level seats and left, while others couldn't find parking.

The turnout for the 11 a.m. service, which was free and open to the public, caused a back-up on Interstate 5. Portland police said the traffic was similar to that around a Blazers game.

And the Easter service was lavish in many ways, Hannon said, including using the Rose Garden's big screen. Plus, Hannon said, for extra pop, T-shirts were shot from air guns.

Bishop was pleased by the attendance, but doesn't know whether the church will hold an Easter service at the arena again. "We may do it again next year," he said. "The (Rose) Garden is available."

In Our View: Easter's Lessons

Sunday, April 08, 2007

The lessons of Easter cross all boundaries of denominations and nations.

In its truest form, beyond bunnies and baskets, Easter is the Christian celebration of the risen Lord. The agony of crucifixion is overtaken by the joy of resurrection. Christians embark on new life. It is appropriate, then, that each Easter arrives with each spring.

And while one's faith remains deeply personal, Easter is very much a community observance. Evidence is seen throughout Clark County this morning as church parking lots spill over into pastures. The multi-site Living Hope Church, which in a typical week offers a dozen services at five locations, this morning expects up to 10,000 worshippers at a special Easter service scheduled for 11 a.m. at the Rose Garden in Portland. The lessons of Easter cross the boundary of a river.

On this morning, some see sunrise not through a rush-hour windshield but over the rim of a hymnal. For many, this is a morning of sartorial splendor and magnificent music. It might be the only day of the year when a shy mother wears a hat, a tone-deaf father dares to sing and a dancing child carries a basket for his tune.

For all its morning magnificence, Easter, like Christmas, is built around a man of humility. Not all of these lessons are happy or merry. In the early 1960s, Johnny Bond and Tex Ritter wrote a narrative, "Here Was a Man," that was most popularly recited by Johnny Cash. The middle portion of that speech describes a man of humility who "never held political office, never wrote a book, never bought a home, never had a family, never went to college �" It's hard to imagine such a man achieving greatness in 2007. Why, he never even had a blog!

There was no splendor or magnificence when this man was denied by one friend and betrayed by another, when he endured a mock trial, when he was whipped while carrying his own death device, and then was executed despite committing no crime.

"And even while he was dying, his executioners gambled for the only piece of property that he had in the world, and that was his robe, his purple robe." Finally, the man of humility was buried in a borrowed grave.

Only not so finally.

Today, it's hard to fathom a man who has no army and fights no battles taking command of the hearts of people around the Earth, and ruling hearts for two millennia. We have none of this man's writings, yet he remains a universally quoted counselor.

This lesson about the power of humility is taught in other ways by people of different faiths. Even the faithless recognize the thorny hazards of hubris. They know that the man of humility arrived in this world in a barn, born of peasants. Imagine what awaits such a baby today.

It's an amazing story, isn't it? In Easter's magnificence, the life of humility serves to guide.

Marquee Mission
Sunday March 26, 2006
By Amy McFall Prince , Columbian staff writer

John Bishop 's typical Sunday best is a pair of trendy Born sneakers, designer jeans and a pressed, button-down shirt, untucked.

The Brush Prairie pastor preps for services in an office at Living Hope Church that he calls his greenroom. Painted in burnt sienna, the greenroom is outfitted with black leather couches, a wet bar, and a slate-tiled coffee table displaying Dive Training, Wired and Time magazines. A painting of a rhinoceros hangs above one couch, serving as a symbol.

"They see 35 feet in front of them, run 30 miles an hour and weigh 4 tons. They crash into things," the 42-year-old Bishop says. "That is so Living Hope. We've been running forward, making mistakes."

Living Hope isn't just running forward, it's charging full tilt.

Starting on Easter Sunday, Living Hope will turn to technology for help in delivering its message beyond Brush Prairie to four movie theaters and a second church building it purchased in Orchards. Each location will host two Sunday services including a digital video of Bishop's message for adults and a live puppet show for children in which the characters will lip-sync a pre-recorded script.

The five-fold expansion is just the latest effort in an outreach program that's considered to be among the most ambitious of its kind.

Bishop's pop-culture-infused sermons already are available on the Internet through podcasts and streaming video. On weekends, he draws about 3,400 regulars to six services. The taped sermons delivered to five new locations starting on Easter Sunday will expand the church's physical reach from Hazel Dell to east Vancouver.

"I've been to 260 megachurches this year," said John Vaughan, who runs a Missouri-based church research and consulting business. "I don't know of any other church that would try anything this bold."

Vaughan was so taken aback by Living Hope that he's writing a story about it for The Church Report, a national trade publication. He predicts the church could soon become one of the 100 largest megachurches in the country.

Though Living Hope is outpacing many of its peers, its methods are shared by many other independent congregations.

Many so-called megachurches are adding satellite locations using digital audio-and video-editing equipment that's not only gotten more affordable, but better.

It was necessity that drove the 10-year-old Living Hope to explore using technology to deliver its message to multiple sites. Its church building at 10702 N.E. 117th Ave can't continue to support its growth, which reached 750 percent the past two years. A year ago, it drew about 1,600 people, mostly youth and young families who hadn't joined a church before. By January, that number shot up to 3,400.

Bishop laughs as he remembers a conversation with a banker who described Living Hope's growth as "catastrophic."

Bishop said he responded, "Nothing at Living Hope adds up."

Spreading the message

When the idea to launch satellite campuses in movie theaters was first discussed, Bishop's team of associate pastors initially picked about 10 sites ranging from downtown Vancouver 's historic Kiggins Theater to the hip McMenamins Crystal Ballroom in Portland.

In the end, they settled instead on five. Starting on Easter, a team of church staff and volunteers will fan out to Cinema 99, Cascade 16, Battle Ground Cinemas, Cinetopia and a recently acquired second church building in Orchards. An associate pastor will be on hand at each venue to gather the crowd and lead the service that will culminate with a recorded version of Bishop's sermon.

Bishop recognizes that with the expansion online and into movie theaters that he loses the personal connection he once had with members, some of whom started the church in 1996 at Manor Grange.

It's no longer possible for him to know the names of everyone's children or the details of a family's recent struggles.

"I'm just not that guy anymore," he said. "That's a hard transition."

In recent weeks, Bishop has been coached to spend more time looking into cameras and less time looking at the people in the audience. "It's the biggest adjustment I've had to make" in 10 years of preaching, Bishop said.

It's an adjustment being made nationwide.

Greg Ligon who co-wrote "The Multi-Site Church Revolution: Being One Church in Many Locations," which will be published by Christian book distributor Zondervan, found more than 250 churches in 36 states using movie theaters as satellite sanctuaries. Some, like Living Hope, use recorded services. Others simulcast their services live. "It's so new, there's not a standard that we've arrived at yet," he said.

Maximizing resources

One of Clark County 's larger megachurches, Crossroads Community Church , offers live feeds of services from its Web site. Many others have turned to podcasting to extend their reach.

Vaughan says these churches are demonstrating their flexibility.

When Living Hope didn't have the budget to expand its 600-seat auditorium in Brush Prairie, it first started adding services. Then, with a small investment in technology and employees who knew how to use it, the church launched a creative Web site (www.livinghopechurch.com) with blogs and a constant stream of new material.

"If most businesses were as resourceful as that church is, they'd be Fortune 500 companies," Vaughan says.

Technology is so important to Living Hope's success that Bishop says he won't limit spending on it. He believes that doing so would inevitably limit the church's growth. "If we need something, we find a way to pay for it," he says. "Technology is not what drives us. We drive technology, and I'll leverage it any way I can."

Technology makes the church's messages accessible. Bishop taps pop culture to make them compelling.

A recent series of sermons about love and marriage borrowed from ABC's "Lost" TV series. The church transformed its stage into a deserted island with tropical plants, boulders, tiki torches and a small wrecked plane. With the setting in place, it produced DVDs of the lessons, including "Lost in Sex" and "Lost in Reality," that members could watch at home.

Bishop's latest series of productions plays off the movie business and movie theaters, a nod to the Easter Sunday theater launch. The church's set designer pulled together a volunteer crew to build a retro movie theater facade in four days.

Bishop sees his role changing as he works to keep messages relevant and the themes catchy. As a result, he's become a different kind of leader. "I feel like I'm the cultural architect of Living Hope."

Vaughan says the key to Living Hope's success is that it has found a way to engage young, unchurched people. Combining that appeal with technology creates a powerful draw.

"This church will actually bring people to your community," he says.

Amy McFall Prince can be reached at amy.prince@columbian.com or 360-759-8019.

Did you know?

* The term megachurch is typically applied to churches that draw 2,000 or more people a weekend.

* At least a half-dozen Clark County churches are using technology such as podcasting to reach a larger audience.