[In 2011 Keynote celebrates 45 years of ministry. We thought we would use our Friday posts to look back on God's faithfulness through the years.]
Keynote Office from 1992-2006
After 14 years of centralized ministry in Carmel, IN, Keynote’s Worldwide Ministry Center was established in 2006. We moved from a large house to a 19,000 square foot office facility in Westfield, IN.
For the next ten months, the Keynote artists continued rehearsing and recording at the old office while East Street Studios was being built. This 23,000 square foot facility includes rehearsal space for bands, a recording studio and a 12,000 square foot event space for concerts, conferences and training events.
The first official “event” in the new facility was the 2007 Keynote Summer Project which included the Impact Music Summer Project, a partnership which began in 2005. Classes for all the students took place at East Street Studios and the bands for both Keynote and Impact prepared their programs in the rehearsal rooms surrounding the main meeting space. [click to continue…]
[In 2011 Keynote celebrates 45 years of ministry. We thought we would use our Friday posts to look back on God's faithfulness through the years.]
International ministry opportunities exploded for Keynote in 2004-2005. Here are a few highlights:
Tajikistan — New Life, a band from this former Soviet republic came to the 2004 Keynote Summer Project. The next fall, Keynote’s Dave Fackler went to help the team plan a recording studio — the closest one was 1200 miles away! While he was there, Dave saw the band in action in Ragun, a mountain village about 50 miles east of Dushanbe.
“New Life played on a concrete stage in the center of town. The longer they played, the bigger the crowd got, and the more people got into it–dancing, clapping, etc…Alexei estimated the crowd at 2000…. Two years prior, they couldn’t set foot in that village because extremists left over from the mid-90’s civil war controlled it. Since then, the village government has opened to other ministries …, –all because the band opened up doors of friendship”
Dave Fackler
The video below tells more of the story of how our friends are using the studio that was built in 2005.
Italy — a place where spiritual fruit requires much cultivation. X-nelo spent two weeks in Rome, Florence and Pisa working alongside U. S. students on spring break. Campus Crusade for Christ staff members and students in Italy said X-nelo was an answer to prayer; X-nelo helped them meet and build relationships with many non-believers. In the previous year, staff members in Pisa had only seen one person put his faith in Christ. Two weeks after X-nelo performed, four students came to Christ. [click to continue…]
Kate Carpenter, a contributing writer for the Keynote Connection blog, is serving as an intern with Keynote.
[From time to time we'll post about various resources we recommend. We hope you will find them helpful as you seek ways to honor God with your labor, influence, finances or expertise (L.I.F.E.).]
If you’re like me, you probably don’t give much thought to December 6th, St. Nick’s Day. Besides being the day I finally convinced my parents to celebrate by putting little gifts in my shoes while I slept, it didn’t mean much to me.
Not until I did some research about who Saint Nicholas actually was. He was a Christian who took seriously Jesus’ words to “sell what you own and give the money to the poor.”
There are many stories about Saint Nicholas, but nearly all of them have to do with secret gift-giving. He was famous for leaving gold coins in children’s shoes when they left them out for him. There’s also a legend that Nicholas secretly paid for the dowries of three poor sisters, allowing them to marry good men instead of being sold into slavery. He tossed bags of gold through their window at night and they landed in stockings that were hung in front of the fireplace to dry.
While it’s easy to simply think of Saint Nicholas as a kind man, receive presents on December 6th and go on with life, I think St. Nick would have a different idea of how to honor his day.
I think he would have us do what he did: find people in need and help them. There are so many wonderful organizations helping people that it’s easy to find one that meets a need that you personally care about. Here are a few that people at Keynote are excited about.
This Christmas season, we encourage you to be like St. Nick: give generously and have fun doing it! Whether you’re meeting a need around the world or next door, you’re participating in a tradition that began with God. He so loved the world that he gave. Let us go and do the same.
Share some of your traditions of giving to others during Christmas in the comments below.
[In 2011 Keynote celebrates 45 years of ministry. We thought we would use our Friday posts to look back on God's faithfulness through the years.]
In 2004, Keynote staff members, Bruce and Julie Boyd began adding their three sons, Brandon, Shaun and Ryan to some of their concerts. Each of the boys played an instrument – bass, drums and guitar, respectively. An opportunity to go to the Middle East for outreach concerts in schools came up so they packed their bags and headed out for an amazing adventure.
The band performed multiple evangelistic concerts each day, using their own stories of forgiveness as a platform to tell people about Jesus. The response was incredible. More than 1000 people indicated first-time decisions to trust Christ at their concerts that first year.
The Boyds have returned to the same country multiple times, the first few times as The Boyd Family Band with all five performing and, most recently, as 3Union with only Brandon, Shaun and Ryan performing. Bruce and Julie handle all the details and watch in amazement as they see God work. Each year the response to the gospel was incredible with more than 15% of their audiences indicating a desire to begin a relationship with Jesus. [click to continue…]
My palms are sweaty, my knees are shaking, my mouth feels like cotton and I can feel the skin on my neck turning red. And they’re all sitting there waiting to hear what I have to say. Familiar feeling?
“If speaking in public scares you, you aren’t alone,” says Paul L. Witt, PhD, assistant professor of communication studies at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth. “The important thing is, it does not have to make us embarrassed or frightened or upset to speak in front of other people…You may be nervous, but you don’t have to be disabled in front of other people.”
Whether we’re in front of a group of 200 or 20, or even just sitting across the table from someone, most of us have probably wished we knew how to communicate more effectively. We think Keynote can help.
This March, Keynote will host our third annual Comm Lab, a four-day training event offering biblically-based teaching and practical training to help people refine and improve their communication skills.
Think for a minute about your favorite sport. To get good at it, you’ve got to spend time practicing and maybe training with a decent coach. Speaker and author Tim Downs argues that those same principles apply in developing as communicators. At Comm Lab, we offer the opportunity to spend four days practicing various communication skills in small groups and receiving personalized feedback from trusted communication coaches. Tim Downs, Tim Muehlhoff (Associate Professor of Communication at Biola University) and other seasoned Campus Crusade for Christ staff members will present valuable messages on communicating effectively and confidently as an ambassador for Christ.
Comm Lab will take place March 27-30, 2012 at Keynote’s East Street Studios event center. For more information, visit our website.
