BEHIND THE SCENES

BEHIND The little chapel was standing room only. Hidden in the back corner of the stairwell, Paul Cox listened intently as Cass Langton addressed the Hillsong creative team. She spoke of the innocence of THE childhood creativity — how little ones are so eager SCREEN to show us their mediocre masterpieces. They are content with simply having put pen to paper, unencumbered by what others might think of their disconnected lines and scribbles. Children simply How the 100-Day create for the sake of creating. Yet as adults, we often lose that simplicity amidst the fear of failure, Creative Challenge judgment from others, and pursuit of perfection. inspired a business At the time, Cox was an accomplished drummer modernising online for the team, having come to Hillsong College to develop those skills in the Worship Stream. However, church platforms his paid work was in website development. Cass Langton continued encouraging the team to create Words: Janae Janik

with what they currently had in their hands. She explained that writers will write, painters will paint pictures, singers use their voice, and musicians play their respective instruments. But while Cox knew how to release creativity through drumming, it had never occurred to him that his skills with website design could be a creative pursuit as well.

Cox began to dream up how he could use his web expertise to launch creativity in the online sphere. He noticed a lot of churches using old, disorganised websites. Since hiring a web developer costs a small fortune, and with no affordable options available, it was understandable that most churches settled for what they could design themselves. Realising this was something he might be able to change, Cox set to work and The Church Co. was born.

It was fundamental to his vision that churches shouldn’t have to settle for mediocrity when it came to their online presence. Skilled vocalists help lead people to a place where they can encounter Jesus. There’s beauty and reverence in the sound of their trained voices. In the same way, Cox believed a skilled developer should be designing the church website in order for it to best communicate the church’s vision and mission.

“You wouldn’t invite me, your web developer, to come and speak at your church on the weekend and you definitely don’t want me to sing and lead worship,” Cox said. “Your website that you’ve built yourself sounds like me trying to sing and lead worship.”

That sentiment became his pitch to pastors, helping them see the potential in letting his business contribute to the work God was already doing in their congregations. His business now reaches tens of thousands across the globe. However, like most entrepreneurial ventures, it wasn’t an overnight success. The beginning was a bit more menial. Initially, Cox offered his services for free. When he eventually began charging for them, half his small clientele dropped out. At first, he only worked on this new venture when he had some spare time, (maybe ten hours each month), but eventually Cox and his wife moved to New York and he decided to invest more into this business idea. So before the sun rose while most people were still asleep, Cox would wake up and drop by the local coffee shop.

“It was a lot of early mornings. I would wake up at five, go to Toby’s Estate, which is called Partners in Brooklyn,” Cox said. “And I would work until nine and then go to my job and work. I did that for like, two years until I finally got enough customers to where I could quit my job.”

As he used his creativity to make churches more accessible online, Cox began to recognise an opportunity to shift people’s mindsets — the mindset that limited church to a physical location. He started wondering if church could be tailored for people who may never come inside the four walls of the building. Maybe the website could provide the opportunity to encounter God all on its own.

According to Cox, the website is often the first interaction a person has with church, and even more importantly with Jesus. That makes it increasingly important to make sure it actually explains who Jesus is. However, he found most websites had no explanation of the gospel at all.

We already assume that they know why they should attend a church and they know about Jesus,” Cox explained. “Or they’re in like, some midst of a spiritual enlightening that makes them want to come to church, but we don’t often take one step prior to that which is like, ‘Hey, if you know nothing about church. This is what church is about. It’s about this person named Jesus.’”

If nobody knows the person behind the events and programs, then we lose the reason why the programs exist in the first place. Cox made it his goal to create online church platforms that clearly pointed to Jesus. This included sermons made easily accessible, the ability to join online connect groups, as well as participate in outreach programs. The website wouldn’t just be a source of information, but an avenue to engage in Faith with other people.

In some ways, even though nobody sees him, Cox is the front door greeter for thousands of churchgoers every Sunday. He often stays up till 3 a.m. working to make sure the servers don’t crash the next day so upwards of 110,000 people can be ‘welcomed’ to church via the various websites he’s created.

While some may go on mission trips, and others preach or evangelise, he sits behind a computer screen and codes. It’s his contribution to the Great Commission. In fact, he has an online map of the world showing all the churches he’s built websites for. Each church is represented by a light, reminding him that there are thousands of small communities being impacted by the gospel because of the work he does. me is like the map isn’t reached yet. So the map’s not covered yet, which means we still have work that we need to do.”

It all started at the back stairwell of a chapel, through a simple creative challenge and a revelation

of the creativity sitting in his hands. It’s turned into a new understanding of what it means to use our talents for a greater purpose.

“Calling for me is kind of like...it’s not one thing it’s just like how can you help the Great Commission,” Cox said. “What am I doing? Okay, how can I use it for the Kingdom.”

He may not even be on the same continent as the people he’s impacting, and they may not even know he exists, but he has been able to create a platform through which people encounter the love of God every day, all around the world.

So what will your creativity inspire?

My goal is to light it up everywhere. So, like right now, the entire United States is pretty much lit up because that’s where I was living. So now it’s like, how can we get this into Africa and Australia and Europe, because every church that signs up, puts another dot on the map. And so, yeah, the why for