CreativePastors Blog & Podcast

The Sounds of Silence

Please forgive the two long weeks of silence. We love our blog readers...really! In fact, when you get to the end of this post, we'll give you a great reason to smile!

What have we been doing, you ask? We have been working around the clock to make CreativePastors everything you want it to be! We receive so much great feedback on what you love and what you'd like to see on our site. Over the next few months, we're going to be rolling out some very cool things. Here's an update on what's new.

Podcasting

Next week, we enter a whole new world on CreativePastors.com. What would you do to receive Ed Young's weekend message for free each week? Would you click a button?

You're going to love what's coming.

Catalyst

Are you heading to Atlanta next week for the Catalyst Conference? The CP team will be there - be sure to stop by and say hello! We have some great giveaways and we'll even set aside something extra for anyone who mentions this blog. We’ll be in Booth #54 on the Concourse Level.

New Staff

We’ve added two great people to the CP Team! Cliff McNeely is our new Director. Cliff is Fellowship's Resource Development Pastor and works with Ed on the weekend message as an integral part of the creative team. He shares Ed's passion for the local church and equipping pastors with creative tools. Victoria Sullivan is your customer service connection, available by phone or email to answer your questions and make your CP experience effective and enjoyable.

Two of our founding team members have moved into new ministry positions at Fellowship Church. As most of you know, Fellowship now has a total of four campuses. Terry Storch and Leslie Clemens have both been called to this ministry; Terry as the Campus Pastor of our Uptown Dallas location and Leslie as the Executive Assistant at the Alliance campus. We’ll miss them like crazy, but they will always be part of the CP family!

And me? I'm the Web Director at Fellowship, overseeing the design and development of our websites. My job is to help make all the cool ideas you and the CP Team come up with a reality.

We'll have much more to tell you soon, but some things are just too big to fit in a blog post.

Look for updates from next week's Catalyst Conference. And for our loyal blog readers, leave a comment on this post and we'll send you a free transcript of one of our favorite messages, Four things that make God smile by Ed Young.

Make a Deposit for Later

The Director of Volunteers for Fellowship Church has put a unique practice into place to invest in her leaders on staff.  Once job openings are filled, she writes out why that candidate is the best person for that position.  She notes the reasons he gave for why he is feeling called to that ministry and files it for later.  When a discouraging season hits, she can pull up that file and remind that person of why he’s there.

You'll find more ideas like this in our Volunteer Kit - check it out!

You Want Authentic?

In a society built around experiences, it's not just enough to attend church. People clamor for authentic worship—they want to feel it, to be a part of it.

What's one of the richest worship experiences we can offer them? Serving.

As Ed Young illustrates in The Table, our worship can't consist solely of what we take in. We have to move beyond diet, pushing away from the table and exercising our faith. When our members get passionate about volunteering, they will experience a whole new level of intimacy with God. Their energy and enthusiasm becomes contagious and spills over into every area of the church. And while their lives are being transformed, more resources become available to our churches for reaching the lost.

At Fellowship Church, we've deliberately chosen to keep our staff small so that our members have plenty of opportunities to serve. With nearly 1,500 volunteers serving across our four campuses each weekend, we've learned a lot about recruiting, training, leading, retaining and appreciating our volunteers. We want to share all that with you through our Volunteer Kit—available this month on CreativePastors at a $50 savings. Stop by the site and check it out!

Hurricane Relief Effort

Tragedy struck next door last weekend as Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc in our region. As we continue to pray for the victims and relief workers, Fellowship Church is launching its response campaign by providing an area for online donations at FellowshipChurch.com as well as accepting donations of needed items throughout our four campuses. We are working directly with a Fellowship Connection church that is serving as a staging area for assistance relief in one of the hardest-hit areas. We are also aiding families within our church who have opened their doors to those who were forced to evacuate. It was recently announced that approximately 25,000 residents of the New Orleans area will be re-locating to Dallas/Ft. Worth this week.

We'd be interested to hear how your churches are reaching out to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.