CreativePastors Blog & Podcast

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Rallying Volunteers for Easter

As you gear up for your Easter services, your to-do list will probably include something like "Line up lots of volunteers!" Our Director of Volunteers, Wendy Bertel, and her team have the same task on their plates. Here's a quick look at the strategy we will be using at Fellowship Church:

• Offer an alternative perspective. We encourage our current volunteers to see serving on Easter as a local mission opportunity by committing to multiple services.  We have many people that come to church for the first time at Easter and we want them to feel welcomed here.  Extra volunteers on hand who can provide one-on-one attention is a huge benefit.
• Nix neediness. As we recruit, we keep the focus on the vision and the opportunity for our volunteers to be a part of what God will do at our church - we do not use the word “need”!
• Encourage them to step up. Most people are willing to help, but they need to be invited. We’re asking our volunteers to serve during at least two of our Easter services.
• Bump up the numbers. Since we’ll be welcoming a larger-than-usual crowd during Easter services, we are planning for extra volunteers, including enough to cover for those who aren’t able to serve at the last minute.
• Make it a pleasant experience. Our volunteer leaders will mingle with people as they serve and let them know how much they are appreciated. We'll also try to provide some special snacks as an extra treat. Easter is a reason to celebrate – we have fun with our wonderful volunteers!

Wendy will be taking a break from Easter preparation next week to teach the Volunteering Breakout Session at our C3 Regional Conference in Orlando on April 3. If you are in any way remotely involved with volunteers, you won't want to miss her in-depth insights!

Easter Strategies

In case you missed our most recent newsletter from Ed (sign up here for future editions), here are some helpful tips for planning Easter services at your church:

• Easter is a team effort. Your entire staff should be focused on preparing for Easter services throughout the church. What songs will you use? How will you encourage children who are visiting for the first time to come back? How are you mobilizing extra volunteers? Are your service times on your website yet? Now is the time to start planning the worship, brainstorming the graphics for videos and the bulletin, recruiting extra help, and developing the message - as a team. (There's so much to say about preparing your Easter sermon that we're going to focus on that in depth next month.)
• Be strategic with your service times. If you've never added extra service times before, you might want to try offering expanded options for Easter this year. Keep your fingers on the pulse of your community and you'll have the best information to guide your planning. If everyone in your area works on Good Friday, then that afternoon might not be the best time to offer an additional service. Take into account the local school and workplace schedules as you target the times when most people will be able to attend. At Fellowship Church, we've learned that evening services leading up to a major holiday are our peak opportunities. And don't go overboard in adding services; plan strategically for maximum attendance at each one. You can check out our Easter service times here.
• Easter should be an anchor. When you're deciding whether to make your Easter service part of a series, be flexible. It's a great idea to change it up from year to year - maybe one year you launch a series on Easter weekend and the next year you use it to wrap up. Consider your annual church calendar, personal/family schedule, and spring break timing in your community as you plan. Whatever you choose, make sure to have a compelling follow-up. When we give those first time visitors a reason to return, we're planting the seed for a long-lasting relationship with the church, and ultimately, Christ. At Fellowship Church, we've varied our approach from year to year - check out our past Easter messages here. This Easter, we're doing a stand-alone message and announcing an exciting new series that will begin the very next weekend.
• Get the word out one by one. The best possible way to spread awareness about your Easter services is through word of mouth. Lives are changed and churches are built one person at a time. We continue to find that the majority of our newcomers visited for the first time as the result of an invitation It may not seem like one invite makes a difference when compared with the overall crowd, but remind your members that they've never locked eyes with someone who didn't matter to God. Make it easy for them to invite a friend, whether it's with tools like tear-off invitation cards in your bulletin and e-invites on your website or something as simple as using the bulletin itself as an invitation. Then you can put traditional advertising and marketing methods in place to support that effort instead of as a standalone strategy. And if you're going to try something like a direct mail piece, make sure it's exceptional. Hit it out of the park. Choose your words and graphics carefully with a goal of clarity and impact.

Podcast > Trading Spaces > Rubble Trouble

Rubble Trouble 
Three days. 1 Designer. All of humanity. 1 carpenter. The ultimate price. That’s the premise behind God’s restoration plan for humanity through Jesus. In this powerful Easter message discover how God traded spaces with each of us.

To listen now, click on the podcast icon below.

Length 27:20

Trading Spaces Series
As Ed Young follows two sets of neighbors who trade spaces and transform a room in each other's home, this compelling and unique teaching series will inspire you to think about how Christ “Traded Spaces” with us on the cross so that our lives could be forever transformed.

Trading Spaces

CreativePastors

If you have iTunes 5.0, click the link below to subscribe to our podcast. Twenty-four hours after Ed delivers his weekend message at Fellowship Church, it will be downloaded to your computer automatically. You can listen at your computer or take the MP3 with you on your iPod or other MP3 player.

If you don't have iTunes, you can get it here free for Mac or Windows. You can also subscribe to the podcast using other podcasting tools and RSS newsreaders. The feed address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cpblog

C3 Regional Followup

Many thanks to all of you who came out for the Regional Creative Church Conferences in South and North Carolina! Our conference team was overwhelmed by the response and really enjoyed meeting so many wonderful church leaders. Here's a photo album with some shots from the two conferences.

If you haven't had a chance to attend C3, you still have some great opportunities! The next regional is less than two weeks away in sunny Orlando (sounds nice right about now, doesn't it?). Online registration will close next week, but as always we'll be welcoming on-site registrations on the day of the conference.

Podcast > Men and Women > Garage Sale

Garage Sale
From the life of Simon Peter, Ed reminds us that God can restore the masculine and feminine junk of our lives through the power of the resurrected Christ.

To listen now, click on the podcast icon below.

Length 28:52

Men & Women Series
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. - Genesis 1:27 Unquestionably, there has been some serious gender confusion over the last several decades. Most of us don't really understand who we are as men and women. In this timely series, Ed Young teaches that God can rescue and refurbish our true masculinity and femininity based on the perfect character of Jesus Christ.

Men and Women

CreativePastors

If you have iTunes 5.0, click the link below to subscribe to our podcast. Twenty-four hours after Ed delivers his weekend message at Fellowship Church, it will be downloaded to your computer automatically. You can listen at your computer or take the MP3 with you on your iPod or other MP3 player.

If you don't have iTunes, you can get it here free for Mac or Windows. You can also subscribe to the podcast using other podcasting tools and RSS newsreaders. The feed address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cpblog

Go Regional

Couldn't make it to the Creative Church Conference (C3) in Dallas/Ft. Worth this January? No worries, we'll come to you! We're taking C3 on the road as we host Regional Conferences throughout the US this year. In the past, some of you have let us know that you're not able to make the trip to Grapevine in January, so the concept of Regional C3 Conferences developed as a way to make it easier for you to attend. Starting next week, we'll be heading out to the following locations:

• March 20, Greenville, SC, NewSpring Church
• March 21, Raleigh, NC, Living Word Family Church
• April 3, Orlando, FL, The Gathering Place
• June 12, Phoenix, AZ, CitiChurch
• July 12, Los Angeles, CA, Newsong Church
• October 2, Atlanta, GA,  Mountain Lake Church

A couple of really cool things about the Regionals:

1. You only pay one fee ($325/church) and you get to bring as many people as you want. Your entire team can enjoy the general sessions together, and then your group can divide and conquer as you each choose two options from six different breakouts.
2. You'll experience a more intimate setting at our Regional conferences with increased opportunities to interact with our staff and other attendees. It's always a pleasure to meet you and share what's going on in our respective ministries. When the ideas and stories start flying back and forth, the air seems electric with brainwaves!
3. Senior pastors and their spouses can enjoy a special Q&A luncheon with Ed.

You can register at the door for the North and South Carolina conferences, and online registration is available for Orlando, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Atlanta. We'd love to see you there!

Easter Invite Cards

What do you pay more attention to...

an advertisement for a restaurant in the newspaper 

or...a friend who raves about the wonderful food and service at the local cafe she just tried?

We trust our friends. They know what we like and they often share our tastes. So when they recommend something to us, we're going to give that a lot more weight than a blanket advertising message aimed toward the general public. Word of mouth marketing is becoming recognized widely as the future of marketing and advertising. You know this - we call it evangelism :)

At Fellowship Church, the majority of our new members say that they first attended a weekend service because a friend invited them. So, we're always looking for ways to make it easy for people to invite someone to our church. A couple of years ago, we debuted tear-off invitation cards in our weekend bulletin. These business-card sized invites feature our service times, a map, and graphics that promote an upcoming series. We don't include these in every bulletin, but use them to build up to times like Easter, Christmas, back to school, etc. Here's an example of the invite cards we used before Easter and Christmas last year.

Sometimes we make an announcement from the stage and challenge our members to use the cards to reach out to people in their lives who are missing that crucial relationship with Christ. At other times, we let the cards speak for themselves. Not only have these been a great tool for our members on an individual basis, but we've seen stacks of them in businesses and doctors' offices throughout the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. They took the initiative - all we had to do was supply them with the method.

Podcast > Masterpieces > Raising of the Cross

Raising of the Cross 
Have you ever felt like just a face in the crowd? In this special Easter message, based on Rembrandt’s self-portrait, The Raising of the Cross, you'll discover how God has communicated what He thinks about each one of us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

To listen now, click on the podcast icon below.

Length 30:32

Masterpieces Series
Sometimes a great work of art can take your breath away. But we see even greater masterpieces every day, human lives in the hands of the Creator. In this series, using some of the world’s great masterpieces as backdrops, Ed Young reminds us that the canvas of life is still wet.

Masterpieces

CreativePastors

If you have iTunes 5.0, click the link below to subscribe to our podcast. Twenty-four hours after Ed delivers his weekend message at Fellowship Church, it will be downloaded to your computer automatically. You can listen at your computer or take the MP3 with you on your iPod or other MP3 player.

If you don't have iTunes, you can get it here free for Mac or Windows. You can also subscribe to the podcast using other podcasting tools and RSS newsreaders. The feed address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cpblog

A Breath of Fresh Air

Have you had a chance lately to invest in yourself as a leader? This is particulary busy time of year for churches - getting ready for Easter, spring curriculum, planning for summer events...Not to mention the hours we pour into the individual relationships so crucial to our ministries.

If it's time to refuel, consider picking up a copy of our C3 General Sessions. Block out a mini-retreat on your calendar, either solo or with your team, and check out the insights shared by Ed Young, Bill Hybels, Erwin McManus and T.D. Jakes at this year's Creative Church Conference.

Many of you who attended let us know that C3 was a pivotal moment for your church team or your journey as a leader. As attendee Jason Nelson commented, “We were all so blown away by what we experienced and I felt like this was not only the best C3 I have attended, but it was one of the best church conferences I have ever attended.” I can definitely say that C3 spoke to our staff at Fellowship Church as well. We're still not done chewing on those talks, and you'll hear us quoting lines such as, "It's like Bishop Jakes said, we need to turn our misery into ministry."

That's why we're really excited that we get to share these General Sessions with you. To help you get an even better taste of the conference experience, we're also including a copy of our conference magazine, EVOLVE, with all C3 2006 CD/DVD orders (while they last). This 88-page publication is bursting with informative articles on church leadership topics such as team creativity, sermon illustrations, creative programming and more. Here's a PDF to give you a taste of what's inside.

After you listen to/watch the General Sessions, let us know what you think!