Scott's Thoughts: Sun, Jul 11, 2021
Mostly a few small announcements/updates with some multisite vision today, (which may be friendly reminder for some, but may be new for many of our new folks.)
Misc Updates
Next Steps – Speaking of how it all works… Bob Radank (and I, and others, and Next Steps and Connections Peeps) are closing in on a really helpful and innovative vision for a 15-mins Next Steps session that happens on Sunday mornings at every service. More to come soon, but we’re working toward an August launch. As it will be a one-time session, (not 4 as it used to be), we can launch at any time. I’m really excited about the possibilities here. It’s a really cool and scaleable-across-campuses vision of 7 Habits for Discovering God’s Vision for Your Life! Much more to tell, but we’ll have to pepper you with it a little at a time. I promise, you’ll like it, and you’ll love becoming a Next Steps Helper because our approach is going to give you the tools to share our vision with others and help them connect with us, the 7 Habits, and God’s vision for their lives.
Some Multisite Vision Info – In case you’ve missed it, or are unaware, here are a few helpful places to go for practical info re our multisite strategy:
Please Pray With Us – (Repeat of last week, but nonetheless soooo important.) Please be praying with us about church and staff and organizational transitions. Things are fine, (quite good, in fact), but we have a lot to manage, folks are tired, we need a new Student/Youth Ministry Director, we’re taking over Catalyst (from the volunteer Board), we’re launching a revamped and agile (and I think, super innovative) Next Steps (on Sundays again), we’ve got many new folks we need to connect with and connect to our 7 Habits vision, we’re needing to launch new pop-up Life Groups (and another couple such LGs), we’re launching a new Young Adults ministry, we’re working hard behind the scenes toward a 3rd Campus Launch at South Greene High School late Fall, we are going to likely need around 100 (mostly) Greeneville campus people to go to that new campus, we are likely needing have a small congregational capital campaign (of something like, still a guesstimate here, around $125,000ish) in order to ensure we launch strong, (and that daggone new website still isn’t done!), so just pray for us all–from paid leaders to lay servants within FCC to newcomers considering coming on-board with our crazy vision–to listen closely to the Lord’s leading. (I’m still considering going into ice cream. Pray I don’t need to do that.)
Misc Updates
- FYI, I’m on Vacation – The Wakefield Crew is gone after church today till Mon, Jul 26, 2022. ;o) (J/K.) We’ll be in Michigan visiting family one week and going to Family Camp at Life Action Camp the next! (And I’ll be hanging out early morning at the many lovely coffee shops in Michigan to read and think about God, His grace to me, my wonderfully faithful family, my amazing church family, and likely also read some Covenant Theology and watch some soccer, (and if there’s not much happening soccer-wise, clips of FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi.))
- Pulse “Tab” on the App – (Btw, a “tab” is just our name for the buttons on the bottom of the app. “Subtabs” are generally what we call buttons that occasionally appear at the top (not directional buttons) like when going into “Media” and seeing “Sermons” and “Media” subtabs at the top. Way more info than people need to hear in ST, Scott.) Anyway… make sure you check out the “Pulse” Tab on the app for ongoing updates.
- The “News Feed” is our blog on our new site, where we will post ministry updates, write-ups and sign-ups about significant and/or irregular upcoming events, weekly content as it’s produced (sermons, MMM, BBB, CC, etc. ← Oops, I think I have that wrong. Sermons maybe don’t go there since they’re in, like, 17 places?!), videos/pics/highlights/reports of past events, Scott’s Thoughts, etc. I’m planning on rejiggering and republishing and adding to our old Great Questions series when I get back from vacay.
- The “Event Calendar” is being kept up and added to now, so you can go there for basically anything other than Staff Mtgs/Vacations/Days Off (which, SCW, may not be all that dumb to put on there?)
- The “Our Socials” feed is an RSS feed of our many outlets, including Kids, Students, and Spotify playlists of our Sunday morning songs. (RSS feed may be wonky still, and frustrating.)
- “Latest Elders Letter” is just that… that latest Elders letter, (which was Dec 2020, so we’re behind guys.)
- Also, there are sign-up forms for Kids/Students Emails/Texts and Weekly Pulse Emails. (Btw, Alicia and Kelly, maybe we should have a Subsplash “List” of oft-used PCO Forms there?)
- Mon Morn Missives, Brown Bags & Bibles, and Coffee Convos – Was planning on only taking a 2-weeks break, but a few folks/staffers need some extra break, too, so we’ll get back to them at the beginning of August. (← Heads up, Mark Liebert, and Tech and Comms Peeps. Please call/contact/adjust accordingly. I like this lead-Staff-from-Scott’s-Thoughts thing. Gonna need to do this more often. Hey, Tommy, you’re on for leading Staff Mtg this Tue, Jul 13, and Tyson, you’re on to lead it next Tue, Jul 20.)
- New Website – … is getting there. Got mired in some backend website-and-app ones and zeros this past week, (that’s my version of tech nerd talk for technical coding type stuff), but I’m excited to get this thing done… (in my dreams.) Plodding along, but making good progress. It’ll be a really helpful overview of our entire church vision that will be primarily directed at outsiders/non-FCCers looking for a church. It’ll be one big huge (“Big and huge?!” ← I can hear my wife mocking me now.) presentation of our multisite people-and-campus-launching strategy. While it’ll mostly be directed to outsiders (and the app is directed to insiders), it will be worth a good read through from every FCCer, as a helpful mental refresh of who we are and where we’re headed and how it all works. Btw, thanks to the 70 of you who participated in the “Help us name our new website” survey. Looks like the basic consensus is to keep fccgreene.org (which requires a little ones and zeros work that will mean a few weeks of broken links, a little frustration when something online/electronic doesn’t work, etc.) as our main page name while perhaps occasionally using forgreene.org for promo purposes, perhaps as launching a campus (?!) Btw, using forgreene.org won’t negate using fccgreene.org (or fccgreeneville.org, which will still work.) We can have multiple names all point to the same site. (“Ahh… I get it now.”)
Next Steps – Speaking of how it all works… Bob Radank (and I, and others, and Next Steps and Connections Peeps) are closing in on a really helpful and innovative vision for a 15-mins Next Steps session that happens on Sunday mornings at every service. More to come soon, but we’re working toward an August launch. As it will be a one-time session, (not 4 as it used to be), we can launch at any time. I’m really excited about the possibilities here. It’s a really cool and scaleable-across-campuses vision of 7 Habits for Discovering God’s Vision for Your Life! Much more to tell, but we’ll have to pepper you with it a little at a time. I promise, you’ll like it, and you’ll love becoming a Next Steps Helper because our approach is going to give you the tools to share our vision with others and help them connect with us, the 7 Habits, and God’s vision for their lives.
Some Multisite Vision Info – In case you’ve missed it, or are unaware, here are a few helpful places to go for practical info re our multisite strategy:
- “Campus Constants” – This how we “decentralize” and “centralize” the non-negotiables, in practical terms. It’s (mostly) updated to reflect some changes going into 3 campuses, (though needs a little more work.)
- “Factors in Launching Campuses” – These are some of the principles involved in deciding how and when to pull the trigger wisely.
- “Leadership Pipeline” – This is a crucial piece of how we need to continue to learn to structure human resources for multisite across campuses and develop leaders. (This is still the old version. Almost done with new version. Will letcha see it ASAP.)
- “Team Code” – This is how we lead and develop our Serve Teams.
- “Next Steps” – This is still developing, but here’s the gist of where we’re headed in a new and more personal and practical way to help connect people to us and God’s vision for their growth.
- Again, the new website will be an overall picture of our churchwide people-and-campus-launching strategy.
Please Pray With Us – (Repeat of last week, but nonetheless soooo important.) Please be praying with us about church and staff and organizational transitions. Things are fine, (quite good, in fact), but we have a lot to manage, folks are tired, we need a new Student/Youth Ministry Director, we’re taking over Catalyst (from the volunteer Board), we’re launching a revamped and agile (and I think, super innovative) Next Steps (on Sundays again), we’ve got many new folks we need to connect with and connect to our 7 Habits vision, we’re needing to launch new pop-up Life Groups (and another couple such LGs), we’re launching a new Young Adults ministry, we’re working hard behind the scenes toward a 3rd Campus Launch at South Greene High School late Fall, we are going to likely need around 100 (mostly) Greeneville campus people to go to that new campus, we are likely needing have a small congregational capital campaign (of something like, still a guesstimate here, around $125,000ish) in order to ensure we launch strong, (and that daggone new website still isn’t done!), so just pray for us all–from paid leaders to lay servants within FCC to newcomers considering coming on-board with our crazy vision–to listen closely to the Lord’s leading. (I’m still considering going into ice cream. Pray I don’t need to do that.)
Posted in Scotts Thoughts