Scott's Thoughts: Dec 5, 2021
Sorry, it’s longer than my usual goal of 5ish mins of reading, and much of it will be far too sparse on detail, but there are SOOO many things to cover today! Total Reading Time: 6 mins, 30 secs.
Yeah, So About That “No Scripture Passages Onscreen During Preaching” Thing – Well, that didn’t last long. In the previous Scott’s Thoughts (ST) and the last couple Sundays before preaching, I briefly mentioned trying a little personal experiment of not putting Scripture passages onscreen during preaching. (For more on why, see about 70% of the way through last week’s ST, under “Few More Thoughts & Details Re Upcoming Service Tweaks”.) But as Proverbs 15:22 and 20:18 say, “plans are established by counsel,” and apparently said counsel required more communication than I communicated. As you can imagine, for me as a Type A leader and personality, this isn’t the first time I’ve let my frustration with a problem and vision to fix it outpace communications channels and others’ readiness! So anyway, even though I still think my underlying concerns warrant our best efforts and that my experiment would’ve worked in the long-term, it was almost entirely detested! So we’ll keep trying to increase Bible engagement in other ways, inside and outside of sermon time.
Christmas Plans – This is a natural time for folks to be more open to coming to church and resetting life’s priorities. So grab a couple Invite Cards, pray for opportunities to hand them out, and text an invite or two with a link to fccchristmas.org to a friend!
2022 Sermon Series Plans – Not sure yet, frankly, but I’ll letcha know the first draft of plans. After finishing Daniel on Jan 2 and 9, I’m leaning toward a gospel (maybe John?) or Hebrews. Whatever it is, it’ll be New Testament and even if it ends up being a super long series (4 sections of 8 weeks, e.g.), we’ll break it up by doing a shorter series of a couple/few weeks between those larger blocks.
Brown Bags & Bibles (& Books!) – The Rise of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman – It’s Book Club time! Starting this Tue, Dec 7, we’ll spend (3 episodes, I think? I hope?) discussing this important book. If you want to know how Western culture got to where we are, put in the time and effort to read along and think with us about these important issues. Friendly Reminder, Staff, as part of your continuing education, you are required to read/follow along with BB&B(&B!) Copies available at amazon.com, christianbook.com, etc., or in The Hub at any campus.
New Service Times & Flow – Friendly Reminder that 9a & 10:30a times start next Sun, Dec 12, at both campuses! There are a number of good reasons we’re doing this: readiness for 3 campuses, emphasize personal and pastoral presence of Campus Pastors, add personal connection time between services, accommodate Next Steps, better emphasize communion, add time for passing communion and Bibles, and add and systematize time for both campus-specific outreach and churchwide focus. For more detail, check out these previous ST posts and the Elders Letter (also easily found on the “Pulse” tab on the app.)
How Our New Next Steps (NS) Works (Basically) – It’s more complex than the following, and starting next Sun, Dec 12 the process will eventually become more clear, but basically, we want everyone at FCC who is “meaningfully participating” to have a Next Steps Helper (NSH) and/or to be a Next Steps Helper. A NSH is a personal and ongoing point of contact who is an FCC and 7 Habits expert who can help guide others through a 7 Habits Growth Plan. The Next Steps process itself involves attending a brief 10-min intro session on a Sunday morning (we dismiss toward the end of every service, sign-up or show-up), watching 25-mins of 7 Habits videos on your own (on the app), and developing and executing a 7 Habits Growth Plan (on the app) with a Next Steps Helper. For more info, go to fccgreene.org/nextsteps or talk to Bob Radank, who is Mr. Next Steps in charge of developing this ministry, at bob@fccgreeneville.org. (And yes, please do indeed call Bob "Mr. Next Steps".)
2022 Budget Preview – The Elders have recently been working with the Staff to prepare for 2022 with a view to a number of important vision-based priorities. We’ll be showing it to you in another couple weeks, but we’ve still got a few things to finalize, so in the meantime, here are a few of the most important highlights.
Areas We Need Help – Because of our multisite campus-and-people-launching strategy, which emphasizes asking people to both Worship and Serve, pre-Covid, on average, 70% of our Sunday morning attendees served, (which is awesome! According to Barna, the national Pre-Covid average had been 40%.) But now, that nationwide number is 15% and ours is more like 40%, so there are a few places we need some help:
If you wanna know more, let us know on the Connect Card and we’ll follow up with you, let you know what’s involved, give you a test drive if desired, etc.
Couple New Weekly Blog (“News Feed”) Features: Prayer List and Tell the story. Ministry Wins – You may not have yet noticed, but we now have a couple new weekly features on our regularly updated Blog. You can find them on the “Pulse” tab on the app, under “News Feed”. You can also get there outside the app by going to fccgreene.org/blog or you can see a curated feed of content:
Two more things: (1) The Prayer List never includes confidential requests. Those are only shared with Elders, Staff, and key Volunteers (i.e., usually only Care Team leaders). (2) We’ve already had 3 Tell the story. posts about one of our family’s experience Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, a number of our youth sharing during a recent 180 Worship Night, and one of our FCCers from re:gen talking about how much she loved “Friendsgiving” and what re:gen means to her!
Update re 3rd Campus Launch & Students Dir Search – I’ve mentioned versions of the following a few times here and there, but just wanted to let y’all know the latest. Long and complicated story short, we are most definitely consistently working toward 3rd campus readiness, but a few key components need to be in place, some of which have been beyond our control. The most recent Covid surge of the delta variant slowed previous momentum considerably. The finalizing of hundreds of items that go into the 2 trailers that make portable church happen has been increasingly frustrated by supply chain issues. Plus, we need to hire a new Students Director to free a couple existing staffers to go back to doing, well, more of what they’re hired to do, much of which has to do with going to 3 campuses. While all of this has been incredibly frustrating, God continues to grant us the favor of new folks, healthy finances, community cred, staff unity for mission, young and sold-out leaders from within, and a team of people ready to implement Next Steps, which will quickly show itself to be a critical piece of our multisite structure working well for Helping people find and follow Jesus at more smaller campuses. Btw, we’ve had a few good recent discussions with potential Students Directors. Feels like we’re closing in on someone. (But, again, we’ve felt that way before with this specific search!)
In a future ST post, I will soon give an overview of the entire process, what we’ve done, what we’re working on, and what it looks like when we announce the 3rd Campus Pastor, continue doing outreach, begin gathering a launch team that will meet to do more outreach and launch-prep scheming, inundate Greene County with promo like yard signs and billboards, “retrolaunch” existing campuses, and have ‘how-to-be-a-portable-church’ training and preview services. So, yeah, we’ve got plans. We’ll get there in God’s timing. Please pray about… finding a new Students director, supply chain issues, sociopolitical drama dividing people, and more people willing to serve.
Recent Teachings/Thoughts Related to Membership at FCC – As a lead-in to our upcoming January Membership Renewal Campaign, (about which we’ll be telling you plenty soon enough), for the last couple months we’ve been touching on the Biblical idea of membership quite a bit, so here are some links to our resources:
Yeah, So About That “No Scripture Passages Onscreen During Preaching” Thing – Well, that didn’t last long. In the previous Scott’s Thoughts (ST) and the last couple Sundays before preaching, I briefly mentioned trying a little personal experiment of not putting Scripture passages onscreen during preaching. (For more on why, see about 70% of the way through last week’s ST, under “Few More Thoughts & Details Re Upcoming Service Tweaks”.) But as Proverbs 15:22 and 20:18 say, “plans are established by counsel,” and apparently said counsel required more communication than I communicated. As you can imagine, for me as a Type A leader and personality, this isn’t the first time I’ve let my frustration with a problem and vision to fix it outpace communications channels and others’ readiness! So anyway, even though I still think my underlying concerns warrant our best efforts and that my experiment would’ve worked in the long-term, it was almost entirely detested! So we’ll keep trying to increase Bible engagement in other ways, inside and outside of sermon time.
Christmas Plans – This is a natural time for folks to be more open to coming to church and resetting life’s priorities. So grab a couple Invite Cards, pray for opportunities to hand them out, and text an invite or two with a link to fccchristmas.org to a friend!
- Sermon Series: “Hope of Israel” – We’re doing 3 weeks in Matthew 1 & 2, from Dec 12-Dec 26. More detail at fccchristmas.org.
- Advent Candles – During Christmas services, FCC families will help us focus our attention on Christ as our hope!
- Kids Singing on Sun, Dec 12 – For many weeks, our Kids Min and Worship Teams have been prepping the kids and communicating this to parents, but wanted to give a friendly reminder that there will be kiddos singing with/for us at both services at both campuses!
- Christmas Candlelight Services – Choose one. Choose them all. But please know they’ll all be identical services on Fri, Dec 24 (at Chuckey-Doak High School only) and Sun, Dec 26 (at both campuses). So, Friday evening’s service will be no different than Sunday morning service.
2022 Sermon Series Plans – Not sure yet, frankly, but I’ll letcha know the first draft of plans. After finishing Daniel on Jan 2 and 9, I’m leaning toward a gospel (maybe John?) or Hebrews. Whatever it is, it’ll be New Testament and even if it ends up being a super long series (4 sections of 8 weeks, e.g.), we’ll break it up by doing a shorter series of a couple/few weeks between those larger blocks.
Brown Bags & Bibles (& Books!) – The Rise of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman – It’s Book Club time! Starting this Tue, Dec 7, we’ll spend (3 episodes, I think? I hope?) discussing this important book. If you want to know how Western culture got to where we are, put in the time and effort to read along and think with us about these important issues. Friendly Reminder, Staff, as part of your continuing education, you are required to read/follow along with BB&B(&B!) Copies available at amazon.com, christianbook.com, etc., or in The Hub at any campus.
New Service Times & Flow – Friendly Reminder that 9a & 10:30a times start next Sun, Dec 12, at both campuses! There are a number of good reasons we’re doing this: readiness for 3 campuses, emphasize personal and pastoral presence of Campus Pastors, add personal connection time between services, accommodate Next Steps, better emphasize communion, add time for passing communion and Bibles, and add and systematize time for both campus-specific outreach and churchwide focus. For more detail, check out these previous ST posts and the Elders Letter (also easily found on the “Pulse” tab on the app.)
How Our New Next Steps (NS) Works (Basically) – It’s more complex than the following, and starting next Sun, Dec 12 the process will eventually become more clear, but basically, we want everyone at FCC who is “meaningfully participating” to have a Next Steps Helper (NSH) and/or to be a Next Steps Helper. A NSH is a personal and ongoing point of contact who is an FCC and 7 Habits expert who can help guide others through a 7 Habits Growth Plan. The Next Steps process itself involves attending a brief 10-min intro session on a Sunday morning (we dismiss toward the end of every service, sign-up or show-up), watching 25-mins of 7 Habits videos on your own (on the app), and developing and executing a 7 Habits Growth Plan (on the app) with a Next Steps Helper. For more info, go to fccgreene.org/nextsteps or talk to Bob Radank, who is Mr. Next Steps in charge of developing this ministry, at bob@fccgreeneville.org. (And yes, please do indeed call Bob "Mr. Next Steps".)
2022 Budget Preview – The Elders have recently been working with the Staff to prepare for 2022 with a view to a number of important vision-based priorities. We’ll be showing it to you in another couple weeks, but we’ve still got a few things to finalize, so in the meantime, here are a few of the most important highlights.
- Our total budget goes from $1,033,099 in 2021 ($19,867/week) to $1,081,028 in 2022 ($20,789/wk), an increase of $47,929 ($922/wk more), or 4.6% more in 2022 than 2021.
- The overwhelming majority of that 4.6% increase was due to (1) missionaries and staff receiving modest increases and (2) scaling for a 3rd campus.
- Because we are consistently whittling down unused items and refining efficiencies so that our budget and finances are always ready for launching a new campus, not only have we steadily increased our total financial holdings since going multisite, but the foreseen additional cost to our budget for adding a 3rd campus only amounts to $52,000! That’s only 5% more than our 2021 budget. How cool is it that we have continued to safely and wisely adapt our staffing and ministry structures toward multiple campus ministry so that, other than the large one-time expense of 2 trailers of supplies for making portable church happen, we are already well positioned to launch a new campus debt-free?!
- Beginning in January, we’re welcoming Samantha Hinkle, our fourth homegrown young leader, onto the Kids Team as part-time staff!
- Relative to their 2021 amounts, we also significantly increased Kids (45.4%), Facilities (22.5%), and Outreach (9.5%).
- More details forthcoming…
Areas We Need Help – Because of our multisite campus-and-people-launching strategy, which emphasizes asking people to both Worship and Serve, pre-Covid, on average, 70% of our Sunday morning attendees served, (which is awesome! According to Barna, the national Pre-Covid average had been 40%.) But now, that nationwide number is 15% and ours is more like 40%, so there are a few places we need some help:
- Youth Ministry Small Group Leaders/Assistants
- Kids Small Group Leaders/Teachers/Assistants
- Afton Campus Trailer Puller
- Tech Crew
If you wanna know more, let us know on the Connect Card and we’ll follow up with you, let you know what’s involved, give you a test drive if desired, etc.
Couple New Weekly Blog (“News Feed”) Features: Prayer List and Tell the story. Ministry Wins – You may not have yet noticed, but we now have a couple new weekly features on our regularly updated Blog. You can find them on the “Pulse” tab on the app, under “News Feed”. You can also get there outside the app by going to fccgreene.org/blog or you can see a curated feed of content:
- Prayer List – fccgreene.org/prayerlist
- Tell the story. Ministry Wins – fccgreene.org/tellthestory
Two more things: (1) The Prayer List never includes confidential requests. Those are only shared with Elders, Staff, and key Volunteers (i.e., usually only Care Team leaders). (2) We’ve already had 3 Tell the story. posts about one of our family’s experience Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, a number of our youth sharing during a recent 180 Worship Night, and one of our FCCers from re:gen talking about how much she loved “Friendsgiving” and what re:gen means to her!
Update re 3rd Campus Launch & Students Dir Search – I’ve mentioned versions of the following a few times here and there, but just wanted to let y’all know the latest. Long and complicated story short, we are most definitely consistently working toward 3rd campus readiness, but a few key components need to be in place, some of which have been beyond our control. The most recent Covid surge of the delta variant slowed previous momentum considerably. The finalizing of hundreds of items that go into the 2 trailers that make portable church happen has been increasingly frustrated by supply chain issues. Plus, we need to hire a new Students Director to free a couple existing staffers to go back to doing, well, more of what they’re hired to do, much of which has to do with going to 3 campuses. While all of this has been incredibly frustrating, God continues to grant us the favor of new folks, healthy finances, community cred, staff unity for mission, young and sold-out leaders from within, and a team of people ready to implement Next Steps, which will quickly show itself to be a critical piece of our multisite structure working well for Helping people find and follow Jesus at more smaller campuses. Btw, we’ve had a few good recent discussions with potential Students Directors. Feels like we’re closing in on someone. (But, again, we’ve felt that way before with this specific search!)
In a future ST post, I will soon give an overview of the entire process, what we’ve done, what we’re working on, and what it looks like when we announce the 3rd Campus Pastor, continue doing outreach, begin gathering a launch team that will meet to do more outreach and launch-prep scheming, inundate Greene County with promo like yard signs and billboards, “retrolaunch” existing campuses, and have ‘how-to-be-a-portable-church’ training and preview services. So, yeah, we’ve got plans. We’ll get there in God’s timing. Please pray about… finding a new Students director, supply chain issues, sociopolitical drama dividing people, and more people willing to serve.
Recent Teachings/Thoughts Related to Membership at FCC – As a lead-in to our upcoming January Membership Renewal Campaign, (about which we’ll be telling you plenty soon enough), for the last couple months we’ve been touching on the Biblical idea of membership quite a bit, so here are some links to our resources:
- “Membership” at fccgreene.org/membership
- “Why We Should Gather” (Episode #7 of Brown Bags & Bibles Podcast)
- “Is Church Membership Biblical?” (from Great Questions Answered)
- "Changes to Sunday Service Times & Flow (from Recent Elders Letter, (with link to said letter))" – Nov 7
- "Some Thoughts Re FCC Being More “Confessional” & Requiring Members to Affirm our Confession of Faith" – Nov 7
- "Update Re Changes to Membership, Timeline of 3rd Campus Launch" (Look for “Few Important Updates Are Forthcoming ASAP”) – Oct 24
- "Why Membership Matters" – Oct 24
- "Why All This Emphasis on Membership?" (Last bullet point) – Oct 10
- "We Are Designed Such That ‘The First 3’ Are Essential" – Sep 27
Posted in Scotts Thoughts