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Church Life

Excellence honors God and inspires people. On Sunday Gus Sareyka talked about how Elevate is doing just that.  Being responsible for the strategic adoption of technology at Fellowship, I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight an example which you will be hearing more about in the coming weeks and months.

Church Community Builder (CCB) is a secure, web-based system that allows churches to go about the business of 'church management' more effectively.  Sunday morning and event check-in, Life Group management and communication, event registration, tracking financial contributions, and member involvement are a sample of the many features that CCB will give us. We will be able to accomplish many of the tasks that go along with running a church in a much more efficient manner.  We will also gain some new ability to connect with you in ways we have not been able to in the past.

Our vision is to Redefine Church Through Relationships, not Religion. CCB is a tool, made possible through Elevate, that will help us to do just that.  As a church grows, it becomes harder and harder to build close relationships with each other or for the staff to get to know everyone. The staff will have much better visibility across ministries of family involvement.  Prayer needs, welcoming newcomers, and even being able to match faces (via picture profiles) with names are key processes that CCB makes possible for us. 

We have spent a considerable amount of time over the past few months getting the system set up and prepared for church-wide use.  We have done our best to collect the information we have from all of the various places we had it and migrated that to our new CCB database.  Some of you may have started to see communication coming from CCB as we have started to selectively use and test the system. 

I want to also emphasize that FC takes your privacy very seriously.  We have taken great care to ensure that any information you have shared with us remains confidential. CCB will also give you complete control over what information you choose to share and who you share it with.  One of the things we are excited about is that you will now have the ability to update your individual and family contact information.  No more need to call the church office or fill out a communication card!  Having and maintaining accurate information will help us to better serve you and the community we are trying to reach.

You will be hearing and seeing more as we start to roll-out CCB across the church. Stay tuned for more updates about that and I hope you will help us to pursue excellence in this business of 'church management' so that we can be as effective as possible with the resources God blesses us with. Ultimately, it frees us up to do more in serving Him and our community!

Greg Davis
Technology and Innovation Director

Church Life

Fellowship Church is a great place!  I look forward to Sunday morning each week because of all the energy and innovation.  Here are a few thoughts on a great weekend...

Our Sunday experience was energizing.  We're walking through a series right now called "East to West".  It's a series that is helping us focus on forgiveness.  God has forgiven us in such amazing ways, and now He's looking for us to extend that to the people around us.  There are a lot of great conversations happening right now where people are chasing forgiveness.  Go for it.  Be bold. Be courageous.  Pray before you go ("thaw" out a bit).  Prepare what you need to say.  Ask for forgiveness. 

The band at Fellowship is amazing.  I love the energy they bring and their ability to engage the crowd.  They nailed "Apologize"!  I could listen to that for a long time.  Great job. 

The excitement coming from the children's area is captivating.  It makes me want to be a kid again and participate in what they get to do each week.  It's very creative and is preparing the next generation of leaders.  Go children's ministry team.  You're awesome!

I'm so happy with those of you who create great first impressions, prepare food, push carts, set-up truss, hang signs, lights, fabric and make an attractive space for those who walk through the doors.  Great job!  Everything you do plays a vital role in helping us serve people.  What you do matters down to the smallest detail.  Your happy smiles and positive attitudes in the middle of working hard is inspiring.

We're inviting!  Thanks.  I believe that honors God in a huge way!        

The people of Fellowship...it's great to be with you.  I walked away from Sunday genuinely very happy that I get to serve with you.  I'm humbled and can't wait to see you again!

-- Eric

Church Life

The 100 Day Prayer Challenge started Jan 25th. 152 people pledged to join us in praying for Fellowship for, you guessed it, 100 days. Here's what we handed out to everyone who signed up:

For the next 100 days, pray that God would work in Fellowship and in our hearts as His church, that we would:

• Be unified and motivated to serve
• Grow as a community who love and accept each other and new people wherever they're at
• Develop a heart for our local community, our schools, our neighbors, in demonstrating our love for them and meeting their needs, expecting nothing in return
• Become people who invest in our community and invite them into our church family

How are you engaging this 100-day challenge? I’m surprised to find that it’s still hard for me to be intentional about it every day … I thought that 23 days into it, it would be easy, but it’s not. Here’s some ways I’ve been keeping the challenge in front of me: putting the list on my fridge door, taping it to my bathroom mirror, and setting a reminder on my Blackberry.

A couple of people have let us know how this challenge is affecting them, and I wanted to share their stories with you:

“I was glad to be challenged to begin 100 days of prayer for Fellowship because it helped me to establish some consistency to my Bible reading and prayer life. Along with prayer for Fellowship and its staff I have added daily prayer for my family as individuals. Each day I pick one and pray in depth for them. I know that God is going to bless our church through this. Thank you, Eric, for this personal challenge. ” – Ray

“As we left Church the day you gave us the 100 day challenge, we were talking about your message. At lunch, we began to put other items on our challenge sheets that we would add to the 100 days and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. The Monday after you preached, Ron woke me up at 5:30 a.m. because he was excited to pray. He didn't have to ask me twice because I was excited right with him…and we have been pumped up ever since. Our excitement stems from the fact that we know God is going to do something really huge and we can't wait to see it happen. We talked about how God’s heart would be happy hearing 150 families praying every day… Some days, I feel like jumping up and down because I know He is going to bless us in a way we cannot even imagine.” – Ron & Pam

Thanks for sharing! Keep leaning into this challenge. It will change our hearts and our community. If you want to share your story, email me. Even if you’d just like to share with the staff, we would love to hear from you.

Shari Kelly
Group Life Director 

Church Life

God is passionate about forgiving. He is a forgiving God that is continually in the process of making us clean.  Psalm 103 even tells us “He has removed our rebellious acts as far away from us as the east is from the west”.  Amazing!  He takes all of our ugliness and the stuff that we wish we could get out of our minds, and He chooses not to remember them. 

Unfortunately we take what God designed to be beautiful, and we fail to pass it on to the people around us who need it the most.  God forgives and His expectation is that we should be extenders of His forgiveness.  Forgiveness means to “turn the key, open the cell door, and let the prisoner walk free”.  When we give forgiveness this way, when we release people, everyone walks free. 

What relationship in your life is waiting for your forgiveness?  Have you been holding back because of hurt or because you want to make “the offender” in your life suffer?  Don’t miss out on what God could do through your life simply because you don’t forgive.  Live in an economy of forgiveness.  Today…turn the key, open the cell door, and let people walk free!