Sun, Nov 24, 2019

Scott Wakefield   -   November 24, 2019

Christmas Plans

We’ve got BIG plans for using this Christmas series as an opportunity to reach out to our community, to invite them to join us. Here’s a brief overview of the many ways we’re promoting this series as a way to help people find and follow Jesus:

  • Christmas At The Movies – Every year, the Christmas season is a powerful reminder of an amazing truth that came to us in a most unexpected way because it’s the story of God the Father pursuing His children by revealing Himself to us in the person of Jesus! This year, we’ll rediscover this amazing truth in some unexpected places.
    • Sun, Dec 1 – “Miracle on 34th Street” (John 1:1-18)
    • Sun, Dec 8 –“The Polar Express” (Isaiah 9:1-7)
    • Sun, Dec 15 – “A Christmas Carol” (Luke 1:46-56)
    • Sun, Dec 22–Tue, Dec 24 – “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (Luke 2:1-21) – See next bullet point for Candlelight Services times and locations
  • Candlelight Services Plans – We are having 4 identical Candlelight Services (on 3 days, in 2 locations! Details below.) They will be 1 hour long and we will be offering Kids Min for preschool only, babies through pre-K. (Just to be clear, we will have no Kids Min for K-5th grade as they will be included in the service.) And yes, the Sunday morning service will be exactly the same service as the Monday and Tuesday evening services. All 4 services will be identical.
    • We have a present for all who are present! Anyone attending one of our 4 Candlelight Services will get a pretty cool FCC-themed gift. Seriously, you will not want to miss this as it will help us get the word out bigtime that God has plans for us in 2020 to connect people to Jesus throughout all of Greene County!
    • We have some cool stuff planned for the service, but it won’t be so significantly different than normal Sunday mornings that guests will experience something significantly different to what they’d experience on any given Sunday. I.e., we’re planning this so your friends and coworkers can get a taste of normal Sundays, but with a little more punch.
    • We need volunteers for every service, so we’d love for you to pick one to attend and one at which to serve, i.e., Worship & Serve!
    • Times and Locations
      • Sun, Dec 22 – 9:20 & 10:40a – FCC Afton, at Chuckey-Doak High School.
      • Mon, Dec 23 – 6:30p – FCC Greeneville
      • Tue, Dec 24 – 6:30p – FCC Greeneville
  • Invite Cards – We will be handing out normal biz-card-size Invite Cards, that we use for every series, so grab a few and be praying about an opportunity to invite someone.
  • Yard Signs – We have 300 yard signs inviting people to check out fccchristmas.org, where they’ll find specifics on our series plans. Please grab one for your yard and let’s make them ubiquitous in Greene County! #forgreene
  • Online Promo Videos – If you’re on FB or Insta, you’ll likely see one of our brief promo videos soon. We’ve got one that is a generic series promo that you’ll see soon. For the couple weeks preceding our 4 Candlelight Services, we have a specific.
  • fccchristmas.org – We’ve compiled all the series plans on this one page, for easy reference. 

Please be praying with us, that God will use our BIG plans for this series and this season to draw people to Himself!

A Few Friendly Reminders and Miscellaneous Pastoral Thanks & Thoughts

  • Thank you for Joining Together to Send Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes!
    • We had a great time at this year’s Pack & Stack Party last Sunday and gathered around 650 boxes, at first count, with a few more still coming in! Thanks so much for your participation.
    • Pics and info are in the Pulse Email and on our social media pages.
    • If you can help with covering the cost of sending 650 boxes at $9 each, about half of which come without $9, just specify “Operation Christmas Child” on your check or online, or text “help” to 84321 and follow the instructions.
  • Where to Find Info – There is a TON of information to communicate, to keep you updated and aware of what’s going on and how to get involved. Look at the second section on this post to see how and where you can find way more info than you likely care to know!
  • We still need a few more Greenevillians to GO! to create more space at Greeneville and momentum at Afton!
    • We have had about one dozen make the switch! Bigtime thank you to those of you who have done so. We’ve already been experiencing a little more space at Greeneville and a bump in momentum at Afton! It’s been really helpful already! And remember, this is part of how we learn to become missionaries to our community, so we will hopefully be asking something similar of some of you in another year or so when we, Lord willing, see fit to launch a third campus!
    • If you’re a Greeneville campus person, have you asked God if you’re supposed to go or stay? If not, well then, get on it…
    • If you would like to find out more about what is involved in making the switch, check the box on this form and we’ll follow up with you.
    • If you need info re why are we doing this, read ”New GO!” Series and Campaign…” for details/rationale or go to Next Steps to gain more vision for why we are continuing to turn all our people and processes into a campus-launching strategy.
  • Few Quick Items From and About our Elders
    • Multisite has created some new challenges and some really great new opportunities. Please be praying for us, and for your own pursuit of generosity, as we work through planning our 2020 budget. We believe the Lord has great plans for our church.
    • Speaking of the 2020 budget, thank you for your giving. If you are contributing financially to our ministry, you are helping us embody, as a church, our 5th Habit of Pursue generosity. Not only are you helping support ministries that reach out to our community, but you’re helping support dozens of families through our Outreach giving and on our payroll! We believe our whole ministry strategy is outreach and missions! So… (1) Bigtime thank you to those of you who are faithfully giving. Your faithfulness does not go unnoticed. The Lord continues to bless our church’s ministry through you. (2) The end of the year is a natural time to think about your giving for 2020. If you aren’t giving, discuss with your spouse/family and the Lord what you are able to give, and start there. If you are able, as we cover in Next Steps, go up a percentage point or two next year. We believe the pursuit of generosity is part and parcel of growing spiritually, individually and corporately, to be people whose lives embody God’s grace to us on the cross.
    • An update letter is on the way soon, to provide some info on our 2019 Christmas Offering (that we’ll be distributing to missionaries we support), the 2020 Budget, Membership Renewal/Update, and a few other ministry updates.
    • Did you know that our Elders meet every Tuesday morning at 6a to lead and pray for our church?! And that they are all embodying FCC DNA by doing Worship & Serve, on the front lines, serving alongside everyone else, on Sundays?! And that they do lots of other things behind the scenes that too few notices?! And that they loop in Staff, Deacons, Residents, and Key Leaders (They get to be capitalized, too!) once monthly to discuss 3 questions: (1) What are your top 3 biggest wins and why? (2) Where are you most stuck and why? (3) How can we help? … Our Elders are informed, involved, and deeply engaged in helping ensure FCC is on the right track… and I just thought you should know that.
  • A Few Small but Important Tweaks to Great Questions – For Great Questions, which happens on Monday nights at 7:30-8:30p at our Greeneville campus, we’ve added the option of turning in a question anonymously beforehand. You can do so on your Connect Card, on a 3×5 card (which we’ll have handy at Great Questions), by emailing greatquestions@fccgreeneville.org, or by texting the question to 97000.
  • Don’t forget to renew your membership. – We have long needed better ways to track our people better, to help us shepherd well, and to help prevent lapsed members, but going multisite (fccgreene.org/multifaqs) has exacerbated all that. (For further details as to why we’re doing this, check out this previous Great Questions Answered, “Why are we making changes to membership requirements…?” and this Fall Update Letter from the Elders.) Make sure you fill out the renewal and survey if you haven’t yet. It takes just a minute or two to do so here… fccgreene.org/membershipupdate2019.
  • Please help us connect new people! – If you’ve got eyes and are even remotely aware of your environment, you’ll see that we’ve got lots of new people to get to know and to help connect to our church’s ministries. I LOVE walking around both campuses on Sunday mornings (going ~100 mph, usually) and seeing our Guest Team welcoming people with smiles (and prayers they’re offering up silently as guests enter). I LOVE meeting new people and getting to know them. But I ESPECIALLY LOVE seeing FCCers who are finding ways to get new people well connected, inviting them to their Life Group, showing them the Kids areas, explaining what Next Steps is, etc. God has blessed us with lots of new people. Please join us in this mission to connect them well to the body of Christ, for your growth and their meaningful relationship to God’s vision for their lives, their kids, and their kids’ kids. We believe our efforts to meaningfully connect people to the body absolutely has eternal consequences!

“Are creeds and confessions biblical?”

Friendly reminder that you can get to previous Great Questions Answered by going to the shortlink fccgreene.org/gqa.

A couple notes:

  • For a brief discussion on what we mean by “biblical”, see Note (3) at the beginning of this post.
  • Please note that our online Great Questions Answered posts are all my thoughts (Scott Wakefield, Lead Pastor), and are not meant to reflect the thoughts and history of our church… Keep reading…