Adrian Cole

The Worship Arts Conference and New Friends

In yesterday’s post I shared a story about an old friend in ministry Tammy Kelly. Tammy’s title is Executive Director of Strategic Implementation. She is responsible for Willow’s strategic plan making sure it is on track. She also oversees a host of other ministry areas like Human Resources, etc.

Under the Executive Leadership Team is another area of staff leaders. One of those areas is their extension ministries with partner churches or Compassion ministries. They work with other churches that work with the poor and marginalized of our culture. Willow Creek provides volunteers and funding to those churches for those ministries.

At the cookout on Thursday night was another family the Sawyers. Christian Sawyer is the director of the Billy Graham center and museum at Wheaton College. Stephanie Sawyer is the director of the Extension Ministry (Compassion ministry) of the church. They moved to Chicago 8 years ago.

I asked Stephanie what her background was. I has thinking about what seminary she attended or what degrees she had that qualified her to direct that ministry. She said that she was a beautician by training. She cut people’s hair! She shared that she had grown up in Erie and Allentown Pennsylvania and she described her family as “the working poor”. Stephanie knows first hand what it means to be poor and she said that her past was the motivation for her ministry. Wow!

Jesus uses ordinary people like me and you to accomplish His purpose of reaching people with the Good News of His Gospel. The local church is the hope of the world!

The Worship Arts Conference - Seeing Old Friends

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week I attended the Worship Arts Conference at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago (actually the church is in Barrington, IL a suburb of Chicago). It is always fun to go to Willow because they do a top rate job of inspiring, educating and informing you about emerging tends in ministry.
The other reason it is fun is because I get to see old friends. Wednesday night we had dinner with Brandon, Becky and Stella Grissom. Brandon was on our student ministry team a few years ago. We also had dinner with Mike and Tammy Kelly. Mike and Tammy are friends from Ohio and Tammy was on staff at Ginghamsburg UMC.

About six years ago Willow Creek hired Tammy to be on their executive leadership team. I don’t know how many staff members Willow has but they have 20,000 plus people in worship every week. Now they have eight locations in the Chicago area. Tammy and Mike had us over for a cookout on Thursday night. I am pretty sure the staff at Willow would number a few hundred. They have about 12,000 volunteers.

I know something of Tammy’s story from Ginghamsburg. She grew up in that church and became a small group leader. Her group grew and multiplied and they asked her to lead the small group ministry of the church. The ministry grew and they invited her to be on the main leadership team. That was a paid staff position. She was very effective in ministry. Then Willow Creek hired her to be on their executive team. If you go to the Willow website http://www.willowcreek.org/welcome.asp and click on the Leadership Team at the bottom left of the screen, she will be listed with Mike Breaux, Gene Apple, etc.

As we were eating I asked Tammy what she did before she was on a church staff.
She said she was a dental hygienist and she helps lead an international ministry. It just seems amazing to me how God uses us when we make ourselves available to Him. It is not about our degrees, certifications or even our ordinations. God has ordained all of us for His ministry. Look at who He used in the New Testament.

I believe that Jesus wants to use New Covenant in a special way by taking ordinary people like me and you and using us to accomplish His purpose of reaching people with the Good News of His Gospel. The local church is the hope of the world!