Jun 26, 2019
By Patty Petersen
In business circles, a CRM is the main storage system for all things customer-related. For our Conference, it’s a central database for all things church-related, a “Church Relationship Management” tool. Churches are made up of people, so we also have information on individual Seventh Day Baptists, as well as those connected to us through subscribing to the Sabbath Recorder or having contacted the Conference in the past.
So how is the CRM useful to you? We are gathering information on people’s skill sets and experience that you can tap into. Say you are planning an event on missions and you want to know which of our people have served as missionaries so you could invite them to share their experiences. You would contact me or Pastor John Pethtel to request that list from the CRM.
Say you want some new ideas for summer camps. Who are the people in our denomination with previous experience leading camping programs? We can send you a list (once we have assigned skills to all the people in the CRM). What if you want to start a new prayer ministry in your church but no one has previous experience leading that kind of effort? You could use the CRM to find SDBs who can be a resource for you.
What if your church wants to help start a new church somewhere in your region? You can contact us for a list of remote Sabbath-keepers in the area to help you consider where might be a good place to plant. I recently supplied a list of people in the Phoenix area to someone wanting to lead a church-planting effort there.
Since creating this database two years ago, we’ve seen its usefulness in tracking contacts with new people. Last summer a Florida man leading a small Sabbath group contacted Pastor Norman Fearon of the Fort Lauderdale Church, who passed the contact on to us. I entered him in our CRM as a “lead” and sent him information about SDBs. He wanted to get to know us, so he came to General Conference in July and attended the Southeast Association in November. Now he is returning to his home in Argentina armed with SDB tracts in Spanish and an additional contact in Argentina through Pastor Ben Figueroa of the Hispanic SDB church near Seattle. All these details are saved in the CRM for future reference.
In the past, if we received an inquiry by letter to the SDB Center, someone would answer it and it would be stored away in a file. Now we have the information in our CRM and can follow up on that person through running reports on our recent “leads.” Several times a year we receive
letters from prison inmates who are Sabbath-keepers. They are very appreciative of a reply and would welcome ongoing correspondence with an SDB brother. Please contact me if you would like to be a friend to one of these inmates. Email: ppetersen@seventhdaybaptist.org
God is at work through SDBs in many ways! One of the new ways is through our CRM database that helps us stay better connected to new people as they build relationships with us and provides resources to our churches through this central store of SDB people. We are hard at work adding more data to the CRM to make it a great tool to support your church’s ministries.
Wanted: Dynamic Pastor For a Culturally Diverse Church
With Pastor Andrew Samuels called to a new ministry with the SDB Missionary Society, the Miami SDB Church is seeking a pastor who will mentor and encourage the congregation spiritually, dynamically preach and teach the Word, shepherd a geographically and culturally diverse group throughout South Florida, and help us fulfill the vision that God has for the church.
We covet your prayers as we ask God to reveal to us the Pastor that He already has in mind for our church.
Please send any suggestions, resumes, and questions to the Miami SDB Pastor Search Team at
MiamiSDB.PastorSearch@yahoo.com
Pastor Search
The following SDB churches or groups are looking for pastoral leadership. Please keep them in prayer as they search for their churches’ next leaders.
Shepherd’s Fold SDB Church (Johnson City, TN) Assistant
Bay Area SDB Church (Pinole, CA)
Covenant SDB Fellowship (Hungry Horse, MT)
Pataskala SDB Church (Pataskala, OH)
Miami SDB Church (Miami, FL)
Remembrance SDB Church (Ft. Worth, TX)
There are other potential vacancies in the near future. If you are interested in one of these vacancies, if you are called to pastoral ministry, or if you know someone who might be
interested in pastoral ministry, please contact the Director of Pastoral Services by email at jpethtel@seventhdaybaptist.org or call 608-752-5055 ext. 1009.
Summer Institute 2019
Fourteen students began their studies on SDB Polity & Applied Ecclesiology in February 2019 by responding to reading and discussion posts in our 2019 Summer Institute class. Teachers Carl Greene and John Pethtel (assisted by Nick Kersten and Jim Skaggs) met with nine of the students from June 9-14 in Janesville, WI. Some of the others were not able to attend due to work or illness issues.
If you have questions about Seventh Day Baptist University or want to pursue training for ministry leadership in your SDB church, please contact:
Director of Education or visit seventhdaybaptist.org/sdbu for more information.
