Corby Shields, Pastor, 5/23/2024

Dear Highland Park Fellowship,

Coming out of our re-launch phase, I hope this summer feels like a welcome plateau in church life. I’m looking forward to our five midweek dinners together over these months. As we enjoy a deep breath as a church plant, it is also good to look forward to our next season, which will be a time of leadership development.

Our plan for the fall semester is to offer a leadership development/discipleship track to our whole church. This will involve about twelve midweek meetings that will include a time of teaching as well as breaking into small groups for discussion and application. While this is available and encouraged for anyone who is interested in growing in their faith, the completion of this track will be a required part of the preparation and equipping for anyone who will be in discipling leadership in our midst (teachers, worship leaders, elders, Community Group leaders, etc.). For that reason, we are asking all Community Groups to cease meeting in order to give their leaders (as well as others who wish to participate) time and space to complete this equipping. We’ll plan for Community Groups to resume in the winter of 2025.

Winter and early spring will be a time to nominate, train, and elect our officers. We plan to particularize as a church with the installation of officers sometime around Easter of 2025, Lord willing.

I hope these plans are as exciting to you as they are to me. There is no other opportunity to have a first class of officers for our church plant. These initial leaders will set a DNA for our church which, according to many experts, will be almost unalterable for up to 20 years or 3 different head pastors!  To ensure a healthy culture among us, our leaders need to know each other and together be actively moving towards the Lord, so we will take our time to do a thorough work of equipping and growing together. 

Please let me know if you have any questions about this. And thank you for your continued faithfulness in participating in the Lord’s work in and through Highland Park Fellowship!

Corby Shields
Pastor, Highland Park Fellowship