Good Morning.

Welcome back! For those of you who can and/or did take the past week or so away from your church ministry responsibilities, I'm sure you have returned to a full desk. Here at the Creator office, we spent some time browsing the internet because we had some extra time due to the holidays, and we found some interesting things.

● First, you may want to check out what one church's Christmas special services were like. Just reading about them made me tired thinking about all the planning that had to go into making the services happen. Go here and search for the entry entitled Sunday Summary - Music: December 21, 2008.

● And I personally found this research to be fascinating. It concerns how visual stimulus affects auditory perception. If you are doing any kind ...

Good Morning and Happy New Year.

Wow! Another year gone. We'd like to thank all of you for your support in 2008. We appreciate the feedback (we're human...we especially appreciate the positive feedback) you've given us during the last twelve months on how to help you do your ministry better. We love being able to help members of the Creator Leadership Network by providing timely and helpful information, and we look forward to continuing to do so in 2009. Stay tuned...we have some wonderful things coming, including new ways that CLN can help you, and they are just over the horizon.

Before we get to this week's Monday Morning Email, let's wrap up this year by reminding you:

● We continue to add new articles to the Creator knowledge base every week, and you can see them all by

Good Morning and Merry Christmas.

It is almost Christmas. Are you ready? From all of us here at Creator and Monday Morning Email to all of you who bring your gifts to the service of the new-born King, we wish you to best of all Christmases, and the most wonderful New Year of ministry.

Just a couple of bits of information before we let you get back to those last minute preparations and time with your family:

● Last week we held our second Fantastic Friday, and I want to congratulate the following Creator Leadership Network members who will each get a free copy of the newly released After the Chase album Make Me New:

Dan Blankenship of Georgia
Paul Christiansen

Don't miss Randy Vader's Christmas Meditation for 2008, now on the Thinking on These Things page. Click here to see it.

Good Morning.

I am reminded by my staff that I keep forgetting to celebrate things--like the fact that over the past couple of weeks we have again surpassed a milestone in Creator Leadership Network membership. We are now over 2400 strong, and counting. Won't you please tell your friends about CLN and Monday Morning Email? I think it would be great to get to 2500 before the end of the year.

Two things...read to the end of this paragraph to see how they tie together. First, last week I was talking with a friend of mine about the state of...well, the media in this particular instance, but, almost everything connected with the notion of opinion. Have I told you all about how I've been (in my head) working on a little "checkout" book for years? It is "The world is divided into...&am ...

Good Morning.

Thanks for all your responses to my book excerpt. I am pleased to know that so many of you are interested in purchasing the book. I've responded to all of your personally, but if you are reading this and did not send me an email over the past week or two, and are interesting in buying the book, just let me know by clicking here. I'll make sure that we get the information to you as soon as it is available.

Our next issue of the print version of Creator is at the printer and should ship in the next few days. This particular issue may "strike a few chords" with you, because it is about The Call to ministry- ...

Good Morning.

First, an apology...The response to my book excerpt generated so much email traffic last Monday, that my e-mailbox couldn't handle it. Part of the problem was that I was also being bombarded with spam, which happens periodically. If I responded to you personally, I got your email feedback. However, I know I missed a number of emails, and I really do want to hear what you thought. Perhaps you were sending me your own story. In any event, I don't want to miss what you had to say, so here are the email options again:

Click on one of the response possibilities, please. Then, if you can and will, click on the I've got a story link to share your own tale.

And the winners are:

Marty Cole of Washington

Mike McClurg of Ohio

Lyndsay Naranjo of Florida

Margaret Quezada of Kansas

Duane Toole of Virginia

Congratulations to all of you. Your DVD of Noelle will be on its way to you in the next couple of days.

Blessings,

Vern Sanders

Publisher

Creator Magazine

Good Morning.

Happy Thanksgiving week. I have always found this to be an odd two Sundays to plan, from a worship standpoint. Do you celebrate Thanksgiving on the Sunday before, or the Sunday after the actual day? Neither, for me, is entirely satisfactory. And, when you consider that most of the time the church at which I serve has been in or at the end of a stewardship campaign, it gets complicated. I think our Canadian friends have it much easier, since their Thanksgiving comes on a Monday (for our American readers, just look at the Monday closest to Columbus Day and you'll have an idea), so celebrating on the day before seems much more obvious. By the way, as long as we are having gratuitous Canadian references, American Thanksgiving weekend is also celebrated in Canada as one of the biggest holidays of the year--it's called Grey Cup (inside joke...don't worry if you don't get it). Anyway, since my wedding anniversary is such that it normally takes place on or about Thank ...

We have our winners. Thanks, everyone, for your participation. Look for our next Fantastic Friday coming in December. We'll announce who won tomorrow in this space...