Last week I got a chance to go up to the Fellowship Technologies offices. You don’t have to read this blog for very long to know that I’m a big fan of F1. Selfishly, I wanted to see the offices and get a look at their operation. However, I did want to say thank you for all the ministry help by taking some F1 people out to lunch.
Wow! I’m not sure I had any real expectations. In reality, the whole visit was very last minute. I was shooting emails and tweets to anyone I knew at Fellowship Tech the day before I would be there. However, the experience was off the charts. It was an incredible time for sure! Seeing their operation was pretty amazing and I’m so impressed by what their doing. It’s funny really. There have been times where I’ve seen a company or organization that has a really great public face, but if you could see things from behind the curtain, you’d be surprised by what was missing or how things are not as organized as you would assume. Again, I’m not sure I really had any expectations, but I was really impressed when I got to look behind the curtain of Fellowship One. I realize that they were birthed out of Fellowship Church many years ago by a lot of creative and very smart people, but I was really impressed by what I saw. I felt like I was in the headquarters of any top web company bring run by a lot of really smart guys who knew what they were doing. The best word I can use to describe the feeling I had walking around their facility was “impressed.”
Being in the ministry world, you don’t always get the training or knowledge that other industries have on project planning, structure and organization… so I learned a lot while I looked around. I took pictures and looked at everything through the filter of “how could I translate that to the ministry I run.” I’ll have to blog a little later about some of the stuff I learned and I’m cooking in my mind right now.
Most importantly, as I walked around and saw what people were doing and projects they were working on, I really did get the sense that the folks at Fellowship Tech love the church and they’re committed to serving churches. That may sound silly, but I know that many companies that service churches as clients sometimes get distracted by profits and losses and it all just becomes business. I didn’t feel that here at all.
So, I got to meet Jeff Pelletier for the first time. He had some words for Matt McKee that I was glad to pass on about how his football team was better that Matt’s. Anthony Coppage took me on the grand tour and I took him and Curtis Harris to lunch to Hard Eight BBQ. It was pretty great and I’d say that if you’re in the DFW area, you should check it out. I’d say it’s the best BBQ I’ve had in the metroplex. However, I’ll be honest. It still just didn’t quite compare to some of the classics we have down in the Austin area. Ha! I shook Curtis Simmons‘ hand, but ended up missing him as I had to run to another appointment (Curtis, I’ll hang with you next time). Last but not least, Mark Lindsley and a few developers from his team gave me a sneak peak at some new features in development. Mark has helped me out many times via twitter and phone, both showing me where I was doing something wrong as well as showing me features I didn’t know existed. He’s a great guy and it was a real privilege to see some stuff in future development and even asked for my opinion.
Wow! What a great time I had, I can’t wait to visit again. I know I’ll be in DFW again in a few months, so if they’ll have me again, they can count on me stopping in again.
