Off to School

Licensing school that is. Holston Conference Licensing School begins Thursday at Camp Buffalo Mountain outside of Johnson City, TN. There are 3 sessions, Thursday afternoon to Sunday afternoon over the next couple of months. I’m looking forward to what is ahead.

The pre-session study has been on part of Outler’s Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit along with a text that I’ve enjoyed reading entitled Keeping in Touch, Christian Formation and Teaching by Carol Krau. The text deals with learning as a lifelong process and how we minister through Christian Education and especially through small group settings. It also touches upon the fact that we must be open to all learning styles to be successful in our small groups.

The thing that scares me most about this process is coming face to face with the realization of how much I don’t know.

I’ll post an update on Sunday night…if I’m not too drained from the weekend experience.

Happy Valentine’s Day

To my beautiful bride of 16 1/2 years, a Happy Valentine’s Day. You are the love of my life. You keep me balanced. You keep me grounded.

As we begin the journey down the path of this calling together, I thank God that he placed you in my life.

Love,
Wayne

Missing Dean

I really miss Dean Snyder. He hasn’t posted since the first of November. Dean always brought a fresh perspective to any topic and he did it with respect for differing opinions.

Dave Allen Grady did a great job of defining a progressive ideology in this post at his Southern Liberal Methodist blog. By the way Dave, prayers for your speedy recover from surgery.

Taking the Plunge

As I mentioned in this post, I have inherited the job of webmaster at church.

Our website, which was developed and maintained by a single individual for almost a decade, is in deperate need of an overhaul. Although the site was functional at one time, it isn’t even a competitor in today’s web world. It is not user friendly, it is difficult to navigate and is a royal pain to maintain…and those are it’s good features. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good features of the site, but it provides nothing that would encourage a potential visitor to darken our doors on Sunday or any other time.

So, what are the goals that I have for the website? For starters, I want to create a site that is more concerned with content than with style. I want a site that can easily be maintained by the different ministry areas. I want a site that that will allow interaction with the visitor. I want a site that will give us an opportunity to minister to, and with, those who come to our website…a site that says who we are…and why we’re here…and why you should join us in the journey.

In order to accomplish this much needed redesign and reposition of our website, I have been given the authority to have total control over the layout and initial content of the site. There will be a brainstorming group that will give me direction and set priorities, but the final word on what and how will be mine. In order to accomplish the changeover, I will be using the Web Empowered Church (WEC) initiative from the Foundation for Evangelism. WEC provides extensions to the open source TYPO3 framework of content management software (CMS) which means, in geekspeak, that it plays well together.

I come into this process with the experience of someone who has been developing and maintianing websites for over 10 years, so I have no misconceptions about the challenge ahead. In fact, I’m looking forward to the challenge. Now, my question for you is this: If you had an opportunity to design a church website with the goal of using it as a tool for ministry and evangelism, what features would you include?

Thanks waiter

I firmly believe in directing folks to other blogs when the other blogger has something worth saying and says it well. I was introduced to Waiter Rant by another blogger. Waiter’s posts are sometimes irreverent, sometimes controversial but always dead on when it comes to human nature. This post is no exception.

Enjoy!