Offices, Patios, and the Web

by Jeff Bills

Lots of exciting things have been happening that I want to share with you, beginning with the church offices. As we continue to reorganize our staff, the physical office suite needed to be reorganized as well. Four office cubicles were donated to the church by a local business and have been installed by a group of our men. Feel free to take a walk into the office to look around this morning (of course we are still in the process of settling in). In addition to the new cubicles, Joanne Kramer, who is serving as my assistant, has moved into the office next to mine where Pastor Rick used to be. Rick is now down at the other end of the lobby in my old office. John Grace, who leads our operations (what we call Ministry Support), is in an office down that same hallway.

On another front, the project that Phil Nagley took on as his Boy Scout Eagle project, is completed. If you walk down the hallway towards the Activity Center, you will see on the right a set of doors leading out to a courtyard. Phil and his team laid down patio pavers to create a beautiful outdoor place for people to be able to sit and eat, read, pray, or visit with a friend. In addition, they laid out two dump truck loads of playground mulch to create a safe environment for children to play. I am really proud of Phil for a job well done, and I am grateful to all who supported him financially and/or by providing some sweat equity.

Finally, a project that has been in process since January gets launched today — our new Web site is now live! MeetHope.org has been completely recreated and I am very excited by what our Web design team has produced. The look is contemporary, the site is easy to navigate, and it has lots of helpful information without overwhelming people with stuff. One new feature is that Sunday’s message will now be available online to either listen to on your desktop or download into an MP3 player. Go out and surf our site and — just as importantly — invite someone you know to check it out as well.

As great as the new site is today, it is still a work in progress. A new site for Sojourn is being developed as is a “Webzine.” Under the direction of Randy Petersen and Lu Kepron, an online magazine is being developed that will feature stories by and about HOPE people. Both of these projects will be linked to the HOPE site and we will let you know when they are up and running.

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