Church Website Update

As the current webmaster for our church's website, I have been curious to see how many hits we have been getting. After a few weeks, I was able to have access to a tracking website through http://www.godaddy.com. Since March, our statistics have been pretty low. If would appear we had a handful of hits each day. However, in the month of September our number of hits has quadrupled! So far October has shown the same numbers.

I try not to get my hopes up. There could be a variety of reasons for this. Hopefully, it is for legitimate reasons. Maybe there's one person who really likes out site that checks it over and over again. But, it is great to see some increased traffic on the site.

If you have not had the the chance to check it out yet, it is: http://www.oakfield-taborumc.org/. It provides information about our worship services, about upcoming events at both churches, about the pastor. If you missed the service on Sunday, the sermon from the previous week's service will be posted on the site. It also gives you the ability to submit an on-line prayer request. It is helpful for members and non-members alike.

We Have a Webpage, Revisited...

Last week, I posted that we had a website for the Oakfield and Tabor churches. I posted that with the assumption that what I had uploaded for the website would be ready by the time I posted that particular entry.

It became obvious to me how little I knew about web design when I got a call from the GoDaddy folks. There were a few things that I did wrong, and once we got those corrected over the next few days, it finally works. Corrections to the website are now almost instant.

Please check it out:

http://oakfield-taborumc.org/

I am always looking for ideas and suggestions.

We Have a Webpage!

It's official: Tabor UMC and Oakfield UMC now have a website. It is: http://oakfield-taborumc.org/. We purchased the domain name through godaddy.com. I plan on utilizing a service where they will both host and help in the construction of our website. They provide these services for a very reasonable price.

Please know that for now about all that we have on our website is a title and some information about how the website is coming soon. Please keep checking as I am able to get information uploaded onto our new site.

If you check today and tomorrow, you will go to the website, but you may not find the page yet. They say that it can take a day or two for the information to be uploaded.

I am excited. This is a project that I have been working on since I became a pastor for these two churches. To know that we can start putting information on our own website is exciting news!

Productive Meeting

Typically, if I was part of a 2-hour meeting, I would tell you that it was a waste of time...or that we talked too much. Last night Oakfield Church Council meeting was an exception to that. There was a lot on the agenda, but I thought there was some incredible news to report:

• Our apportionment payments went up significantly in comparison to last year. We are close to paying about 80% for 2009, whereas we were at about 50% for 2008.
  
• We approved the creation of a website for the Oakfield and Tabor churches. The cost is very low and we will not have to worry about hosting the site. We will simply need to upload the necessary information onto the pages. Hopefully this will be up and running soon.
• We have shown a great deal of initiative to get a group together to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
• We had a good discussion about advertising. We are hoping to utilize the Oakfield Gazette more, as well as be more intentional about submitting press releases for upcoming events.

It was a lively meeting with good discussion. I hope all of our meetings continue to be like this!

Tabor Ministry Initiative Teams
Next week, letters will be going out to some members of Tabor United Methodist Church regarding our Ministry Initiative Teams. I am hoping to get current members of the these committees together along with some other individuals who I think would be good on these committees. These groups work specifically with nurture (Sunday school, youth, etc.), missions and witness (worship services).

With the excitement of the new addition growing and additional facilities soon at our disposal, I think it's important that we think about new ministries and new opportunities at the Tabor Church. Stay tuned for additional information and updates!