Today Our Saviour’s hosted Journey to Jamaa. A program produced by World Vision. We are very excited because Our Saviour’s is actually the first church to host this brand new program!

Taking place during the Sunday worship service, Journey to Jamaa brings home the reality that worship is something you do with your whole being—heart, mind, hands, and feet. Journey to Jamaa allows your congregation to see poverty through the eyes of two Ugandan orphans, experiencing their journey from tragedy to hope. Each participant is invited to learn more about poverty by personally experiencing the story of one character in the narrative parable, told through film. You’ll learn about the needs of children around the globe and how World Vision is helping children, families, and communities experience life in all its fullness. Grow closer as a church family—on your Journey to Jamaa.

- Journey to Jamaa.org

The video is very powerful and shows the types of conditions these children live with… every day of their lives. It shows heartbreak, struggle, frustration, joy, love, kindness, compassion and understanding. It will bring tears to your eyes and will call you to action!

You can make a difference!!!

By sponsoring a child through World Vision you can enable them to experience the fullness of life that God offers.

More than 1 million children live on less than $1 each day! These children and their families are all too familiar with poverty. By sponsoring a child you can provide them with the basics such as food, clean water and love. By writing to them and getting to know them you will be helping them and encouraging them in so many more ways than just food and water.

If you decide to sponsor a child, let me know what his or her name is and send a picture or blog about them yourself!

[Images by: World Vision]

Sometimes the greatest story ever told can be the hardest to tell

- STORY 2010

Last year I had the amazing opportunity to attend STORY Chicago 2009. It was an incredible experience and I am grateful to my church for allowing me to go. My friend Dan Beirne, who is also the Youth Director at my church, attended last year with me. We heard from some amazing speakers which included; Ed Young, Dave Gibbons, Nancy Beach, Chris Seay, Stacey Spencer, Mike Foster, and Donald Miller. It was very cool to hear from each of them and learn how they’ve developed the art of story telling over time.

As worship leaders, both behind the scenes (myself) and up on stage (pastors and worship directors), it is so important that we know how to tell a story. The story of Jesus is the greatest story ever told and God has entrusted us with that task. Telling that story in the most creative and inspiring way possible is our mission.

This year I am pleased to announce that more representatives from the worship team at my church will be attending with me! I am very excited about sharing this experience with them and I know we will all walk away from this conference both energized and better equipped to do ministry in the local church!

STORY Chicago 2010 takes place on September 23-24th at Park Community Church (Near North Campus) in Chicago, IL. This year’s theme is “Communicating the Unseen”.

Are you going? If not Buy some tickets! Space is limited!

[Image by: STORY Chicago]

(list of speakers after the jump)

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Our Saviour’s new website has been live for a couple months now and we are very pleased with how it’s performance. I have received some comments from the congregation that it is difficult to find information on it. This post is an attempt to help explain the new navigation system. Cloversites highly values “clean”. They firmly believe that a user at all times should #1 – know where they are, and #2 – know how to get where they want to go.

If you can’t use a product, it’s the product’s fault. It’s not the user’s fault.

-Cloversites

As I have stated in the past, 80% of the new site’s content is directed at people who are not yet a part of our growing community while 20% is directed at our current members. Below I will highlight the 20% areas. We know that this new website is vastly different from our old website. Everything we have done with this new design has been intentional.

Home – Advertisements for specific ministries and events have intentionally been left off our home page. The new website is focusing on drawing new people into our growing community and the images that rotate on our home page are designed to be representative of who we are, not what we do.

When We Worship

Times – Displays a list of our worship service times at both campuses as well as links to Google Maps for directions.

Messages – Contains a link to launch the media player where each week’s message is posted. The media player is one of the simplest web players I’ve seen. Clover automatically podcasts the messages for us and even offers them to you as an .mp3 download!

Giving – Simply put… giving is a form of worshiping God. This page explains how the giving process works at Our Saviour’s.

Summer Happenings – This page title will change throughout each year depending on the season. Right now it is home to registration links for our summer events.

News.Calendar.Register

News – Page where PDF documents of our weekly and monthly connections (newsletters) are posted for you to download.

Calendar(s) – We are currently in the process of replacing the Cloversites calendars with Google Calendars. This will create less re-work for staff and allow the public to subscribe to a Google Calendar for different ministries as well as the general church calendar! Google Apps FTW!

Downloads – This is where you can download Our Saviour’s original forms and brochures for events.

Registrations – Contains links to myConnections (Access ACS), our web-based database software where a member can use their own personalized login to search and register for events and mission trips.

myConnections – Contains links to the general myConnections (Access ACS) login page as well as a link to the current serving opportunities at Our Saviour’s.

If you are curious about how why we chose Cloversites and a overview of our the back end of our new website operates check out the below video.

(after the jump)

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