The Case of the Gray Face
0 CommentsCraig Sterling sent me this note after church last Sunday:
Josh,
Good afternoon! This morning you mentioned having a pet peeve (my words) with gray faces in the church directory. A few weeks ago, we received a letter from Erik Sheffer announcing that we are now under the care of Ben Wikner. So, like you, I wanted to put a face with the name of our new pastor. (If he was introduced to the congregation, I must have missed that particular meeting.)
In short, he’s not pictured in the Member Photo Directory. This morning I wondered who the person was asking us to pray for Russia. One of our row mates told us that person was Pastor Wikner. It was good to put the face with the name!
Grace and peace,
Craig and Mary Ann Sterling
Yes, we’re in the directory! :-)
Thanks for your note, Craig. This is funny because Ben and his family all lined up and got their photos taken at church this Sunday. So, you can find the Wikners in the directory now. Your note is a great reminder (to pastors, too!) of how helpful it is to be able to put faces with names! Here’s the Wikner clan: First row: Ben and Erin, Ellie, Abigail, Lilly. Second row: William, Gracie, Hope.
Church members, here are a couple of helpful links related to the directory:
• Forgot your password?
• Member Photo Directory homepage (access your profile, settings, frequently asked questions, upload your own photos, etc.)
February 25 2009 at 2:40 pm
Website Gets Fresh Paint
2 Comments
Noticed anything different around here lately? Last Friday, in the wee hours of the morning, our Web team launched a revamped home page for this website. I hope you’re enjoying and benefiting from the changes.
The main idea of the site refresh is to give users easier access to more information from the home page. So now, in addition to this blog, you’ll find “Events” and “News” tabs right on the home page. Check these tabs often for current info. You can also select from several recent blog posts, or choose from a longer list of options under “Recent Media.”
Some of the other changes have to do with bringing member features to the forefront. Now, if you’re logged in as a member, you’ll see a number of member options right at the top of the page. You can go straight to your member profile to make sure it’s current, or go to “Your Settings” where you can easily adjust your password as needed. You can also quickly get to your care group and ministry teams in the Member Photo Directory.
Incidentally, if you see anything that’s out of date or inaccurate in the way your or your family’s photos show up, or your ministry team information looks wrong, please use the “Report a Problem” form to notify our Web team. They love working hard to get this stuff right!
I’d like to thank our Web team, Ryan James, Aaron Simmons and Don Nalle in particular, for the fine work they’ve done to continue to refine the website. It’s a valuable resource for our church family and many guests and inquirers around the world. Thanks, team!
July 9 2008 at 6:00 pm
Welcome to the new site.
5 CommentsIt’s been a couple years in the making, and I’m excited to say, “it’s here!” 
Welcome to our church’s newly designed website and this blog. (Aaah, just what the world needs—another blog!) Please poke around the new website and let us know what you think. I think you’ll find the resource section particularly useful. And members, you’re going to love the new photo directory!
But let me tell you about the vision for this blog.
On a weekly basis, my goal here will be to share a bit of the unique perspective I have as a pastor in seeing the many ways that God is at work in our midst. So I want to highlight how he’s speaking to us through his word preached, what the pastors are thinking and praying about and where God’s grace is at work in different people and ministries. The Bible talks about the eternal and heavenly significance of what God is doing in and through his church (see Ephesians 3:10), and I hope that this blog, in a small way, will reflect this reality.
The audience I’m writing for is local—members of this local church and neighbors in our local community. So if you’re reading from Idaho, that’s great but—no offense—I won’t be writing for you. My scope is intentionally limited. I’m not trying to be “the blog for all nations.” Rather, I just want to talk about how the gospel of Jesus Christ is transforming lives in this town and this church family.
I also want this to be a place where you can add your voice to the topics and themes discussed. Now if you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet or other blogs, you know the comments section can often get a little hairy. So let me explain how we’ll handle comments here. Comments are welcome, but we will moderate them. So while all comments will be read, we won’t post every one. Thanks for understanding the need for this. Also, just like the blog itself, I’d like to keep comments primarily from locals—for people visiting the church and for members here. Finally, I ask that comments stay on the topic of the post.
All that being said, I’d love to get your feedback on the new site. The staff has been working so hard to get this ready for you. Please leave a comment telling them what you like.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to interacting with you as we celebrate God’s grace at work in our church.
July 8 2008 at 1:51 am
Ryan James: Web Designer
0 CommentsRyan James came to work at Covenant Life a little over two years ago. He and his wife Jenny, a skilled photographer, have made a wonderful contribution to this new church website and many other projects the Communications team has tackled.
Ryan has a profound passion for the Web and information architecture as well as an acute visual sense and graphic design skills. While he would say he’s not a “real” programmer, he is a great marriage of left brain and right. He really “gets” the programming/technical side, but also has a strong artistic sensibility and temperament.
I am grateful not only for Ryan’s skills, but for where he’s decided to use them and why. At age 22, newly married and with a growing desire to put Christ at the center of his vocation, Ryan reached out to New Attitude about supporting their website. The conversation led to a radical departure from the typical Web designer career path—a job where he would split his time between a church (Covenant Life) and Sovereign Grace Ministries (where he works on the New Attitude website). I am so grateful Ryan made the choice to move to Gaithersburg. In doing so, he intentionally chose to invest in God’s kingdom over immediate career advancement and financial gain.
July 7 2008 at 12:58 pm
About the Web Team
0 CommentsI’m so thankful for our Web team. They’ve put endless hours over the past two years into making this new site effective and creating a platform we can build on. So, let me introduce them:
(L to R): Jenny James, Ryan James, Don Nalle, Aaron Simmons, and Besilica Reaves
Our Web Designer Ryan James handled all aspects of site design as well as front-end development. Back-end development and database administration were the province of Aaron Simmons who serves as the church’s Database Administrator and author of at least one amazing Web application per day. Our Communications Director Don Nalle worked on project management, copy and content. Unfortunately, Technical Director Dave Wilcox was unavailable for the photo, but he and his team did a brilliant job preparing all the sermon audio files and logging them into the database. Ryan’s wife Jenny is a wonderful photographer who selected and prepared most of the photos for the website and took many of them, too. Administrative support, which included various meetings and lots of juggling of names and faces for the Photo Directory, was ably handled by Besilica Reaves.
Some of the many other vital contributors are: Joe Moorman (server administration); Latricia Reichman, Ben Neumann, and Gavin Black (sermon audio); DJ Ryan (copy and content); Peter Bang (Member Directory development and photography); Kristen Snyder, Andy Alonso, Corey Furman, Lydia Hartnett and Israel Groveman (Member Directory and other photography).
One more important person to mention: Katherine Reynolds, my assistant. Her role is just beginning to ramp up now, as she facilitates the daily posts for this blog!
One of the things that’s really helpful about the new site is the Content Management System (CMS) we’re using. It’s called Expression Engine, and it allows us to easily involve more of the church staff in maintaining the content of the site without everyone having to be highly technical. As you may know, I am a big fan of Apple computers, so it’s great to know our site was designed on a Mac.
Here are the main tools used by Ryan James and the team:
The Tools
—Apple Computers (ok, Aaron is a PC guy, but we’re still nice to him)
—Adobe CS3 (for layout comps and graphics)
—TextMate (for coding and development)
—Transmit (for file transfer)
—Sorensen Squeeze and Visual Hub (video encoding)
—Expression Engine (Content Management System or CMS)
Next post: more about Ryan who designed the site.