The Ministerial Conference held on the weekend of December 7th and 8th in El Paso, Texas was productive on several levels. It was undoubtedly due to God’s benevolent intercession through His Spirit and as a result of your faithful prayers. As James said, “…The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16).
Saturday evening, the newly formed Tech Team’s goals, technology issues, and future projects were presented to the Board and Management Team. As you probably know, technology is a moving target. The development of new equipment is a constant feature. This has meant that each area has developed their own way of using equipment to stream and record according to the skills of local people. The team will assess the existing equipment as well as new technology to provide a consistent operating standard. This standardization of equipment, software and processes for streaming and recording will be implemented across the board to provide a simplified approach for our tech crews. Also, a goal is to take some of the workload off these hard-working people. A technical support website will be developed so problems can be managed and to speed up problem solving.
Sunday morning each council and committee member in attendance gave their view on the present state of the Church and their thoughts on where we should be going. Based on personal feedback there was consensus that the feeding of the flock was a positive aspect of the work. There was also consensus that the time has come for us to go beyond the preaching of the gospel by our personal example and to add to it a more public work.
Our present website serves us well in meeting the needs of the Church of God. It will be preserved, maintained and updated as needed going forward. A public work, however, will be best served with a website dedicated to those who have not yet been called. The plan, then, is to launch a new website for that specific purpose. It represents an exciting and somewhat daunting opportunity to share the good news that many in the world are crying out for, though unwittingly. The new site will start as a mustard seed and will grow only as God blesses it. That brings us back to our faithful collective prayers as a body of believers filled with a desire to humbly move forward in a manner that brings glory to our Father – not to a physical organization, but to the spiritual organism.
The aspect of the gospel that we have focused on so consistently these last five years – our personal example of reconciliation both with God and among ourselves – is an absolutely vital part of the foundation on which we now feel compelled to build. To forget or neglect that foundation would be tantamount to trying to build on shifting sand. As from the beginning, the work we will continue to be engaged in does not seek the glorification of any organization — we seek to bring glory to God and to His one spiritual organism.
Let us be about our Father’s business!
Bill Hutchison and Marshall Stiver
