Our church , my passions and our growing web ministry...

I have been wanting to have a place to have an on-going dialogue about life, leadership and other issues. Being a pastor is challenging and fun and draining and exciting and awful and awesome all at the same time. I think that the coolest part of it is that I simply get to be friends with people and share with them the only thing that really matters in life - a relationship with Jesus!

I don't want this to seem pretentious. But I have been reading other's blogs and have really been fed by them and maybe just maybe I might say something halfway interesting every once in a while.

Probably to begin, let me say why I do this. Why I preach. I can't do anything else is the answer. That isn't because I don't have skills in other areas of life. I could always flip a burger somewhere. But I really believe in this. I really know God wants to use me...and more than that I desperately want to be used by God.

At The Fort, where I preach, I have been there for over 8 years and there have been a few times in that length of time that I have thought about throwing in the towel and looking for another church. But I know, I know, I know that God is doing a great work at The Fort! I believe it with all my heart.

I believe that The Fort is going to become a one of the premeire churches in Des Moines, Iowa. I believe that our congregation has the power to impact more lives for Christ than most churches. We already are, for crying out loud. Our web ministry is exploding...and I believe it is a total God thing.

We started with a half-way decent web site and kept adding little features to it. And it used to be hosted by some dear friends in another state. But now our web site, which we host on our own, is growing and growing.

Our vision for it has evolved as well. We don't want a static site that just lists information. We want a dynamic site that offers tons of resources to the visitor. A place where the visitor can come and really be "fed".

Our forums section is really taking off...which is cool. But the ability to download podcasts of the messages is a great tool for the web site. Now we have a growing video ministry where we are putting those videos on Youtube and then embedding them on our site. That is very cool.

A couple of cool newer features that will be coming very soon are a new podcast entitled: Ask The Pastor. This will be a weekly show where we deal with a variety of questions in about 10-15 minutes. It will be a lot of fun and hopefully very informative.

Also we are going to be adding soon a whole other section to our web site entitled: Godspace. It will mirror what Myspace is and will be targeting our teens but will really be for anyone to use. It is going to be a safe place for Christians to create and make their own "Space" on the net through our web site. I am really excited about this and think that it has a lot of potential for our whole web ministry to just continue to expand into new directions!

I guess while listing these things, it hit me that it would be easy to interpret that these things are cool and I might like all of them because it is new and edgy but I want you to hear my heart too. It's about people. It's about people using our web site and it's resources to help them be drawn closer to Jesus. And maybe even drawn closer to other Christians (and yes, that can happen even in a virtual environment).

So bottom line for me...our web ministry is doing something that our Sunday morning ministry cannot. We are reaching around the globe and really helping people know Jesus better. And that is absolutely awesome.

There are a couple of guys in our church that are heroes in this realm too. And I want both of those guys to know that I not only love them for what they do but I respect them more than they could possibly know. So thanks to them!