In today’s post I’m going to start a series of posts that will give you highlights of some of the workshops that we attended while at General Conference and how we think that they will help us to see God’s work move forward during our time in France.  First of all though, let me tell you about the…

Warm Welcome in St. Louis

I was surprised to see the extent to which the city of St. Louis rolled out the red carpet (or at least, the red banners for us). These banners were all over the downtown core along with similar themed welcome signs in several of the hotels & welcome areas as well.

There were also some black ones around town for another convention that was being held in the same venue: Organo Gold; a network marketing company that sells pre-packaged coffee .  (Someone did try to recruit Liz as she sat drinking her Starbucks one day: “Does Starbucks ever send you a cheque for drinking their coffee?” the salesperson asked… oh dear!)

Simplify

You may have noticed a change to the top navigation menu since the last time you visited the site. If not… take a quick moment to scroll up and look at it now.

I’d been wanting to add a “Contact Us” page to make it easier for us to connect, but with 7 menu choices already there, that would’ve been a bit much. The compromise… I grouped The Destination, The Dream and The Team beneath a single heading “The Mission” , allowing me to add the new page and still reduce the options across the top, making navigation a bit more simple.

This is just one small tweak (for now) after being inspired by Rev. Lee Wells‘ #UPCIGC14 workshop…

Social Media & Church Planting

Not only is churchplanter Rev. Wells pastor of Landmark Fellowship Church, in Rockwall Texas, but he is also founded iChurch Marketing which aims to provide churches with new tools for a new generation. The workshop gave me ideas to help improve this blog, but it will undoubtedly lead to things that we’ll implement when in France as well.

Thanks Bro. Wells, you likely just became part of revival in France!

Here are the top 3 tidbits that I took away from that seminar:

1.  The church’s website and social media presence have become the church’s new front door.
   (90% of potential guests will check the web first – looking for your church’s website or Facebook page – before they ever approach your real front door. If they don’t find us, they will find someone else.)
2. 75% of Google search users never go beyond the first page search results.
   (Make sure you do everything possible to ensure that keywords and other SEO measures are optimized for your site so that you’ll be on that first page)
3. This year, web searches from mobile devices are expected to overtake searches from a desktop or laptop.
   (Websites therefore must be mobile compatible)

When in France…

The church in Châtellerault currently has neither a website, a Facebook page or any other online presence. This is not entirely uncommon in France. There has traditionally not been as much emphasis on web presence there as there is in North America. I believe this will actually work to our advantage, because as we develop an attractive site and web presence for the church there, it will certainly stand out there in the region. I will, of course, let you know when that comes online.

Upcoming post…

Finally for today… do you remember the post where I talked about the “Big & Little Crowns” that surround Paris and how God used that image to speak to and through me on the day that he called us to France? I’m going to come back to that image in Saturday’s post, I hope you’ll come back to pick up on it.

If you don’t remember that original post, why not go here and read it to refresh your memory.
See you Saturday!