Dear Friends,
“Catalyst of the Community’s Love” is how one of our program directors recently described the work of the Broome County Council of Churches. I couldn’t agree with him more. In many ways we embody the faith, prayers, and dreams of our foremothers and fathers who worked and had a vision for the mission of the church to connect with the needs of our community and for that act to be the embodiment of love. We are in many ways God’s love manifest in practical acts of kindness and compassion. The Broome County Counci of Churches is God’s love made real.
To that end, we have always struggled with how to showcase what it is that we actually do at the Council of Churches. We want to help people engage each other in acts of compassion and kindness and to invite folks to participate in our activities, but we don’t want to do it so flashy that it demonstrates false pride and a lack of humility. We are very proud of what we do, but we don’t want to spend an inordinate amount of time or resources flaunting ourselves. We would rather put that time and money into mission: building wheelchair ramps, planting vegetables, creating relationships with community partners, caring for the lonely, the sick, the imprisoned, the hungry, and those who can use some help to make their lives a bit better.
As we have struggled with how to do this effectively, one of our board members told us about an open-source website platform called Word Press. WP helps websites adjust to many different platforms including tablets and smart phones and makes it very easy to manipulate content and add information that updates you on what we are doing. The best thing about it is that it costs us nothing. Well, almost nothing.
$249 dollars a year is what we have to pay for web hosting. The content from our previous website was migrated to the new website by a caring board member who volunteered his time to make it happen. The format was also donated by a web designer with whom the board members works. We are truly thankful for the care and the work that these folks have done to help us launch this website.
One of the best fetures of this new web site is how easily it connects to the blogging, the social networking, and web design worlds. For those of you who would like to help us share this new web site with your contacts, this feature will make it very simple for you. It would be a huge help if you would share us with your friends, colleagues, and business and church contacts to help us grow our following.
We have combined several of our email lists onto this platform and you will be updated on what is happening at the Broome County Council of Churches from time to time. If you are uninterested in receiving email updates from the Broome County Council of Churches, simply unsubscribe from the email list and you will be removed. And I promise you, it won’t hurt our feelings. I know how inundated an inbox can become with emails, and the last thing we want to be is another piece of junk mail you have to delete.
As a catalyst of the community’s love, we look forward to demonstrating the love, mercy, and faith to our community. Thank you for being a part of this journey with us and for helping us to make the love of God real in Broome County.
Peace and Towels,
Rev. Dr. Joe Sellepack