Thursday, May 17, 2007

More Effective Ministries

My purpose within International Teams is “Developing Resources that help IT Canada be More Effective in its Mission”. How has this played itself out in the past few months?

TrueCity Web SiteInternational Teams has a ministry in Hamilton, ON. We’re working with churches, helping them to reach their city together. It’s been exciting to see churches from various denominations come together in all sorts of areas to serve and reach their city. This past fall, I helped them develop a web site (www.truecity.ca) that they have found very helpful in facilitating some of this. They had their third annual conference in February, which brought 370 people from 65 different churches together. TrueCity 2007 Conference PosterI had the opportunity to produce the promotional material that helped to make this possible.

International Teams has a number of financial partners who give to various projects, or generally to the expanding work of IT. Up until recently, we’ve found it challenging to communicate how that money is being used. I’m now involved compiling communication to these donors in various formats (print, email, web, etc.)

MomentumWe’ve also been actively bringing stories from our missionaries together on our web site (www.iteams.ca). I personally have found it an exciting way to hear more about what’s happening around the world. We even send out a monthly email with some of these stories. You can subscribe to it from IT’s web site.

Coming up, I’m starting to work on a new web site for a ministry developing audio training materials for African pastors. What an exciting opportunity to help those in the front lines of communicating God’s word to those who have never heard!

It’s pretty exciting to see God at work, and all the ways I can be a part of it!

So what are Blogs, and why should I care?

ArisBetween my newsletters, listening to the news, etc, most of you have probably heard the term “Blog”. Some of you even have your own. Others of you have never used a computer, let alone seen a blog. So what’s the big deal?

ZaneBlog (Short for web Log) is a special sort of web site that’s set up a bit like a journal, where people are able to write stories, articles, etc. about what ever they like. They can even post pictures and videos to blogs. Another useful thing about a blog is it’s ability to deliver it’s contents in a standard way (RSS) that other computers can read.

Aris-You TubeFor our purposes, they’re an exciting way to publish stories, prayer letters, etc. that our friends, family, supporters, etc might be interested in reading. All of our news letters are also posted to our blog (www.vanbruwaene.ca) with an archive back to the original one. In addition to this, we have other articles there that don’t make it into our newsletters for one reason or another. We’ve even got videos of our kids on our blog.

BlogA number of other missionaries in International Teams are also starting to use blogs. Since those blogs all publish their contents in a standard way, International Teams is pulling the articles into our centralized news page. The result is a great place you, and anyone else interested in IT, can go to read about current happenings.

GalleryIn addition to our blog, we now also have an extensive photo gallery that’s kept up to date with all our latest pictures, shots from our travels, etc.

If you haven’t checked our blog out yet, I encourage you to do so! And if you’re a computer savy person who uses an rss reader to stay up on news, or even a “my yahoo” homepage, you can add our site, and IT Canada’s news page too (news.iteams.ca). I think you’ll enjoy the news you get there better than all the other bad news generally read on CNN!

Our Blog can be found at:


www.vanbruwaene.ca

Tuesday, May 15, 2007