Tim Postuma

Cool. I just got an email saying we've made it to the next round in the selection process. It didn't say how many other churches were in this round, but I'm hopeful.

Thanks so much, Terry, for posting this on The Network!

At our most recent elders meeting, we discussed this very issue. One easy (but hopefully significant) change we made was to assign young adults to a district separate from their parents. So, for those that grew up in our church, they move from Youth Elder to their 'own' district at the age of 18.

Hopefully that helps remind them - and us! - that they are an adult member/attender in their own right. They'll get the same elder visit as any other member, including a conversation about their participation in the life of the church. And the lines won't be so blurred as when they have the same elder as their parents.

I'm looking forward to hearing what comes of your round-table discussion. Keep us posted.

And, in the meantime, what other things have churches done to be better enfold young adults into the full life of the church?

Thanks for the link to that, Dave.

I also just saw that the seminary is hosting a panel discussion on the Belhar Confession next week Tuesday, October 12, at 7:30pm. Here's a link to their events calendar and the description:

John Cooper, Victoria Proctor-Gibbs, and Peter Borgdorff will dialogue on the Belhar Confession. Thea Leunk will moderate the discussion. One question that will be addressed is "Should the Christian Reformed Church adopt the Belhar?" Free and open to the public. Please join us. 

Maybe this could be recorded, or webcast? I'll email the seminary to see if they can let us know about that.

I just heard back from Betsy at the seminary. The panel discussion WILL be recorded and broadcast live (if technology cooperates). Links will be available on the CTS Lecture Archive page (update: or try this lecture calendar page). She writes:

"...a box will appear in the top left of page that says something like "listen/watch live."  Be patient for a couple of minutes so the IT guys can get things going (or if we start a couple minutes late).  If for some reason it doesn't work it will definitely be on the archive within days of the event."

Thanks, Amy. You actually can do this now, but it's not as easy to find as it should be. Look for the "Share" button at the bottom of any post and there's an option to email to a friend.

We've been working on a more obvious implementation of that (i.e. in the sidebar of all pages). That will be launched very soon - in fact, it might even be later today if all goes well.

That's great, Stanley. Forwarding specific articles to specific people is going above and beyond. It gets the RIGHT content into the hands of the right people. Thanks!

re: Banner ads - Yes, it's all one 'family' of CRC ministry so it's basically an internal transfer. But if they didn't charge us anything, I'd be asking for a Network ad on the back of every issue (market value: $4,500). CRC ministries get a discount, but by 'paying' something close to fair market rates we don't crowd out important income from outside advertisers.

Any way you slice it, print is expensive. So that's why we're so appreciative of pastors and staff that help get the word out through email, bulletin announcements, etc. It doesn't work for everything, but when it does it means we can spend less on paper/postage and more on ministry.

I should have mentioned that the tool we use - reCPATCHA - actually serves an additional function...helping digitize old texts that require human (rather than computer) recognition.

It's nice that those 30 million entries/day are being harnessed for some extra good. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.

Greetings, all who are following this thread.

I wanted to let you know that our new spam-prevention tool just went live in the past hour. So hopefully you'll see fewer Captchas as you post on The Network. The new system analyzes the content being posted to determine the likelihood of spam, and then only displays the captcha if it thinks it necessary.

We'll be keeping a close eye on it in the next 24-48 hours to make sure it's all working correctly. If you see any problems, feel free to email us at [email protected]  Thanks for helping us continue to improve the Network's accessibility and user experience.

Tim

I think you're both right. Part of the problem is the fact that we actually have two different search tools right now - one that searches guide content and another that searches the forums.

On our roadmap, we've added a project to look at replacing both with Google custom search (which we use on CRCNA.org). We've got a few projects ahead of that one, but hopefully it won't be too long.

Once we've got one, universal search tool it will make it easier to display throughout the site. With the growth we've been seeing on The Network this fall, search will become more and more important.

Keep the suggestions coming! We're listening closely and suggestions like this help make the site better for everyone.

The forum search box will search all forums. If we implement Google custom search as an all-in-one search tool we'd be sure to have the ability to filter the results by guided content vs. forums (much as you can filter search results on CRCNA.org by ministry area - example). Maybe we could even allow people to filter by all 50-or-so Network sections.

You're right, we don't have one. Interesting suggestion.

I suppose it could fit under Elders (in our church we have an Elder to the Seniors), but maybe it should be it's own section. What does everyone else think?