Asbury UMC Testimonial

I'm Bob Johnson the webmaster for Asbury United Methodist Church in Springfield, Missouri (www.asburyunitedmethodist.org).  I wanted to send you a short note about how Vine and WEC has allowed us to expand our ministries beyond the walls of our church here in Springfield.

We used to have an out-of-date  'yellow pages ad' type of web site prior to my coming to Asbury.  I helped get a new web site going using Frontpage and doing what I could to make it more current and a more useful tool for our current members (posting newsletters, weekly activities and such).  When my pastor saw that we were getting a bit more interest in the web site - he started asking about whether we could start some new ministries using the web - his 'vision' included an on-line bible study where the members could interact online.  Obviously my current FrontPage based site wouldn't support the things he was talking about.

This was happening about the time I first ran across WEC - and saw what looked to me like just what we were needing to really start to leverage the internet to connect more people with the church.

I attended a training session given by Mark at the Church of the Resurrection in KC in Sep of 2006 and got really excited about the tools that WEC had developed geared specifically to churches.  I went home and started working with Vine Hosting and the WEC team and turned on our new WEC-based web site on Jan 3rd 2007.

We have about 150 registered users now.  Besides the normal newsletters & church schedules, we now have on-line prayer requests, we have had 3 on-line bible studies so far and our pastor has a blog on the site that is very popular.  The focus of the web site has moved away from a 'members-only' place to a place where we hope people searching for a church will find us.

What really surprised me is the visits our site has had from countries around the world.  We have one member currently deployed to Iraq and he has been keeping in touch with his church family using the website.

Without Vine & WEC - I'm certain it would not have been possible to get all of this done - expanding our ministries into these new areas.  The staff at Vine and WEC have been there with me every step of the way.

I would like to thank Foundation for Evangelism for their support of the Vine and WEC ministries - they are making a difference here in Springfield Missouri.

On another note, I have passed along what I have learned and have helped another church start their internet ministries efforts using Vine & WEC.

Sincerely,

Bob Johnson
webmaster@asburyunitedmethodist.org