Minor Site Redesign

I’ve done some tweak­ing of the site. Basi­cal­ly, I’ve changed the lay­out of the front page slight­ly, and I’ve updat­ed the way I cat­e­go­rize infor­ma­tion on the site to reflect a refine­ment in my think­ing.

For sev­er­al months now I’ve been explain­ing to peo­ple that there are three key ways they can be a part of mis­sions (aside from becom­ing a voca­tion­al mis­sion­ary), and I’m redesign­ing the site so that infor­ma­tion is cat­e­go­rized accord­ing­ly. Most of my entries fall into one of four cat­e­gories:

1. Inter­ces­sion: Pray­ing for Mis­sions
My basic thrust in this sec­tion of the site is to encour­age peo­ple to pray for us, and espe­cial­ly to pray what I con­sid­er to be the core bib­li­cal prayer for mis­sion­ar­ies.

2. Invest­ment: Giv­ing to Mis­sions
This sec­tion of the site invites peo­ple to part­ner with us finan­cial­ly, which is actu­al­ly giv­en more promi­nence in the Bible than is pray­ing for mis­sion­ar­ies. Many of the entries revolve around anwer­ing peo­ple’s ques­tions about giv­ing to mis­sions.

3. Involve­ment: Work­ing for Mis­sions
In addi­tion to pray­ing and giv­ing, peo­ple with­out a call to full-time mis­sion­ary work can fre­quent­ly do things to help out. With­in the Assem­blies of God, this includes work­ing with such mis­sion­ary aux­il­liary min­istries as Light for the Lost, Speed the Light, Boys and Girls Mis­sion­ary Cru­sade, and the Wom­en’s Min­istries Mis­sion­ary Bou­tique. This is a new sec­tion of the site, as I real­ly did­n’t have any­thing up about this pri­or to yes­ter­day when I post­ed prac­ti­cal ways peo­ple can help.

4. Infor­ma­tion: Learn­ing about Mis­sions
Final­ly, I added one cat­e­go­ry for entries that were rel­e­vant, but just did­n’t seem to fit the above clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

I haven’t com­plete­ly fin­ished revamp­ing things yet, as I’m still think­ing about how to han­dle the remain­ing cat­e­gories and whether or not I should launch a per­son­al blog (where­in I actu­al­ly express opin­ions) in a sub­di­rec­to­ry of this site. I express more of my per­son­al inter­ests and obser­va­tions over at http://www.xastanford.org/, but there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t put there because that blog, like this one, is a blog with a pur­pose.

To give cred­it where cred­it is due, I got the cat­e­gories from First Assem­bly of God in Des Moines, Iowa. I don’t know if it’s orig­i­nal to them or not.