The picture above is of a web site I finished this week for Rupert Methodist Church. It’s the second ministry site I’ve done since coming up here to Vermont. The first was a unique ministry called CentrePoint in Glens Falls, NY.

I like doing some kinds of sites better than others. Developing commercial sites pay better, but because of my own natures, I much prefer developing sites for ministries, artists and churches. I suspect it is because they resonate with me, their spirituality and creativity sing to me somehow.

Rupert Methodist, for instance, is a beautiful, simple, warm little church, with some big challenges ahead. How to portray that, keep the message simple, and capture the spirit without complicating the site? And how to design it so the site can grow as the church grows and yet keep the spirit of it intact? What images and words to use for this place that has become special to me in the past year or two? It’s been a challenge, but not unlike the poetry writing you see here. Not unlike it at all.

And why not? Much of the bible is written in poetry. Even the ancients knew, and evidently God knew (since the bible is his inspired word) that poetry, capturing essence and mood and great thoughts in small, focused, rhythmic writing has a certain power that touches us deep inside. So it’s natural that using that same train of thought in telling the story of one of God’s houses would make sense.

After the new year, I’ll start another church site, for the Congregationalist church just down the road from the Methodists. They are, in some ways, sister churches in that they work together on a lot of things. But they have distinct personalities, and it will be a joy learning, and capturing it’s essence as well.

Stay tuned!

Tom