It was 2002 when I came home from a conference really frustrated because I was a teacher who had ideas to share and no opportunity to share it. This website was born out of that frustration. It was built using what I now see as primitive software. After all, the software that now forms the basis of this site did not exist at that time. I spent one week setting up the structure of the site with all the code and even the graphics. These days I could do the same thing in half a day or less.
I came home and said to myself you know how to set up a website why not just put everything you know on a website and leave it there. That way when you come across people who you want to share these things with you can send them there. I even had some cheap business cards printed so that I could pass them onto people.
Things do change sometimes
I never dreamed that 16 years later I would be giving this site its second major revamp. Over the years this site has become one of those old friends that you catch up with occasionally. When you do you make up for lost time and soon fill in the gaps.
Times have definitely changed since this site was set up. I moved out of the house that I lived in when it was built leaving the man who had built it still living there. He had decided to give me the order of the boot but even though I didn’t like it at the time it has proved to be one of the kindest things he ever did for me. I struggled to live in the world he created around him with his ways of thinking and to be honest I am better out of it.
I have moved churches twice. I have moved home three more times since then. There again this website has moved home twice as well when I have moved it from one hosting service to another. Each time it gets moved it is an excuse to go back and see if it can be improved.
Whenever I have done a major overhaul of this site I have ended up adding or removing links. In 2002 when this site first came into being there was no such thing as YouTube. In fact, the emphasis was on making images as small as possible so that pages could easily be downloaded. That was one reason why there were so few images on this site, and those that I used were so tiny. The idea of using video to teach people was just a pipe dream in those days.
In 2002 a phone was a phone and you used it to speak to people. In 2013 a smartphone is a multi-purpose communication device. One of the things that it can do is access the internet and view web pages. Ouch, the original site was not really mobile friendly. You could read the headings and the larger type but the rest was so small that it was unreadable. This new site is far more accessible to those using mobile phones. In other words, everyone should be able to access it no matter what device they use to connect to the internet.
Some things I have learned since setting up this site
Over the years I have been to various events and picked up some amazing ideas. There was the guy who had a flag that was attached to a fishing pole. It was like a standard sized flag on an enormously long pole. When I have I have added bits and pieces to these pages.
One of the things that has become clearer and that is worship tools are no different than many other physical objects. They can be used to demonstrate pro-Christian values or otherwise. There are a number of secular sites that could be helpful. Some of these are spiritually neutral and there would be no harm in using their resources as long as you are sensible. What did come as a surprise are what I can only call counterfeit activities.
I found one site on something called Poi I did a bit of checking and found it had some links to Maori fertility rites. This is definitely not spiritually neutral and in fact, many people would see it as spiritually opposite to Christian worship. Bearing this in mind I intend to avoid this idea like the plague and I would encourage others to do the same.
I would also recommend that if you have a choice of handles for your twirling flags that you consider what any images on them represent. Designs to be wary of include stars within circle shapes which are often seen as related to anti-Christian spirituality. I for one will not be using those flag batons.
Links and income generation
Over the years I have added links to different sites and of course sites come and they go. It is actually amazing that this one is still around 16 years after it was first set up. Ok, it has not always had the attention it deserves but it is still around.
Something else you will notice and that is how few adverts there are on this site. Many people have cottoned onto the idea that you can set up a website to share your ideas add some adverts or write a book or offer coaching or online training and make your website into an income generating mechanism.
When this site was first started the idea of blogging as a means of making money was unheard of. You could make money online but not many people did and it was hard to do because the technology that makes it so easy to do that had not yet been developed.
That was one reason why this site was never intended to be primarily income generating. In the early days, I added a donate button and in 10 years there was only one donation. When I did a major revamp of the site it was never replaced.
This site was always intended to be a means of giving back after taking so much information from cyberspace. It was my chance of putting something out there to help others. Only one problem and that is Google has a habit of pushing sites that do not have content added to them on a regular basis further and further down the search rankings. After having so little attention for so long this one probably reached the bottom of the search rankings.
Times have changed
This website was only the third one I had created and released online. I have created many more since then and some of them are intended to help me make money. As they are also in tune with this one in terms of values and principles it seems only right to share them. That is why there is an advert in the sidebar.
The original optin giveaway on this site was really the first short book that I wrote. Since then I have self-published some books on Amazon. You can check out my author page here.