St. Paul’s — by a combination of necessity and good fortune – developed web skills in-house. We were able to do this only because we found the open source community and built on the powerful tools it provides. The internet is a complex structure involving many very different skill and knowledge sets. We make no claim to broad, general expertise – only to some useful knowledge in certain areas of considerable utility. The following is an analysis of where we are and where we’re heading. Comments, as always are welcome.

The web can be used in many different ways to support the parish and parish ministries. The most obvious – and certainly a very important use — is for storing and transmitting information relevant to the parish. This function can be expected to grow in importance as more people get comfortable with the web. It also will be made easier by the ongoing trend towards computing and data storage on the web (“the cloud”) rather than on your PC.

The other obvious use for a website is to show people looking for a church home what they can expect from the parish. It’s like having a giant, greatly expanded yellow page ad – but the problem is that there aren’t very many people out there looking for a church home! And it’s those not-looking people we need to reach…

Among others, this includes all of the people working to support the greater local community. Willi has lots of people in this category – and they’re doing all kinds of different things. Some are more or less tied to the religious communities (eg via WAIM, First Baptist suppers, Covenant Soup Kitchen) and some are not. So what should we do?

• The first thing is to support the people and organizations in any ways that are open to us – and without consideration of any return. Support of various WAIM programs is an obvious example.
• Develop connections with the various communities and the individuals that make them up. We need to know more about who’s doing what and they need to know what we are doing and what we can offer.

As an indirect result of this kind of activity people with assorted spiritual needs will see what we have to offer – and some likely will be attracted to our community. Some may see enough worthwhile programs to justify providing some financial or other form of support whether or not they’re attracted to the spiritual aspects of St. Paul’s. (Remember that our 2011 budget calls for us to find almost $9,000 of additional income just to continue our present level of ministry.)

By that fortunate combination of circumstances we do have rather extensive internet capability. For some time I have considered ways to offer this capability as support to the community – and in the process develop and strengthen connections to a wide variety of people. Our website provides significant opportunities for this with the forum a prime example. It’s open to everyone and discussion categories are easily added. Andrew Seeling is the forum’s general caretaker and posts very regularly. However, it’s very difficult to get discussions started without a core of regular contributers so he needs help – we really need more participation by the parish to make this an effective tool.

We always are looking for ways to make our website more effective. Our concentration generally has been on providing solid content and clear ways to find it. In our latest rebuilding effort we tried to add a little excitement in order to get people’s attention when they hit the home page. I am grateful to Jean Henderson and Andrew Seeling’s for taking on the “flash rotator” module now showing images related to Black History Month. In the near future I expect we’ll be seeing some of Jean’s gorgeous photography in this position.

Last May, after a good deal of discussion with some young community activists, we created the WilliTalks subdomain (willitalks.stpaulswillimantic.org). This was conceived as both a vehicle for communication and a source of directory information for Willimantic area nonprofits. Jason Ortiz, a UConn student leader with ties to the Willimantic support community, was going to take the lead in developing the site. However, he decided to run for the vacant Mansfield Representative seat (he lost with a respectable showing) so there was not enough time and energy left to develop WilliTalks. In retrospect, the plans for the site were vague and undefined enough to make successful development difficult at best.

For now the WilliTalks site exists but is undeveloped. As we work in the Willimantic community the kinds of services this site could provide become clearer. A simple example: we need easy ways for a church to invite the local church community to special services and events. When the appropriate opportunity arises – and we find the time – we will continue the development of this site.

A different, easy – and significant — opportunity did arise. A few months ago, Tom Ford co-founded the Connecticut Coalition of Gay Adults (CCGA), a social and support network. The LGBT community has been and still is mistreated by many churches. We have parishioners who came to St. Paul’s because they were made unwelcome in their previous church. If you look at the list of Connecticut “Believe Out Loud Episcopal Congregations” — those that officially welcome LGBT people – you’ll only find one parish – St. Paul’s Willimantic. Those issues that are tearing some congregations apart were settled at St. Paul’s years ago – well before the time I arrived. As a result, we are in a unique position to welcome this community.

LGBT people have spiritual needs just like everyone else. However, the church’s history in this area does generate suspicion. This is especially true for people with fundamentalist background as well as older people who remember that for the most of their life the church was telling them that their basic nature was sinful. They are safe to be themselves at St. Paul’s — but we need to do whatever we can to convince them that this really is true.

Supporting Tom’s new network gave us an opportunity to do just that, to reach out and demonstrate our sincerity. This is a small organization that needs some basic web presence – so we gave it to them. We created another subdomain, ccga.stpaulswillimantic.org, and put together a simple independent site with their information. (Subdomains are treated by search engines and such in much the same way as an independent domain. We can create as many as we want at no cost.) Our blogs have an LGBT category so we linked that to give them some more content and us some more exposure. St. Paul’s is part of the site URL so to make sure there is no confusion we added a site link, contact link and explanation on the CCGA page tops: “St. Paul’s Willimantic is providing web help to CCGA as part of our ministry – working with and supporting Willimantic area communities; need help? Contact us”. A bonus for us: CCGA generates its income through ads in its monthly print information guide and has decided to donate a portion of the net income to St. Paul’s. Thanks Tom…

Sharing knowledge is another form of ministry. At some point after we get settled down in our new Community Room offices we probably will get the opportunity to offer lessons in basic computer skills. It could be a program analogous to the Thread of Warmth ministry, very useful for many in the Soup Kitchen community – as well as for a number of our parishioners. Beyond that we could offer more sophisticated web related knowledge particularly targeted to the local provider community. That probably would be web based, maybe use WilliTalks, but at this point is just a collection of vague ideas.

Jean and I have been putting together “how-to” notes to support both future web knowledge sharing ministries as well as our own need to develop the long term capability required for our web efforts. Building the CCGA site provided a little bonus in this area. Usually I start on a site with stuff from a previous site and dive in without much of a plan. The CCGA site is completely new and small enough to be manageable so we could start with a clear organizational plan – an ideal way to develop a “lesson plan” for the how-to notes. They aren’t completed yet, but the notes and other web related conversations are available by joining the ww listserv.

Our office move from the old parsonage building to the newly partitioned space in the Harry Crowther Community Room will be happening before long.  We just learned the layout of our new office so space planning has begun.  Based on my experience in design/build construction I’m sure we can make the space work well for us. Moving always has its traumatic aspects and our office move is no different. It also provides all sorts of opportunities: To make more workable and efficient use of space; to get rid of stuff you don’t need and haven’t used in years; to find interesting stuff you didn’t know you had (historical stuff, blueprints that no one could find when I needed them…).

The kitchen operation is working out reasonably well and getting better. We still haven’t fully recovered from the mess created by the peak construction activities when everything in the kitchen that wasn’t in a cabinet had to be moved into the robing room for temporary storage. At least we’re back to the point where we mostly can find the stuff we use regularly!

Big move coming and at this point we have way to much stuff (in the office, in the kitchen and in the robing room)!  Getting rid of the excess is going to take some work. Some is trash, some we can give away (anybody want an electric slicer?), and some we probably can sell on craigslist.  Lots of help needed!

Our “landlord” has been busy with property improvements both inside and out. Painting has improved the look of the staircase and other spaces in the church building, and the second floor of the office building is undergoing a much needed face lift. On the outside, the grass gets mowed and we have new plantings along Walnut Street.

Of course, the roof is on everybody’s mind and here is the latest news: The State money is coming but getting it turns out to be much more complicated than anyone expected. There have been a series of paperwork delays but actual construction is getting closer.

The latest issue is that the Soup Kitchen had gotten bids from a number of local contractors – but then found out that contractors had to be on a State approved list. The bidders weren’t, and so the process is being redone. Unless something else comes up we should see construction before too long. In the meantime they did readjust the tarps that are up there – and recent heavy rains didn’t seem to pour in too badly.

When the office moves we’ll have limited space to store our collection of ancient and modern documents. Lisa Ferriere, Office Administrator, has begun sorting through this material to determine what should saved. Diocesan House is the keeper of such files, and equipped to care for them. After Rev. Jackie views the material we will begin transporting it to Diocesan House for storage in their archives.

I think of the first stage in this process of transformation then as the period defined by Rev. Pat’s leadership. Those roughly four years saw healing and renewal, together with a strengthened commitment to ministry. [Disclosure: Near the beginning of her stay I came to a service - a renegade Lutheran with a dim view of the mainstream church - and absolutely no interest in becoming involved in a church. Looked around and there were the "nice" middle class ladies that you would expect. But there also were people closer to the edge, people who would be marginalized in most churches. Here they were a real and accepted part of the congregation. I kept coming back.]

This first stage ended with Rev. Pat’s retirement (her last service was on September 7, 2008), the sale of the church property to the Covenant Soup Kitchen, a partial resolution of our financial problems, and the strength to continue. The news from this period has been reposted here so the process of transformation for St. Paul’s – with all its twists and turns – will be covered from its beginning.

The second stage has just begun. Last November saw the arrival of Jackie Sheldon as Eucharistic Minister – but her exact ongoing role has not yet been defined. Major questions remain: how do we develop ways to overcome the financial limitations on our ministries; exactly how are those ministries going to evolve. I believe that there will be positive answers to our questions; these answers – whether positive or negative – will be the subject of this blog.