Wineskins Contributor・01/23/19

When we revamped Wineskins.org back in 2013 I had a vision for a few things that are just now coming to fruition and I want to let you know about them. I will be posting several articles this month that will inform you about the resources we have on the site. Much of it has gone underutilized and I have made it my goal in 2019 to better utilize all of the tools and content we have on the site so that we can make an even bigger impact on the kingdom!

When the site revamped I really wanted to have active discussion forums. So we created over a dozen forums, hoping people would find them in the drop downs and start conversations there. I was naive. People were already having discussions on social media and just throwing up a discussion forum wasn't going to get them to show up at Wineskins to move the discussion there.

So I came up with an idea that I believe will help. Rather than just create discussion forums for various types of ministry, I decided to create ministry resource areas. These resource areas would point you to curriculum, content, and experts in the field for a given ministry (children's ministry, marriage and family, missions, etc).

I then realized that I am not an expert in all of these areas so I needed to recruit help. It was determined that no ministry resource area would be made public until it had someone to spearhead that area who was an expert in that particular field. This person would help create the resource links and point people looking for ministry help in the right direction. Instead of 15 poorly done areas, we launched four, each with someone overseeing it.

It is our intention to make each of these areas a "go to" resource for people to get equipped, find great resources and join in a discussion with others.

That brings us to the forums. The forums are still very much alive and well but we only have forums up for the ministry areas that have an expert on hand to make sure everything is done with excellence and expertise.

Here are the ministry areas we currently have live. You will find resources at each of these as well as the link to the related forum. We will be adding more in the very near future:

Marriage and Family - Trey Morgan
Children's Ministry - Shannon Clarkson Rains
Single's Ministry - Jim Miller
Book Reviews - Matt Dabbs

These can all be found in the Ministry drop down menu on the homepage.

I hope you will try out these pages and please comment on them with resources that have been helpful to you so we can network with you to expand and broaden the resources. I also hope you will join the forums and jump into a discussion, ask questions you have, and network with others who are working on similar things.

Thank you for reading this. There are good things ahead! We are excited about all God is doing at Wineskins and we hope you are as well.