SURPRISE! The All-New TravelBlog: What’s Changed; What Hasn’t

Welcome to the new TravelBlog.  Rather than running a separate website, we’re now a part of sojournchurch.com.

Why the change? As Director of Communications, I have regular conversations with our Executive Pastor Bryce Butler, Lead Pastor Daniel Montgomery and other Sojourn leaders.  I also talk with many Sojourn members and blog readers from around the world.  And last month, I asked all of you to help make TravelBlog better by taking a survey.

This is the result of that survey and many conversations.  You liked lots of the old site’s features – especially the headlines from all Sojourn blogs, the community photos on the right side, and the links to our podcasts, RSS reader, email subscription and Facebook & Twitter pages.

But you felt the site could use a good spring cleaning – less clutter, less noise.  You also wanted better integration with our main website.  You wanted better category listings for the various kinds of blog posts, and you wanted to immediately see whatever the newest blog post was, without having to scroll down the page.  Finally, you wanted to click on something that would immediately tell you what’s going on within the community in a given day, week and month.

You’ve got it.  It will take a couple months to reassign all our old blog posts into the categories that you see on the bottom left sidebar.  Please bear with me in that (we’ve already reassigned many of them).  But otherwise, here we are:

The architecture on the top of the page is the same as every other page at sojournchurch.com.  You can:

• immediately click “Calendar” to see a listing of everything going on in the community.
• Click “The City” to participate in our private message board
• Click “BROWSE MEDIA” or “Resources” to hear sermons and download our devotionals and other church documents, or buy our CDs and books.
• Click any of the six big header listings to explore all aspects of Sojourn Community Church, from “New Here” which tells you about our vision, history, beliefs and leaders, to “Give,” which enables you to learn about our Operating Budget and Vision Campaign, and donate to either.

In short, you can get anywhere in the Sojourn web universe from this one page.

On the blog itself, we will bring you more pastoral reflections and devotions from our leaders.  You’ll read, see and hear more insights from our elders, regarding the direction of this church.  You’ll see more Photo Blogs and fun peaks into the life of this community.  And you’ll continue to read more Sunday service previews and stories of salvation and change from Sojourn members.

It’s not flashy, and it doesn’t contain every “bell and whistle” available.  You didn’t want that, and we didn’t want that.  We just want it to be helpful.  We’ll continue to make sojournchurch.com – including this blog page – as helpful as can be to you, whether you’re a member, a recent attendee, or a friend from a faraway land.