Is Ecclesiologist a word? Cuz I think I want to be one when I grow up

My semester's over, by the way.

On Friday afternoon I realized that my little final assignment for my last class that was due on Saturday night was actually a very BIG final assignment, and it was due on Friday night. I freaked out for a few minutes. The I did my assignment in an hour or two (it should have taken me about 12-15 hours) and turned it in. It won't get that good of a grade.

But I'm done now.

So, for a little while now I've been in the process of discovering what I think might be a fairly major passion of mine. But it's hard to describe. I really like the idea of helping churches to improve as communities of people who obey the Word and follow Christ. I feel like "church consulting" is kind of what I'm trying to describe, but I think that phrase seems very much like a secular businessperson trying to turn churches into profitable business that can simply grow attendance and bring in money -- and that's NOT what I'm talking about. I'm talking about learning as best as I can how churches can be most effective for the Kingdom of God, and then helping them to learn and implement ideas that come from it.

More recently, I've become extremely interested in the use of web-based technology as a part of the mission of the church. It was sparked when I came to the conclusion that my church's website could probably be much more user-friendly, and could include much more content and have a better layout. I just don't think that it's being used that much for anything right now, and that could change quite a bit. The use of facebook, twitter, blogs, and other programs on church websites obviously have both positives and negatives, but I've been learning an awful lot about those pros and cons, and if you avoid the cons and stick to the pros I think they can really be integrated into the mission of the church.

So if I designed my own job (which, while somewhat farfetched, isn't completely pie-in-the-sky, given the fact that 10 years ago facebook didn't exist, and 10 years before that the internet didn't... so the job I end up having someday might not even exist yet) it would be some kind of blending of the two exciting things I wrote about above. Using the internet and its tools to assist churches in growing into biblically-based Christ-following communities. So there you go.

On a sidenote, I've also recently discovered something called Google Analytics. Using this tool you can embed an html code into your website and track how people are using your site and where they're coming from. It'll track number of visits, number of new visitors, where your visitors have linked from, how long they tend to stay on your site, which pages of your site they view the most and the longest, where in the world (geographically) your visitors are, and much more. I've only begun to realize the niftiness of Analytics. I'm using it to track info right here on my blog, but a little unpopular blog that's read exclusively by close friends and family isn't the ideal site to use with Analytics. A church website, which has multiple pages and a lot more traffic, would be ideal (in my opinion). Anyway, it's cool. Ask me about it, if you're interested in learning more!