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Please, allow me to introduce myself, Doug Parker (father of ex-Shout Technician Jonathan or JP).
My family, wife-Karen and son-Jonathan, have lived in Jacksonville since late 2000. We became associated with the First Presbyterian Church when Jonathan started attending youth activities sponsored by the church.
We were so impressed with the Youth Program, that my wife and I started supporting the Youth Program and Church in any manner that we could. My wife loves to bake cookies/desserts and was quickly on the schedule to provide cookies for Sunday mornings. Jonathan became a member in 2010. Jonathan was fortunate to serve as the Shout Technician for about a year in his Junior/Senior High School year until he started college. Jonathan has participated, and continues to participate, in the Mexico Mission for a number of years and we pitched in where needed for various activities like the Christmas Basket program. I started attending services off and on as my work schedule permitted and became serious about becoming a member in 2011. I retired in January 2011, but found that retirement is a full time job. I am still working on the journey to becoming a member and have a lot to learn about the Church and Christianity, but hope to become a member in 2012 or early 2013.
In the November 2011 Bell Ringer my wife and I noticed a request for help with the Church website. After visiting with Larry, Richard, Kay and Nancy AND giving it some serious prayer and thought, I felt this would be a good way for me to continue my support of an excellent organization doing great work in so many areas.
It has been a tough and trying process to find a cost effective solution to the old website and server hosting, but thanks to some gentle guidance by the good Lord and great support by many folks, we are off and running. I am very excited and feel blessed to have the opportunity to be the primary web manger for the First Presbyterian Church.
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The main objective of this website is to serve, in the best possible manner, the following audiences; the Good Lord, new folks to the area, new members and established members. It is my goal to have the website, and if possible every page, meet the needs of these audiences.
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You will see some changes in format and organization from the old website to this new website. This is primarily due to utilizing different tools available in an effort to wisely use God's funding he has made available. Websites can be expensive to store information and maintain. We are utilizing a variety of tools that are free and not taking away from other ministry areas. Many alternatives considered would have been cost prohibitive or were such that it required a pretty high level of website programing expertise to continue with the old website. Unfortunately I did not have the skills or expertise to maintain the old, very well designed, website. We were also concerned that future backup web managers may also be in this predicament. We believe we have found a set of tools and applications that will allow us to maintain and develop the website utilizing volunteers (myself and future backup web managers) to meet the objectives identified.
Unfortunately this means that you will see some things that are a little different. Change is sometimes hard, but we hope that in the long run it will be POSITIVE CHANGE that will better serve everyone. We hope the changes will also give the website a "fresh new look."
I am here to provide you with what assistance I can to facilitate this change and make it a positive experience. If you are having any difficulties utilizing the new website, please do not become frustrated or spend a lot of time "trying to figure things out"; please feel free to contact me at anytime [webm@jvillepres.org / 541-941-2392].
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This website is for you and the good Lord. If you see any typo's or mistakes that may have occurred during the transition process, please let me know as soon as possible. NOT ALL the pages are fully populated. This will take some time to move and located some items; we were under a fairly tight transition goal of February 1, 2012. Our goal was to meet this timeline and do the best possible job we could and continue to improve the site as time goes on.
If you have any website suggestions to better serve you and the good Lord, please let me or one of the church staff know so we can find a solution to meet the need you have identified.
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