Welcome to the New Churchatthemall.com
Starting from scratch, churchatthemall.com has been redesigned to help you Connect to God, Growth, and Ministry. Along with new paint (design), we've developed several new features for churchatthemall.com. With our connect steps in mind, the home page has several distinct sections to help you connect. The new navigation system allows you to browse based on ministry, age group, or if you're Connecting to God, Growth, and Ministry. Each page let's you search the site, sign-up for email updates, and share the page you're viewing with your friends.
With new paint, you'll know immediately if you're looking at Connect to God, Growth, or Ministry content or general church information. Each area feature its own color (light blue, gold, blue or dark blue respectively) and its appropriate logo.
The home page features 9 different sections. The main rotator feature shows ads of all major church events and news. The Connect to God, Growth, and Ministry buttons present feature ads and links specifically relevant to each connect step. Moving down the page for all of you Twitter fans out there, you'll be glad to see our latest tweets and a link to our Twitter page. Our "latest posts" section shows you the most recent blog posts from all our blogs, which include Pastor Jay's weekly video post and church news (this blog), Pastor Mark's Discipleship Thought and our Connect Groups blogs. If you keep moving to the right, you'll seek links to our Facebook page, online giving page and our Foursquare page. (Did you know if you become the mayor of First Baptist Church at the Mall on Foursquare, you'll receive a one-time free drink and snack from the coffee shop?) Underneath those three links, you'll see where you can sign-up for email updates, search churchatthemall.com and share churchatthemall.com with your friends across your favorite social networking sites.
With three unique navigation genres, you'll be able to find content based on ministries, age groups and the connect steps. First, "Other Ministries" found on the top right of you page lets you browse through our major, non-aged based ministries, such as Celebrate Recovery, Compassion House, F.A.I.T.H. Riders, Hope Givers, MOPs and our Worship Ministries. Second, the top navigation row gives you the ability to find general church information (events, sermons, watch live online, staff contacts, etc) and age based ministries. Finally, on the bottom-right of your page, you'll find our connect navigation. Here, you'll be able to get details on our connect steps, find a connect group, and find ways to serve. Let's look at a few of the highlights.
Under "Join a Connect Group," you'll be able to search for a connect group that meets your needs, log-on to Connectbook (our new social networking site that lets you stay up-to-date with your connect group online) and check out your connect group's page. If your connect group doesn't have a page or Connectbook, talk to your director.
By going to the "Ways to Serve" link, you'll find different areas in the church where you can serve and search for other needs throughout the community. This is a great tool to help you get involved in Church at the Mall and Connect to Ministry through Service. The "Ways to Go on Mission" page will introduce you to our missions ministry and our RS7 strategy.
We hope you enjoy the new churchatthemall.com and find it to be a great tool in your Connecting to God, Growth, and Ministry adventure.
Finally, a huge thank you goes out to those that helped with this project. Thank you to Steve Antley, Kim Bedwell, Linda Callahan, Melissa Cobb, Bill Mutz, and Casey Taylor for their work and advice. Thank you to Jason Beckner, Adam Hoar, and Brian Authement at Details Communication for their design work. Thank you to Holly West and Adam Randlett at Monk Development for their programming and development work.