Meeting All Day Long

A mid-morning shot of our living room. Note the two
basset hounds that joined our meeting.

Dudley is flopped between Marlene and Dave while Parker lies at his feet.

Marlene and Vanessa smile for the camera.

I took this picture of Peter, Alan and Dave
at the end of a long day of meetings.

Dudley steals the spotlight as Skip tries to give a report.

I am writing this entry at 11:24 PM, at the end of a very long day of meetings by the Keep Believing board. We started early this morning with breakfast, then spent hours working on the new KBM website that Derek Taylor is designing. Although he was in Chicago and we are in Tupelo, we were able to have a live video conference with him using Skype technology. We ran the video through a flat screen TV in our living room and the audio through external computer speakers. We also had the new website on the screen so we could discuss it with Derek. This afternoon we spent a long time going over the subject and key word categories, an important feature for making the new site easy for search engines to index. We also worked through the logistics of podcasting and adding video to the site. We hope to roll out the new website by the end of February. We spent most of the day working on the website because this is the key to our ministry going to the next level of effectiveness.

Tonight we turned our attention to more personal matters, starting with a look back at the journey we have been on since Keep Believing Ministries began in April 2006. We can clearly see the Lord’s hand in so many ways, not only in answering our prayers but also teaching us many lessons and drawing us into a deeper dependence on him. We looked at the hectic schedule Marlene and I have been keeping and had an honest and open discussion about how to be more effective and perhaps not travel at the same pace in the future. Later we worked through the 2008 budget and made some important decisions that will help us expand the KBM team. Finally we did some “blue sky” dreaming about on-demand publishing that will allow us to publish books, study guides, e-books, and new foreign language translations.

By 10:30 PM we all agreed it had been a good day and that it was time to wrap up.

Tomorrow we meet for an informal worship service and then our retreat will be over. A few folks are staying over to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow night.

I’m very tired right now, but it’s a good tired, the kind that comes when you sense that important things have been accomplished. No doubt we will all sleep well tonight.