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As we push the Free Methodist Church – USA’s web presence further, one of our main goals is a sense of community. The FMC has more than 120,000 members in the United States alone, and close to 1 million worldwide. We want to use the web as a place for Free Methodists to gather.
Light & Life Communications has two staff writers, and as much as we love to write denominational news, it’s only one of many job responsibilities. If we tried to tell the Free Methodist story on our own, we would miss so much of what God is doing in and through his church.
Because of this, we created Your Story, a portion of our website dedicated to gathering news from Free Methodists in the trenches of day-to-day ministry. These stories are posted on the homepage of fmcusa.org, in our RSS feed and in our mobile and tablet apps. We also use Your Story as a way to get ideas for the news section of Light & Life Magazine.
We give these stories such high exposure because authentic stories have great power to connect and encourage. As the central communication team for the denomination, our purpose is to serve the local church.
One of the first stories submitted was about Andy Mott, a young man who was diagnosed with autism at an early age. Mott has been a fervent witness to Christ’s power and currently serves as a Free Methodist fire chaplain in his local fire department.
Barbara Witter writes:
Andy knows God, and God knows Andy. It’s no wonder his favorite worship song is “Awesome God.” He’s heard God thunder an acknowledgment of their relationship, and he is quick to tell others they can have this relationship too.
Andy’s story has certainly been shared before. No doubt he’s known in his church, his boy scout troop, his fire house and his college. However, because of Your Story, now he’s known to the world. That’s not an exaggeration: fmcusa.org received visitors from 126 different countries last month.
Our dream is that Your Story will become a valuable tool for local churches. Your Story allows people with many different levels of technical ability to share news online.
What do you think of Your Story? Have you used it? Do you have any ideas about how to improve it? We’d love to hear from you.
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