In response to user feedback….

Posted by Nick on November 15, 2011

One of the great things that we like is to get feedback from people who visit the CCI website about things that can be improved, or are not working, or ideas and suggestions.

One of the most frequent comments received is that the site didn’t show up very well in smaller display screens – e.g. a laptop or notebook. So while I (Nick) do actually design on a great big 24″ screen, I have been playing around to see how we might do this better to take into account all these different size displays. And then Tim Hyde, a Baptist Minister in the UK – who also happens to run a web ministry, designing wordpress themes particularly for churches, launched a theme called XI. Very trendy name I know . However it’s biggest feature was that it automatically resizes itself (images, texts, boxes, pretty much everything) depending on what screen the website is being view on – even down to mobiles and iBooks.

So after testing it out on a couple of other church sites I have been building I decided to implement this on the CCI website and, so far, I am very pleased with the results and hope that those of you who visit the site regularly will send us your feedback if you have any complaints, criticisms, ideas or other suggestions of how we might improve things – we just want to make our site as good as it can be for you.

And just for your information, here’s a few stats from the website (some of which are mind blowing!) – the last time we shared anything about our website visitors was back in August, so these figures are from 1 August to today:

Almost 1,500 visitors to the website from 86 countries since 1 August
45% of those were unique (first time) visitors to the CCI website.
Over 60% of visitors to the site are reading Bill’s blog (kewl!)
The English version of Small Groups Development was downloaded 260 times (making almost 790 downloads this year)
The Russian version of the Small Groups Development manual has been downloaded 160 times since it was put on the site – that is just amazing!

And on our facebook page, we have had over 2,400 visitors since the page was launched on October 18 – unbelievable. Even though we only have around 40 people who ‘like’ us, it’s amazing that so many people have found that little page on FB and are finding our website from there.

These website statistics are very encouraging to us (me as well as Bill and Beryl) and confirm – like we didn’t already know – that we are not in control of how CCI’s work and materials will be used by God. If we only measured the impact of this website by the number of people who contacted us, or who had signed up for the blog, or are on our mailing list, or who “LIKE” our FB page – we could easily be disappointed, or upset or discouraged. But the fact that we can see that what we are sharing and have to say is being read by many many more people than we could have imagined is just such a wonderful blessing and encouragement – and we especially want to really thank ALL OF YOU who visit the site regularly, share posts and articles with your friends, comment on posts and give us feedback. Thank you, sincerely.

And so, in case this is your first visit, or you haven’t yet connected with us to receive regular updates… a couple of unabashed plugs!

If you are not yet subscribed for the blog… Subscribe to the CCI blog

If you have a facebook account, please “LIKE” CCI on Facebook

Developing Young Disciple-makers in Warsaw

Posted by Bill on October 18, 2011

Dear friends

Paul urges us to “teach God’s truths to trustworthy people who are able to pass them on to others” (2 Timothy 2:2). Last Saturday (15 October), Beryl and I had a golden opportunity to do just that. With the outside temperature at minus 3 degrees, in a warm and comfortable teaching facility in Warsaw, I was privileged to facilitate a discipleship workshop with twelve young people from Christian Fellowship North, together with the Youth Pastors, Adam and Monica. read on →

Discovering your Spiritual Gifts – a new resource

Posted by Bill on September 2, 2011

It’s quite common for believers to be actively involved in the life of their church and not know their spiritual gifts.

With the best of intentions, they expend a lot of energy and are denied satisfaction and fulfilment that comes from serving within the area of their gifting. Sadly, many eventually “wither on the vine” and withdraw from service, experiencing either discouragement and/or burnout.

While the “Discovering Your Spiritual Gift” assessment booklet is not perfect, it can help you and others in your church have a reasonable idea of what your gifting is and where in the church the Lord has prepared as your special place of serve.

Rozwój grup domowych

Posted by admin on June 5, 2011

Once again we are delighted to give you a little language test with the title of this post! And of course it means ‘Small Groups Development’ in Polish.

Many thanks to our friends at Christian Fellowship North Church in Warsaw, Poland for translating our Small Groups Development training manual into their mother tongue. This version is now available to you “free of charge” from our resources page.

At the moment our training manual is available in English, Russian and Polish. An Arabic translation is in the works and will soon be completed and available as a download from the website for use by our Arabic speaking Christian partners and friends.

CCI’s goal is to have the SGD training manual available on our website as a free of charge downloadable resource in forty, or more, world-dominant languages! Can you help us to reach this goal? We are looking for volunteer, gifted language translators to take our English version and translate it into the following languages: German, French, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch – and any other language that YOU would like it to be in!

If you are that person, please contact us and we will be in touch with you.

If you haven’t already subscribed to our blog we encourage you to do so!

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Sermons from Poland (but not in Polish!)

Posted by Nick on June 2, 2011

During his recent visit to Poland, Bill had the opportunity to preach at two churches, the first in Warsaw at Christian Fellowship North, and then at Bialystok Baptist Church.

You can listen to or download the messages from these links.

Just Do It! – Christian Fellowship North, 15 May 2011 (click on the word POBIERZ)

Join in God’s Affairs – Bialystok Baptist Church, 18 May 2011

Enjoy!

If you haven’t already subscribed to our blog I encourage you to do so – we will be posting more detailed reports and testimonies about our visits to Lagos, Ibadan, Warsaw, Bialystok and Llanelli in the coming weeks!