Welcome to the new design.  We have been working hard on giving the site a much-needed facelift, and we finally launched it today.

Most of the changes revolve around an updated look-and-feel.  I'll highlight a couple things here... but look for an official blog post on the Team blog soon.

• Your church name at the top.  Instead of the "myChurch" logo and branding, your header/navigation has your church's name.  This makes the site truly about your church.  The logo has changed as well - reflecting the emphasis on Church (with a capital "C") and de-emphasizing the "my" with a lower-case "m" 

• We want to continue to foster the blogging community here.  With over 250,000 blog posts published, this is the largest Christian blogging community on the internet.  We've updated the blog editor and the blog post itself to have a cleaner and more professional look.  We've also put a link at the bottom of every single page to all the recent and popular blogs on the site

• We updated your homepage feed to standardize the commenting and post structure.  (no more praying hands picture!).  If your church is more about the global community at myChurch rather than a local congregation, your homepage feed reflects the customization without looking completely different from someone who has an active local church.

• The publisher was updated with a cleaner and simpler interface.  Posting prayers, bulletins, media is easier and faster.  And the feed items that are generated go to the respective section on your church's network, as well as to the homepages of your friends and fellow church members 

In a couple weeks, we are launching a redesign of mychurch.org. We'll have the official announcement on the team blog soon. The site will be centered around the church you belong to. Logging into mychurch will feel like you're logging into a social networking site dedicated around your own specific church. And links to explore the global site will move from the top to the bottom.

While we're excited about positioning the church at the center of the user experience, we don't want to forget about the community of bloggers and "end-users" who are not part of active church networks. We want to continue fostering this community, and let folks connect as a global body (Church with a capital "C").

This is primarily connection around blogs, and to a certain extent Bible verses, prayers, and videos. But I heard the bloggers loud and clear - they want to connect and have fellowship through the pieces they write and the comments they leave. MyChurch is home to the largest Christian blogging community on the internet, with over 250K blogs written. We don't want to forsake this community of passionate believers. And it is indeed a "church" in a very real sense.

But since our focus will be on serving our church customers, I've asked a couple folks to join a committee to advise me on the needs of the blogging community. This inaugral advisory group is composed of folks I respect and trust - Mike, Larry, and Sue. I've asked them to commit to meeting with me regularly for the next 6 months where they'll channel feedback to our team from end-users, offer their own product recommendations and ideas, and give me insight that I lack from not being an avid blogger here.

I also invited Mike, Larry, and Sue because I'm comfortable sharing confidential company info with them. And they have the wisdom to help me balance business objectives with the ministry of supporting Christian blogging. They are sensitive to the trade-offs we have to make, while advocating and representing the pulse of the blogging community.

I realize a lot of the recent product changes we've been making have upset some of the bloggers here, and caused many of them to leave. While forming this advisory board won't magically bring these bloggers back, we feel these advisors will help us effectively serve the global Church as we move forward in designing mychurch to serve the local church.

So thank you Mike, Larry, and Sue! I look forward to working with you.

I have mixed feelings about disclosing this, but I feel it's necessary to protect and warn ministries and Christian organizations about an individual named Scott Fehrenbacher.

Scott Fehrenbacher ran a company called New Iron Media who we worked with to run an ad campaign for Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.  His name-dropping and self-proclamations as a nationally recognized speaker and consultant cleared any doubts I had about him.  He even sent me a gift basket for agreeing to work with him (how can you not trust someone who sends you a gift basket!)

This was in Aug 2008, and the contracts were signed for his company to remit $4000 to my company.  We delivered the ad campaign, and confirmed that BGEA promptly sent their payment to Scott Fehrenbacher.  But he never remitted our portion of the payment ($4000).  In the first couple months, he replied to my emails with apologies about his delays and promises that a check will be cut shortly.  A couple months (and several emails and voicemails from me) later, he claimed there were accounting errors that caused another delay.  He apologized profusely again, and even offered a late payment penalty in addition to the $4000.  He promised me the check was on the way.

Then radio silence for most of 2009.  Every month, I consistently sent him voice mails and emails that went unreturned.  I tracked down a former employee of his who told me Scott Fehrenbacher laid off the New Iron Media sales staff.  And conveniently, he laid them off right before the calendar day that commission bonuses were supposed to be paid to them.

Scott Fehrenbacher talked a good game about running his company on Christian values.  But his actions spoke very differently.  

I had a collection agency investigate, and it seems like he knows how to play this game.  Protecting himself from people he owes money to by hiding behind the loopholes of corporate bankruptcy, and then starting brand new companies to con new clients. 

I have forgiven Scott, although he's never asked for it.  But I feel a duty to protect others who are considering working with him.  This post will eventually make it to the top of google when you search for his name.  If your ministry is thinking about working with Scott Fehrenbacher, I would highly warn against it.