The best way is for each page to have a title, relevant keywords and a description, allow caching and back linking. Don't put keywords in your meta-tags that aren't mentioned in articles. Post in relevant newsgroups and with links to the site. Avoid links to specific articles. Make sure your pictures and graphics have <alt> tags that have specific keywords. Name your graphics with keywords. When I sit down and do Christian Unitarian I will study what search words were used to hit BU and write accordingly.
I want to share what was a major paradigm shift for me. Like I said, we have been doing the presbyterian thing since 1993 off and on. The kids were involved in the youth program, which they loved. DH started going in 1999 and became a member of the praise team and I became a regular in 2001. In October of 2002 I did a 3 day weekend. Some call it a walk, tres dias, but ours is more ecumenical and is called a Great Banquet based upon the Luke passage. I will say that I avoided going for 2 years because of the Momentus debacle. There was no way I was going to put myself in the hands of people I didn't know. BUT, DH came home so different. He never said a cuss word for nearly a year. He kept urging me to go, but something always came up like babies being born, kids leaving, etc. Well I finally went and walked in one person and left 3 days later being a totally different person. I have invited everyone at CES, but it's never been a good time.
Guys, I'm telling you that the weekend finally showed me how to know Jesus, not just know a lot about him. I'm here in Indy, but we have people come from all over the country to our banquet because the food is so good. :D--> That's part of it, but really it's because the synergy is great. In the past 2 years I've served on nearly every team just to see the transformations. You can find out more by going to http://www.lampstand.net.
BTW, there are no secrets; only surprises. The reason why we don't talk specifics is that we want it to be YOUR weekend and every weekend is different due to the dynamics of the guests and team. The food is great and the surprises are awesome. There is lots of music, but it's not loud (I've been a music director 3 times). It was so, so healing.
Hmm, Tanzania? Never heard of that country. I had to look it up on the Internet. It looks to be below Kenya in East Africa. What were you doing there Evan?
Mark -- Evan has some photos posted in the "Every Picture Tells a Story" Forum about his recent missionary trip over there. Check it out. :)-->
Jack is a presbyterian who started the great banquet movement based upon the walk to emmaus movement which was based upon a catholic thing started in 1949. Whew.
Bloomington. Been there, done that. Partied. Ours is the Southport Indianapolis banquet.
Tzaia -- my Mother is Presbyterian, and Dad goes to the church too (he quit the Catholic church), more for a social thing than for worship. I guess there are *degrees* of prebyterians, because I can see nothing like this happening at their church.
But it is great to hear that it is happening, and that it has such a positive effect. :)-->
Tzaia, my wife & I have participated in the Walk to Emmaus and have sent other to be involved. A very great ministry. It's made a big impact in our town...
Mark, I was there last time (having been there 1.5 yrs earlier) ministering & teaching among the incredible Masai tribe in one of their villages. I hope the few pictures are still up...
God Bless in Kenya. I have enjoyed your posts. A friend of mine who is a doctor is a missionary there.
Taziaia: I breifly visited that site that u had posted. Interesting that so called fundamentalists now have to post as part of the doctrine beleif in the sanctity of marriage.
Such a thing was unheard of years ago, when it was just presumed that anything else is wrong.
Oh well, on the positive side there is no one arguing abt babtisms and such anymore. Anyways, God bless yah.
quote: ALL WOMEN here are assertive, and logically minded!
Is that All without exception or All without distinction (sorry, couldn't resist)
Heh heh heh --- don't cha know --- docvic changed that at the live PFAL 77 class to the following:
ALL WITHOUT EXCEPTION or ALL WITH DISTINCTION.
But either way (your's, or the *updated version*) fits here at GreaseSpot. The women here are more vociferious, and more demanding that wrongs be made right, than most of the men are. Like I said -- you will fit right in -- whether you are without exception, or with distinction. ;)-->
Take your pick, and enjoy the coffee Raf offered. This is a good place to be, if you want to *vent*. And I for one, am learning much from what you have already shared.
Wow Evan, that is quite an adventure. I have never been to Africa, but my mother and sister have been to South Africa. They really liked the people. And teaching through an interpreter can be quite a spiritually edifying experience. I have done this a few times with someone translating into Spanish. It makes you slow down and really collect and weigh your thoughts and words. The last time I recall was quite an experience for me. I spoke and then while the person was translating the next words of my teaching came to mind. After the person was finished translating I would again speak the words that just came to mind. The person would translate again and while this was occuring more words and thoughts came to mind. It was very orderly one phrase after the next spoken in English and then translated. It had to have been the work of the Spirit.
And yes I saw your photos today on the Photo section of this site. Thanks for posting them. I hope you have a great time and stay safe.
It was not my desire to vent, especially, but as a sort of insider and as an observer, I have had to wage some major ethical wars with the CES home office.
One of the things you won't see is them out here posting on CES time anymore. More on that later.
Part of one person's job was to spam all the seminaries with the BU website. Here it is, MY website, and now it's associated with spam. Of course it wasn't spam in their eyes because they had something important to say. I'm standing there saying that don't you know that is the same reasoning that every spammer uses?
Well, that came to hit home one day when Dan couldn't send email to comcast customers. So I pull up the logs and see where the IP address for cesonline has been blacklisted. So I go to Dan and show it to him. He asks how that happened. I tell him about the unsolicited email coming from the office. He drags Jeff up from his hole and Jeff proceeds to tell him that they have permission to send mass emails from AOL. I'm standing there saying that this has nothing to do with sending mass emails from AOL. It is the spam that is being sent from the office to people picked off the internet telling them about the BU & TorT sites from the office and enough people registered a complaint that it got them landed on a blacklist. Jeff says they don't do that. My question is ever? (which is not true) or anymore? (which is moot, since the damage has been done).
So yes, your contributions have been used to pay some person to spend several hours every week to send spam.
I am trying to explain the ethics of this and Jeff just waves it off.
I kept talking about them needing to be squeaky clean. Quit using pirated software, quit downloading music & software from P2P places like Kazaa and LimeWire (which should be called SlimeWire) and quit spamming people with email for a site that belongs to me.
Some of you are partners. Notice that you didn't get a Contender until recently? Did you notice how you didn't get a teaching of the month for awhile? Have you noticed the erratic publication of The Sower? It's hard to get anything done when you p!$$ the majority of time away surfing the internet and playing with stuff on the computer. I knew what was going on and apparently it didn't take Dan too long to figure it out, either. So now all their internet activities are tracked. When I left, they were still spending over 50% of their time on the internet. However, since Dan arrived they put more work out in 6 weeks than they had the previous 6 months. This has been a top down problem that they know exists, but after all folks, it's them and there's more important things to do than meet deadlines.
They bring in a supporter who is also a financial consultant. 18 months into the process the consultant was gone. I asked about it and was told that the consultant had become pretty perturbed about them not enacting the recommendations and had pretty much confronted them. And then the consultant talked to others, kind of like I'm doing only they told people to quit giving to CES; as far as I'm concerned the decision is yours, but you are entitled to enough information to make an informed decision. Anyway, so they locked the consultant out because the consultant was sharing their concerns. So I asked if they had a problem with the recommendations. No, just never got around to doing it. So I said, so basically you p!$$ed away nearly 2 years of this person's time and you expect them to be gracious about it? Mouths dropped open when I said that.
This is what I saw. I saw a vendor just dropped because they didn't keep the paper stocked that CES liked to use and sometimes they didn't do things on a timely basis. I go to Dan and ask where's the grace in that? I told him that when CES sends a print job out that it isn't trivial and that it's a huge outlay of paper that isn't cheap and would most likely tie up an offset printer for a number of hours. If that printer is told to expect a job on a certain day, they have to plan for that. It doesn't take more than once or twice of the job not showing up as expected, thus the print shop losing money, for the print shop to not go out of their way to accomodate them when it does finally arrive. Here the print shop is cutting them a deal, because they are a Christian organization, but no one should be expected to lose money. And the printer most certainly shouldn't be dropped because CES doesn't meet their deadlines.
I don't know if they'll ever figure this out, but I can tell you that when you eliminate healthy checks and balances and instead rely on each other for accountability when there has been problems with that in the past, you tend to lose perspective. Now they don't have someone who can sit in there with a vendor's perspective and raise these issues.
They have eliminated every person who asked the hard questions.
Those are the kinds of things you need to take into consideration.
Oh, and BTW, I've really appreciated the welcome. I really didn't know what to expect in response to my first post.
My concerns are not that these people aren't good people, because they are. My concern is the us vs them mentality and the need to CESify programs that are already out there and the way they treat people outside their inner circle or those who rightfully confront with the excuse of not liking the way they did it. My response is that it started out as gentle, but even a 2x4 failed to get their attention, so who's fault is that?
What is the ethical integrity of someone who comes on and acts as if they stumbled upon a site, when, in fact, they didn't?
I am concerned because Jeff is being "groomed" for management and instead of dealing with his lack of interpersonal skills and his problem of feeling like he's entitled to operate by a different set of standards, they just remove anyone he conflicts with. I've heard that man speak to Mark in such a way that if I had been Mark, he would have been shown the door. I 've watched him sit in a meeting, where decisions were made and then go downstairs and go on as if nothing had been said.
Giving them money tells them that you like what they're doing. You many like what you see, but you don't see everything. These guys were big players in an organization that burned people big time. I realize that it takes some time to unlearn that mentality, but quite frankly, I don't like the way they are going about it because I believe that in this particular situation, accountablity needs to be a very public and open process because the lack of it affects many people.
That's just my opinion.
If you would like, I'll tell you about *my* Momentus experience. But only if you want me to.
Tzaia - If I'm remembering rightly, my wife and I spent some good times at your house in the mid- to late-'90s. If that's so, then God bless you!, and welcome to the GreaseSpot Cafe.
If it isn't, then God bless you!, and welcome to the GreaseSpot Cafe.
Tzaia, thanks for the clarification. It all makes a little more sense now.
Sometimes a post like the one that started this thread appears completely out of context and makes no sense. Jeff tends to do that, posting CES or related links with little or no followup. They appear to be advertisements, which is fine and would be finer if they were stated as such. There's nothing wrong with Jeff doing that, but in the Doctrinal forum it's tweezey to just put up ads and leave them at that when the purpose is discussion.
You said "These guys were big players in an organization that burned people big time"....Mark G, I don't know about being a big player. Who else is out there, John S?
Thanks for the insights. It's not often you get to hear the inside story.
I can't say as I'm much surprised though. Seems like religions have a tendancy towards all sorts of ills.
One week it's cookies and coffee in the church basement, and a few weeks later it's off to the crusades, and a month or so after that, it's time for the inquisition.
I guess that's why I enjoy the company of rank unbelievers anymore. They don't have anything that important to kill you over...
Recommended Posts
Top Posters In This Topic
44
33
28
45
Popular Days
Feb 7
41
Feb 21
24
Feb 9
21
Feb 10
14
Top Posters In This Topic
Raf 44 posts
Tzaia 33 posts
Steve Lortz 28 posts
dmiller 45 posts
Popular Days
Feb 7 2005
41 posts
Feb 21 2005
24 posts
Feb 9 2005
21 posts
Feb 10 2005
14 posts
Tzaia
Awww. thanks. Just the way I like it...
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tzaia
The best way is for each page to have a title, relevant keywords and a description, allow caching and back linking. Don't put keywords in your meta-tags that aren't mentioned in articles. Post in relevant newsgroups and with links to the site. Avoid links to specific articles. Make sure your pictures and graphics have <alt> tags that have specific keywords. Name your graphics with keywords. When I sit down and do Christian Unitarian I will study what search words were used to hit BU and write accordingly.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dmiller
There is a staff photo at Truth or Tradition?? I went over there, but couldn't find it.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dmiller
Tzaia -- ALL WOMEN here are assertive, and logically minded!
:D--> 
:D-->
It's something us poor guys have to deal with, and if truth be known, I think most of us kinda like it. You'll fit right in here at GreaseSpot!
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tzaia
I want to share what was a major paradigm shift for me. Like I said, we have been doing the presbyterian thing since 1993 off and on. The kids were involved in the youth program, which they loved. DH started going in 1999 and became a member of the praise team and I became a regular in 2001. In October of 2002 I did a 3 day weekend. Some call it a walk, tres dias, but ours is more ecumenical and is called a Great Banquet based upon the Luke passage. I will say that I avoided going for 2 years because of the Momentus debacle. There was no way I was going to put myself in the hands of people I didn't know. BUT, DH came home so different. He never said a cuss word for nearly a year. He kept urging me to go, but something always came up like babies being born, kids leaving, etc. Well I finally went and walked in one person and left 3 days later being a totally different person. I have invited everyone at CES, but it's never been a good time.
Guys, I'm telling you that the weekend finally showed me how to know Jesus, not just know a lot about him. I'm here in Indy, but we have people come from all over the country to our banquet because the food is so good.
:D--> That's part of it, but really it's because the synergy is great. In the past 2 years I've served on nearly every team just to see the transformations. You can find out more by going to http://www.lampstand.net.
BTW, there are no secrets; only surprises. The reason why we don't talk specifics is that we want it to be YOUR weekend and every weekend is different due to the dynamics of the guests and team. The food is great and the surprises are awesome. There is lots of music, but it's not loud (I've been a music director 3 times). It was so, so healing.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tzaia
They may have taken it off. I was looking for the email on my laptop, but it may be on my other computer.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dmiller
Mark -- Evan has some photos posted in the "Every Picture Tells a Story" Forum about his recent missionary trip over there. Check it out.
:)-->
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dmiller
I looked at the lampstand link. Who is Jack Pitzer??
-->
My hometown is in Bloomington, Indiana. There sure are a lot of "banquets" happening down there, according to the schedule.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tzaia
Jack is a presbyterian who started the great banquet movement based upon the walk to emmaus movement which was based upon a catholic thing started in 1949. Whew.
Bloomington. Been there, done that. Partied. Ours is the Southport Indianapolis banquet.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dmiller
Tzaia -- my Mother is Presbyterian, and Dad goes to the church too (he quit the Catholic church), more for a social thing than for worship. I guess there are *degrees* of prebyterians, because I can see nothing like this happening at their church.
But it is great to hear that it is happening, and that it has such a positive effect.
:)-->
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tzaia
Is that All without exception or All without distinction (sorry, couldn't resist)
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tzaia
We are part of the the confessing church movement
We are a bit more on the conservative side, but you will see hands raised at the contemporary service
;)-->
Link to comment
Share on other sites
TheEvan
Tzaia, my wife & I have participated in the Walk to Emmaus and have sent other to be involved. A very great ministry. It's made a big impact in our town...
Mark, I was there last time (having been there 1.5 yrs earlier) ministering & teaching among the incredible Masai tribe in one of their villages. I hope the few pictures are still up...
Link to comment
Share on other sites
TheEvan
Incidentally I leave again day after tomorrow. This time to Kakamega, Kenya
Link to comment
Share on other sites
sky4it
evan and tazaia:
Evan
God Bless in Kenya. I have enjoyed your posts. A friend of mine who is a doctor is a missionary there.
Taziaia: I breifly visited that site that u had posted. Interesting that so called fundamentalists now have to post as part of the doctrine beleif in the sanctity of marriage.
Such a thing was unheard of years ago, when it was just presumed that anything else is wrong.
Oh well, on the positive side there is no one arguing abt babtisms and such anymore. Anyways, God bless yah.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dmiller
Heh heh heh
--- don't cha know --- docvic changed that at the live PFAL 77 class to the following:
ALL WITHOUT EXCEPTION or ALL WITH DISTINCTION.
But either way (your's, or the *updated version*) fits here at GreaseSpot. The women here are more vociferious, and more demanding that wrongs be made right, than most of the men are. Like I said -- you will fit right in -- whether you are without exception, or with distinction.
;)-->
Take your pick, and enjoy the coffee Raf offered. This is a good place to be, if you want to *vent*. And I for one, am learning much from what you have already shared.
David
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dmiller
I like the Confessing Church link, but have questions about the *triune word* they mentioned, as perhaps you do also.
Other than that -- it is a good site. Thanks.
;)-->
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Mark Sanguinetti
Wow Evan, that is quite an adventure. I have never been to Africa, but my mother and sister have been to South Africa. They really liked the people. And teaching through an interpreter can be quite a spiritually edifying experience. I have done this a few times with someone translating into Spanish. It makes you slow down and really collect and weigh your thoughts and words. The last time I recall was quite an experience for me. I spoke and then while the person was translating the next words of my teaching came to mind. After the person was finished translating I would again speak the words that just came to mind. The person would translate again and while this was occuring more words and thoughts came to mind. It was very orderly one phrase after the next spoken in English and then translated. It had to have been the work of the Spirit.
And yes I saw your photos today on the Photo section of this site. Thanks for posting them. I hope you have a great time and stay safe.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tzaia
It was not my desire to vent, especially, but as a sort of insider and as an observer, I have had to wage some major ethical wars with the CES home office.
One of the things you won't see is them out here posting on CES time anymore. More on that later.
Part of one person's job was to spam all the seminaries with the BU website. Here it is, MY website, and now it's associated with spam. Of course it wasn't spam in their eyes because they had something important to say. I'm standing there saying that don't you know that is the same reasoning that every spammer uses?
Well, that came to hit home one day when Dan couldn't send email to comcast customers. So I pull up the logs and see where the IP address for cesonline has been blacklisted. So I go to Dan and show it to him. He asks how that happened. I tell him about the unsolicited email coming from the office. He drags Jeff up from his hole and Jeff proceeds to tell him that they have permission to send mass emails from AOL. I'm standing there saying that this has nothing to do with sending mass emails from AOL. It is the spam that is being sent from the office to people picked off the internet telling them about the BU & TorT sites from the office and enough people registered a complaint that it got them landed on a blacklist. Jeff says they don't do that. My question is ever? (which is not true) or anymore? (which is moot, since the damage has been done).
So yes, your contributions have been used to pay some person to spend several hours every week to send spam.
I am trying to explain the ethics of this and Jeff just waves it off.
I kept talking about them needing to be squeaky clean. Quit using pirated software, quit downloading music & software from P2P places like Kazaa and LimeWire (which should be called SlimeWire) and quit spamming people with email for a site that belongs to me.
Some of you are partners. Notice that you didn't get a Contender until recently? Did you notice how you didn't get a teaching of the month for awhile? Have you noticed the erratic publication of The Sower? It's hard to get anything done when you p!$$ the majority of time away surfing the internet and playing with stuff on the computer. I knew what was going on and apparently it didn't take Dan too long to figure it out, either. So now all their internet activities are tracked. When I left, they were still spending over 50% of their time on the internet. However, since Dan arrived they put more work out in 6 weeks than they had the previous 6 months. This has been a top down problem that they know exists, but after all folks, it's them and there's more important things to do than meet deadlines.
They bring in a supporter who is also a financial consultant. 18 months into the process the consultant was gone. I asked about it and was told that the consultant had become pretty perturbed about them not enacting the recommendations and had pretty much confronted them. And then the consultant talked to others, kind of like I'm doing only they told people to quit giving to CES; as far as I'm concerned the decision is yours, but you are entitled to enough information to make an informed decision. Anyway, so they locked the consultant out because the consultant was sharing their concerns. So I asked if they had a problem with the recommendations. No, just never got around to doing it. So I said, so basically you p!$$ed away nearly 2 years of this person's time and you expect them to be gracious about it? Mouths dropped open when I said that.
This is what I saw. I saw a vendor just dropped because they didn't keep the paper stocked that CES liked to use and sometimes they didn't do things on a timely basis. I go to Dan and ask where's the grace in that? I told him that when CES sends a print job out that it isn't trivial and that it's a huge outlay of paper that isn't cheap and would most likely tie up an offset printer for a number of hours. If that printer is told to expect a job on a certain day, they have to plan for that. It doesn't take more than once or twice of the job not showing up as expected, thus the print shop losing money, for the print shop to not go out of their way to accomodate them when it does finally arrive. Here the print shop is cutting them a deal, because they are a Christian organization, but no one should be expected to lose money. And the printer most certainly shouldn't be dropped because CES doesn't meet their deadlines.
I don't know if they'll ever figure this out, but I can tell you that when you eliminate healthy checks and balances and instead rely on each other for accountability when there has been problems with that in the past, you tend to lose perspective. Now they don't have someone who can sit in there with a vendor's perspective and raise these issues.
They have eliminated every person who asked the hard questions.
Those are the kinds of things you need to take into consideration.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tzaia
No, I'm not real thrilled about the triune god thing, but to expect something different would be rather foolish.
I'm not so interested in changing people's minds about the trinity; I'm more interested in working out a peaceful co-existance.
I'll tell you a few ways I've been doing that in later posts. I really need to work today...
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tzaia
Oh, and BTW, I've really appreciated the welcome. I really didn't know what to expect in response to my first post.
My concerns are not that these people aren't good people, because they are. My concern is the us vs them mentality and the need to CESify programs that are already out there and the way they treat people outside their inner circle or those who rightfully confront with the excuse of not liking the way they did it. My response is that it started out as gentle, but even a 2x4 failed to get their attention, so who's fault is that?
What is the ethical integrity of someone who comes on and acts as if they stumbled upon a site, when, in fact, they didn't?
I am concerned because Jeff is being "groomed" for management and instead of dealing with his lack of interpersonal skills and his problem of feeling like he's entitled to operate by a different set of standards, they just remove anyone he conflicts with. I've heard that man speak to Mark in such a way that if I had been Mark, he would have been shown the door. I 've watched him sit in a meeting, where decisions were made and then go downstairs and go on as if nothing had been said.
Giving them money tells them that you like what they're doing. You many like what you see, but you don't see everything. These guys were big players in an organization that burned people big time. I realize that it takes some time to unlearn that mentality, but quite frankly, I don't like the way they are going about it because I believe that in this particular situation, accountablity needs to be a very public and open process because the lack of it affects many people.
That's just my opinion.
If you would like, I'll tell you about *my* Momentus experience. But only if you want me to.
Tzaia
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Steve Lortz
Tzaia - If I'm remembering rightly, my wife and I spent some good times at your house in the mid- to late-'90s. If that's so, then God bless you!, and welcome to the GreaseSpot Cafe.
If it isn't, then God bless you!, and welcome to the GreaseSpot Cafe.
Love,
Steve
Link to comment
Share on other sites
socks
Tzaia, thanks for the clarification. It all makes a little more sense now.
Sometimes a post like the one that started this thread appears completely out of context and makes no sense. Jeff tends to do that, posting CES or related links with little or no followup. They appear to be advertisements, which is fine and would be finer if they were stated as such. There's nothing wrong with Jeff doing that, but in the Doctrinal forum it's tweezey to just put up ads and leave them at that when the purpose is discussion.
You said "These guys were big players in an organization that burned people big time"....Mark G, I don't know about being a big player. Who else is out there, John S?
Link to comment
Share on other sites
George Aar
Tzaia,
Thanks for the insights. It's not often you get to hear the inside story.
I can't say as I'm much surprised though. Seems like religions have a tendancy towards all sorts of ills.
One week it's cookies and coffee in the church basement, and a few weeks later it's off to the crusades, and a month or so after that, it's time for the inquisition.
I guess that's why I enjoy the company of rank unbelievers anymore. They don't have anything that important to kill you over...
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.