Today is the one-year anniversary of the merger of Caleb Project and ACMC. Should we celebrate? What a disaster it turned out to be! And what a year this has been. About a week ago I got a check from one of my college friends with a note: “Sounds like this has been a very hard year for you – maybe your hardest ever.” True? Of course the merger was not the only big event, but July 1, 2006 is a pretty significant bookend.
New web site...
Well, quite a few bits of our organization remain and as the writer / strategist / keeper of tribal lore, I spent a good bit of energy this week writing, rewriting, formatting, and tweaking content for the new web site that will represent our current ministry. We’re not quite ready to launch it and set up all the “redirects” that will help people find us. But it is already accessible if you know where to look. Take a sneak peak at www.takeitglobal.net.
Trying to describe who we are, what we do, and where we come from in ways that would answer readers' questions but not raise too many others was a fairly tricky process. And when others on our staff review the contents I’m not sure everything I wrote will make it.
I hope people who end up there looking for Caleb Project or ACMC or Initiative360 will know they are in the “right place.” You and I know that in many respects these ministries are no more, but in other ways they continue: through resources, experience, and continuing services. So much so that for some of those who find us, depending on what they are looking for, it will be as if nothing has changed!
Writing history
The “about Initiative360” page was the trickiest. It may end up being eliminated or cut way back; we’ll see. What was the vision behind the new direction and the merger? How and why did it fail? How, when, and why did PIONEERS step in? Once I found ways to put some of this into words, weaving together text from various communications along the way, I felt a weight come off my shoulders. I could go back and write the rest.
I found a ‘brief history of ACMC’ page in my files. It did a good job at describing the ACMC vision and legacy, and setting up the remaining ACMC staff to carry on that legacy. It wasn’t well-written, but that I could fix; it covered the right ground. I wanted something that would do the same for us. But how to describe 25+ years of Caleb Project history?
I already had well-crafted text on how and why Caleb Project began, and a nice summary of the first ten years. After that all the documents I found seemed to skip ahead to ‘current ministries include…’ The ‘current ministries’ lists changed pretty regularly, which gave me clues for what to include. I didn’t want to miss anything really pivotal, though what is important may be a matter of opinion.
The network of Calebites, the traveling teams, student mobilization, and the research program were all early ministries. I added references to church mobilization and Perspectives; people-specific advocacy and prayer journeys; the births of the media department and Caleb Project Europe. I didn’t make specific mention of children’s mobilization, Crossing Cultures, or Encountering the World of Islam: those things come across well enough on other parts of the web site.
Well, take a look if you are interested.
Old-timers, this is your story, too, and I’m sorry you were not here to write it. Let me know if I got a date or detail wrong, explained something in a way that seems strange, or left out something that seems too significant to omit... Wait, I think I left out the move from
Working on this project was good for me. It was kind of bittersweet, but trying to put things into words for others helped me celebrate the good things God has done.
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