Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently said these words, “Some of the technology that we will use in the next 10 years has not yet even been thought about today.”  If we look back over the last 25 years, we can see that the way we communicate with one another has also radically changed.

From delivered mail to fax machines to email to instant messaging - what used to take days now takes minutes and we expect answers instantly. Where we turn for information has also changed. The internet has become the place we find the information we are looking for - from the products we use to the churches that we might attend.

For the last 10 years or so we have had a website at Lakeside. It has gone through some moderate changes over those years but we have not changed the site all that drastically. It was an excellent website with good content and was continually updated through the cooperation of the staff and a small team of people who maintained the site. We have received some excellent comments about our website in the past as many people have found it useful. Peter and Nancy Revie have been responsible for the site for the last number of years and we want to thank them for the excellent work that they have done.

But a while back we decided that we needed to launch a brand new version where the content and the images and the “feel” of it better reflects who we are as a church community and the community that we are trying to impact. We also believed that it was time to use new software that would help us more easily manage changes to the site.

Instead of trying to do this all by ourselves we turned to an outside web design company that specializes in church websites, to help lead and guide us through the process of creating this new website. There has been a staff team who has worked for the last six months or so designing and refining this brand new site. It has taken many hours and many meetings to be able to launch this new website. Although there are a few things we still would like to update (and we will do that over the next few months) we have assembled a completed project that we are excited about. 

We believe this site will be more informative, more interactive and will constantly be changing when it comes to some of the content. It will make it easier to log onto our media options including our live streaming services and podcasts. It will be easier for those who are new to Lakeside or who have never attended Lakeside to know who we are and what we are all about. It will provide lots of information about upcoming events related to the various ministries of Lakeside and it will keep you updated on upcoming weekend series. Some staff will have blogs so that they can share some of their thoughts and comments about things related to their ministry. It will be a very visual site. We will be giving away less information on paper and we will be using the website as the alternative. 

So we encourage each of you to check out the new site and give us your feedback. We hope that you will add the site to your “favourites” and check it often so that you are constantly in the loop about what is happening at Lakeside.