Hello Brother’s and Sisters!

Welcome to the new Living Water Fellowship church website! Some of you have known about this effort to move to a new website, and I am thankful for your patience. For others, this is the first time you heard about it and now the old website is gone. Nothing familiar is here to be seen. (Hint: There actually is, don’t worry.) Whatever the case may be, you may have questions. Why did we need a new church website? How does this benefit the ministry of Living Water Fellowship? Can I access the same account? Can I still do everything I could on the old website?

Let me answer a few of those questions here and hopefully set you at ease.

First, why did we need a new church website?

There are several reasons that we needed a new church website.

1. Josh Wheeler, Littler Bear and Marilyn’s son did an amazing job with the original website and took into consideration all of the needs that we had as a church body, from the prayer submission form to the church directory and many other features we enjoyed. The issue we ran into is that since not much maintenance had been done for a good many years, there were things that had fallen into the dark recesses of servers and multitudes of emails, never to be retrieved again (passwords, configuration settings, etc). If we needed to do any maintenance, this would pose an issue, so we decided it would be best to start afresh with a system that would allow more people to have access to changing it.




2. Next was the desire to do an update to the look and feel of the website. Because of the afore mentioned issues, making an update to the website would have required a lot of digging and a lot of manual work. Starting afresh using a wordpress theme and a variety of plugins made a lot of sense since not everyone who needed to make changes would be a software engineer.

How does a website benefit the ministry of the Living Water Fellowship?

1. Since everyone is online in today’s world, having an online presence is critical for multiple reasons, but one is to be found by others. Someone in Bulverde searching for a list of churches to attend on a Sunday morning, for example. We have had a good number of people visit us through the years, even some becoming members of our church, by finding us online and deciding to attend.




2. Having a website for our church also allows others who are seeking for a new church home to understand where we plant ourselves in the area of Doctrine and Theology. Many are concerned about the growing rate of churches who are unconcerned with the Truth of Scripture and the mandate for the evangelism of a lost a dying world. Since we publicly display our Mission, Vision, Core Values, and our Basic Doctrine on our website, it presents an opportunity for helpful discussion and an understanding of our official standing as a church body.




3. There is a large ministry that our sermon archive has to many different people who have been blessed particularly by Pastor Emeritus Little Bear’s and Pastor Phillip’s messages throughout the years. Having a website allows us to reach many who are interested in receiving nourishment through the Word of God and growing in their walk of faith! I know I have downloaded several sermons to listen to again for my edification and spiritual benefit.




4. A website also allows us to have a ministry to local people that we wouldn’t otherwise come in contact with. Over the years, people have emailed us or called our church phone number asking for help, seeking counsel, wanting some practical assistance or wanting direction for their life. Ministry to these individuals would not have been possible if we didn’t have an online presence for our church body.




5. Our website also allows you as the church members the benefit of accessing our church directory so you can see the contact info of someone else. Thankfully, we still have it behind lock and key so no one outside our fellowship can access it. And no, in case your wondering, we don’t sell that info to anyone…..

Can I access the same account I had on the old website?

The answer is absolutely yes! If you had account on the old church website, you have an account on this one. If you remember your username, you can simply enter it in the username field on the login page, and select “reset my password”. Check your email, and you should be able to easily click a link and reset your password to login to your account. If you don’t remember your account username, just let me know and I will be happy to provide it to you.

Can I still do everything I could do on the old website?

Yes, and no. I am still working to get specific functionalities up on the website again that were available on the old church website. Namely the prayer request form, access to the calendar and several others.

What is still being worked on currently?

I am glad you asked! Here are a couple of things I am working on or will be implementing very soon:

1. Prayer request form for logged in members.
2. Transferring church member data from old website. (If you don’t see your info or someone else’s info in the directory, don’t worry! It’s coming!)
3. Uploading sermons from the previous years plus documenting them and organizing them.
4. Giving online. (New feature!)
5. Resolving any bugs/issues that are inherent when you launch a new website.
6. Probably something I didn’t think of while writing this……

Thank you all for you enthusiastic support of this small aspect of our ministry at Living Water Fellowship! May the Lord continue to be glorified in all that we say, think and do! If you have any questions about anything, please give me a call or send me an email. I will be happy to help.

For the Glory of God and the advancement of His Kingdom,

Pastor Nathan