God’s work in progress

Got back from Kevin’s talk, had dinner and started working on the new church website while listening/watching some “TV” on Joost.
A few weeks ago, and up to a couple days ago, I was quietly freaking out about configuring Joomla 1.5’s default template designs. Yes, the default templates are standards compliant, which is good. However, grappling with 5-7 different stylesheets on each template is no joke, especially when it’s someone else’s work. And despite Joomla being a popular open source content management system, I found it tricky figuring out where to go to change something. “Is it a module or a category? … How do I search this thing?!”
Fortunately I’ve picked up along the learning curve and sorted out most of the styles. I’m thankful to various members for praying for our team, and even specifically for me and the developer as both of us are not too familiar with Joomla and we’ve been trying to produce something decent for our presentation to the church council this Thursday evening.
I must say it has been a most professional team so far, considering we’re all volunteers. We’ve had a detailed project schedule drawn up, several bi-weekly meetings, and Minutes are written for each one. We even presented a paper to the council, detailing our plans.
This time, God called very specific people, each with different abilities. Of the people that came forward, we had exactly one web designer (me), one web developer (from the US), one copywriter, one project manager (I think they’re Australian). Occasionally helping us out are another IT consultant, another writer/editor (UK) and a photographer (Australian I think). Of course we have our very kind, patient and wise Vicar (Australian) advising us as well.
The combination of different skills and backgrounds is brilliant and I see God’s hand in this. It’s my second experience working in an international team but this time there are more people involved so the viewpoints offered have the potential to be even more diverse. I love this kind of interaction.
What’s been keeping us at the project despite our own heavy work schedules and family commitments, is TRUST. If I received an ultimatum to complete the design by a certain date, I’m not sure if I’d feel so committed to the project. Instead, they listened to my concerns, prayed for us and believed we’d be able to whip up something in time.
I believe the soft approach works better in the long run as it makes people feel more committed and responsible in a positive way. I’ll continue fine-tuning the design until it’s showtime.