Some of you might’ve read last year on ym.lifeteen.com that we’re upgrading the website to become CatholicYouthMinistry.com. Well 2010 is here and you can now see what we’ve been working on for the last twelve months. Here are some highlights to our new CatholicYouthMinistry.com (beta):

1. A New Name.We felt that ym.lifeteen.com had outgrown its name and deserved to be become its own website: CatholicYouthMinistry.com. Plus it would be easier for search engines to direct people who are new to Life Teen to our resources, training events, and wealth of knowledge from our bloggers.
2. Easier access to resources. After two years with the “Member Resources” section on ym.lifeteen.com, we decided it was time to go back to the drawing board. Our goal was to rethink the section so that youth ministers could have easier access to our Life Nights, Liturgy Planning Guides, Retreats, etc. We are confident that this new Download Ministry Resources section will make it easier for parishes with Life Teen and/or Edge to get quick access to the resources they need to effectively plan for their parish.
3. Better Blogs. You’ll notice that here in our new blog section that it loads faster and is easier-to-read than on our previous website. Plus every blog finishes with links to relevant articles and resources. We also re-organized the blog archive into more intuitive categories. (Look on the right.)
4. Better Jobs. Our jobs section has been entirely restructured to better help individuals find jobs in Catholic youth ministry. Plus it’s easier than ever for a parish to submit a job opening to the website.
5. Interaction. Soon you will now be able to post comments to some of our blogs and select resources. Your feedback will make the website more lively and fun for everyone.

For those of you who are comfortable with ym.lifeteen.com, know that we will keep that website online through the first quarter of this year while we work out the bugs in CatholicYouthMinistry.com. Be sure to let us know if there’s anything on the new website that is either broken or needs improvement: webmaster@lifeteen.com

Our goal is to serve you all better so that you can focus on leading teens closer to Christ.

How Many Catholics Does it Take to Launch a Website?

Short answer: more than 70

Long Answer: CatholicYouthMinistry.com has been a twelve-month project that began in January of 2009. This website is the most sophisticated and comprehensive website Life Teen has ever launched. That’s a fancy way of saying that we worked very hard to make sure that the site helps a lot of people. Accomplishing such a lofty goal required the hardwork and collaboration of a lot of people. Here’s a list of [almost] everyone involved, in no particular order:

1. Life Teen Missionaries
   1. Maria, Jordan, Nick, Alex, Carrie, and Pam prayed for the project for the past six months.
   2. Miller and Jon helped unified the file names of all of our digital resources.
2. Tobi Wedig (Conference Coordinator) helped us fine-tune our Events & Conference information.
3. Life Teen’s Resource Team:
   1. Lisa Epperson, Resource Team Leader,
   2. Katie Heller
   3. Carlos Weaver (Graphic Designer)
   4. Kevin Hickey
4. Randy Raus (President & CEO) and Mark Hart (Executive Vice President) gave prayer support and guidance for the project.
5. Steve Allgeyer (Development Director) and Kathleen Maxwell (Development Assistant) promised to pray for this website after we launched lifeteen.com/donate to be the online headquarters for Life Teen’s 2009 Annual Appeal.
6. Alissa Roberts (Executive Assistant) added digital resources.
7. Nick Heller (Life Teen alum) reformatted our featured images from the last three years of blogs. Plus Nick helped prepare images for a slick new 3D renderings of new Life Support shipments.
8. Life Teen’s Media Team
   1. Sergio Garcia (Media Team Leader) supported and guided the project for twelve months straight. There’s too much to write here, so I’ll have to leave it at that.
   2. Ryan Miller (Missionary, now our full-time Web Developer) worked tirelessly on this project. It is impossible to recount everything he did to make sure this website launched on-time and in full-featured.
   3. Greg Iwinski (Content Editor) helped edit the biographies of our bloggers. He also entertained us with humorous commentary during the most intense chapters of the project.
   4. Derek Natzke (Video Editor) edited and manages our online videos.
   5. Matt Smith (that’s me, Director of Internet Ministry) is awesome.
9. Russ Gordyon (Off site IT Director) kept our servers healthy and in top performance. Plus Russ prepared our servers for a new publishing platform.
10. Life Teen’s Parish Support Team
    1. Eric Porteous (Director) helped add digital resources into our Ministry Resources section and gave guidance on how to better support parishes.
    2. Tricia Tembreull (Parish Start-up Coordinator) gave advice on how to help parishes start Life Teen and loaded
    3. Pam Zimmerman helped coordinate our strategy for issuing new passwords to Life Teen parishes.
11. Regina Fortune and Jolene Hernandez (Accounting) prayed for the project and made sure we paid our bills.
12. Kori Baker (Communications Director) helped wordsmith our copy and put in countless hours contacting parishes so we could issue new passwords. Plus Kori offered feedback in countless conference calls and planning meetings.
13. Covecrest Staff and Missionaries prayed for the Media Team through this whole project.
14. Tepeyac loaned us Kat (missionary) to help edit our blogger bios.
15. Life Teen Board of Directors Jeff Berghoff, Tim Byrne, Stephen Smith (my dad!) helped me navigate through challenging crossroads in the project.
16. Our 22+ New Bloggers took time to snap a new photos, and for sending us updated information about your ministry so we could write your new biography.

I cannot thank everyone enough for their hard work and dedication to seeing this project through to the end. Teamwork makes dreams work!